Career Biography

Tom Maher is a seasoned General Counsel, Chief Legal Officer and Chief of Operations at public and private companies in the life sciences industry. Maher started his career in private practice as a corporate/M&A/public company lawyer at A&L Goodbody, and during that time began to specialise in life sciences, initially in the pharmaceuticals space and later in medtech.

In private practice, Maher has also been a corporate partner and Head of Life Sciences at Matheson where he built a successful specialised corporate life sciences team. One of the many highlights at Matheson was acting for Opsona Therapeutics Ltd in its spin-out from Trinity College in the early 2000s, which was one of the first high profile biotech spin-outs in Ireland. Between Goodbody’s and Matheson, Maher was Vice President Corporate Affairs at Elan Corporation plc where he led an internal legal team that transacted multiple biotech partnering and investment deals across the US and Europe over a “hectic” five-year period.

Maher left Matheson in 2005 to take up the rare opportunity to become General Counsel at the NASDAQ-listed Irish based, Amarin Corporation plc. This was a transformational period in his career as a member of the executive team of an international publicly listed biotech company. Amarin later listed on AIM UK and IEX Ireland, becoming a complex tri-listed company. This cross-border public company experience set Maher up well to later join Mainstay Medical International plc as Vice President Corporate and Chief Legal Officer after working with the company on its IPO on Euronext Dublin and Euronext Paris. This was the first and still only dual listing of a company on an Irish and French stock exchange, again unique experience to add at a key development stage in Tom’s career.

At Mainstay, Maher oversaw two financing transactions for a total of €60M which funded the company through its US pivotal Trial of ReActiv8, its implantable neuromodulation device for lower back pian. These transactions were structured as the Irish equivalent of US “PIPE” transactions, which was highly innovative in the Irish market space. The 2018 transaction involved in investment from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), which was an opportunity for Tom to gain experience in the public/private investment space.

After Mainstay, Maher had the opportunity to join Amarin for a second time n 2019, only this time in a business rather than a legal role as Chief of Operations and Board Director of Amarin Pharmaceuticals Ireland Ltd at a time when the company was building out its European footprint ahead of the launch of its highly promising cardiovascular drug, VASKEPA, in Europe. This was a great opportunity for Maher to broaden his experience as a business leader across multiple company functions, including finance, regulatory, quality, supply chain, alliance management and legal. Maher recruited this multi-functional team during COVID (all recruited virtually!) and set about establishing commercial operations and teams across 16 countries in Europe (a mixture of subsidiaries and branches).

In 2024, Maher returned to neuromodulation when he joined the Irish medtech company, Neuromod Devices Ltd, as General Counsel and a member of its SMT at a pivotal time in the company’s growth following the commercial launch of its highly innovative tinnitus device, Lenire, in the US and Europe. Maher is greatly enjoying this latest move into a highly entrepreneurial venture backed commercial stage company operating on an international basis from Dublin.