QiVantage Founders Bios

Bradley Heilman
Co-Founder

Brad Heilman co-founded QiVantage in October 2004 to help athletes maintain and improve joint and muscle condition through the use of Asian herbal formulas. The company combines Brad’s lifelong interest in the East Asian martial arts, which emphasizes developing condition and laying a foundation for longevity, with his experience in sports, education, health and biomechanics. As president, Brad leads QiVantage’s strategic planning and shares responsibility for day-to-day operations with Rob Lucier.

As an International Level 6th Degree Black Belt and instructor in Traditional Martial Arts with more than 17 years experience, Brad has trained more than 1,000 instructors and students. Developed in East Asia, the Traditional Martial Arts that Brad practices utilize form and movement, acupressure, herbal formulas and meditation in a time-proven system of self-development. Together with Rob Lucier, Brad has led numerous seminars on Traditional Asian Health Methods that combine movement, acupressure and herbal formulas to relieve stress and improve internal functions including breathing, digestion and overall Qi (energy) circulation.

Previously, at Simplayer, a sports media company, Brad oversaw the design of real-time web-based representations of NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL games. Earlier, he served as a product designer for Logal, an educational science software company that created simulations in human physiology, biology, chemistry and physics.

At Lifecor, a company that developed and produced an external, wearable defibrillator, Brad designed and tested vest prototypes that mimicked aspects of human skin. As a graduate student, he helped design and build a laboratory at Tufts to study comparative biomechanics. This lab, which is a cross-disciplinary lab for biology and mechanical engineering, researches methods by which human life can be enhanced by designs found in nature.

Brad earned a Masters in Mechanical Engineering focusing on Comparative Biomechanics and a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University. While at Tufts, Brad received both the Mechanical Engineering Prize and the Trefethen Award for outstanding research. His work has been published in numerous magazines and journals including Newsweek, Popular Mechanics, Science, the Journal of Applied Optics and other scientific publications.

Rob Lucier
Co-Founder

Rob Lucier is an International Level 6th Degree Black Belt Instructor in Traditional East Asian martial arts. An elite athlete studying the traditional East Asian martial art for 19 years, Rob has taught and trained hundreds of instructors and students using this time-proven system of self-development. Together with Brad Heilman, Rob has taught numerous seminars on Traditional Asian Health Methods. These seminars use a system of movements, acupressure, and herbal formulas to relieve stress and bring balance mind and body. In addition, Rob has utilizes these techniques and formulas to help athletes and others recover from a variety of injuries and conditions.

Rob also brings an extensive background in business development, marketing, and product management to QiVantage, holding an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. At QiVantage, Rob oversees marketing and ecommerce areas of the company, and shares in managing day-to-day operations with Brad Heilman.

Before launching QiVantage to bring herbal treatments to athletes, Rob worked in a variety of Internet and software startups. Most recently, as Ecommerce Manager for Direct Hit, a search engine company subsequently acquired by Ask Jeeves. At Direct Hit, Rob managed the team that developed a comparative shopping engine and recruited a wide range of online merchants to sell and merchandise their products on the site.

Previously, while at Bright Tiger Technologies, Rob launched the first web-based resource management solutions for Microsoft Windows. At net.Genesis Corp., he launched the first web-based service to monitor website performance and ecommerce responsiveness. And at JetForm Corp, Rob managed the launch one of the first commercially successful forms-based workflow products.

Along with his Masters in Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Rob has a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College with a concentration in engineering.