FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS
She’s Full Of Ideas Lifelong Cliffside Park resident Randice-Lisa (“Randi”) Altschul, 66, began her career in toy and game development. Eventually she invented the world’s first disposable cell phone, which won the market-research company Frost & Sullivan’s Product of the Year award in 2003. She’s also the founder and CEO of Palisades Therapeutics, which develops new medicines and medical technologies. Could you describe what you do? I’m a serial inventor and a serial entrepreneur—a concepts person. I come up with ideas and pitch them— sometimes I make them, sometimes I find smart people to help me bring them to life. My first sale was to the ABC television network in my early 20s. My Miami Vice board game in the mid-’80s was very popular. I also did The Simpsons game, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, Barbie’s 30th-birthday game. I patented the disposable cell phone and its super-thin technology in 1999. What’s your invention process? It just feels like the project is there, in my head. It appears like a marketing sheet. I find that when my conscious mind is occupied—if I’m driving or on a hike or walking my dog—my subconscious mind does the work. It’s different if someone comes to me with a request for a certain category—“a game for ages 7 to 12,” for instance. That takes more conscious brainstorming. I’ve licensed more than 250 products in the toy-and-game industry, the television industry and technology. Then I fell into pharmaceuticals. How does one “fall into” pharmaceuticals? First I hit rock bottom. I lost my mom, my dad and my company, Diceland Technologies—the one that focused on the disposable cell phone and similar projects—in one year. My financial consultant scammed me, and I lost everything. But I couldn’t just feel sorry for myself and give up. I had a good cry and tried to figure out how to move forward.
to go out and find the right people to make it a reality. Like who? My cousin Neil Theise, a research scientist [and clinical professor at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine]. We sat down together, and it all developed from there. Palisades Therapeutics became my full-time job. Suddenly we were also looking into oncology, diagnosis tech, antivirals. I spend all day looking through medical data, funneled to me from colleges and organizations all over the world, for new ways to use it. We’ve directed more than $50 million in funding into our science through grants and collaborations with institutions and government agencies. Your greatest talent? I make not knowing things an art form. Sometimes only having a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. Your thoughts get siloed, and you get stuck. I don’t know enough for that to happen to me. I can think about things in ways the Ph.D.s I’m surrounded by don’t, because they think in their expertise and I think broadly. Someone you find inspiring? How did you do so? Did you know the man who invented xerography, I needed to make money while having time during or a Xerox copy machine, didn’t make a dime from the day to do meetings, because I was still conceptuathat technology for almost 20 years? I love stories lizing and pitching ideas. I became a night nanny for about persistence. a wealthy woman who didn’t want to wake up after Experiences being a woman in a male-dominated field? 10 p.m. for feedings. I took care of the babies at night, I’ve never felt like a glass-ceiling breaker, honestly. My and I started getting a reputation for being good at it. gender has never been a problem because people like I was contacted by this woman, Sandi Peterson. She good products and I provide them. was a pharmaceutical executive, the CEO of Bayer. She Technology you’re excited about? needed help keeping an eye on her son because she AI. The things you can do with data using tools like traveled a lot. I started working for her, and we became Perplexity are incredible. friends. She is the catalyst for everything I do now. Memories of growing up in Cliffside Park? What next? I still live in the house I grew up in with my parents and One day she happened to mention that the world siblings. I love the cliffs overlooking NYC. Things have was scrambling for a noninvasive diabetes testing changed a lot—back then it was this small Italian town, system. I said, “I could do that.” She laughed, but the next day I conceptualized what I called the “Pop and I felt like I was from the one family who wasn’t Italian. But it’s still a place I love. Test.” It was in the shape of a lollipop, and it was —Kirsten Meehan a saliva diabetes test. And Sandi gave me the guts
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Photo courtesy of Randice-Lisa Altschul
Cliffside Park’s Randice-Lisa Altschul, inventor of the disposable cell phone, says she makes “not knowing things an art form.”
MARCH 2026
2/17/26 12:29 PM