Ahmed Afifi, Gilead Sciences
Ahmed Afifi, Head of Strategic Planning – Access Operations & Emerging Markets (LatAm – Africa – Asia Pacific), Gilead Sciences
Currently Head of Strategic Planning for the Access Operations & Emerging Markets at Gilead Sciences. My core responsibility is marketing, life cycle management, market access, strategic planning, and portfolio management across all of Gilead’s therapeutic areas in three geographic regions – Latin America, Africa, and Asia Pacific – spanning more than 130 developing and emerging countries. Prior to this role I was the Global Commercial Team Lead at Amgen based in San Francisco and for Novartis in several local, regional and global roles. I am holding a BSc in Pharmacy from Cairo University, and MBA from Academy of Science and Maritime.
Mallika Ann Ambat, Actelion Pharmaceuticals
Mallika Ann Ambat, Senior Director, Market Research, Actelion Pharmaceuticals
Mallika Ann Ambat is the Director, US Market Research Lead at Actelion. She has over twenty years of hands-on pharmaceutical and bio-tech experience.
She started her career at Pharma companies such as Hoffman-La Roche and Schering-Plough on the East Coast, and most recently worked at bio-tech companies, including Agouron-Pfizer (formerly in San Diego) and Actelion in the Bay Area.
She has extensive market research experience with key stakeholders (HCPs, patients and payors) and has worked in both primary care and specialty markets. At Actelion, she works in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, MF-CTCL and Gaucher’s Disease.
In her role at Actelion, she collaborates closely with her sales analytic colleagues to optimize decisions for business development, portfolio planning and new product commercialization.
Mallika earned an MBA degree from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and has a B.S. in Life Sciences.
Steve Bell, AplusA Bell Falla
Steve Bell, Senior Partner, AplusA Bell Falla
Steve Bell is a statistician and consultant specializing in pharmaceutical markets and quantitative marketing research methods. Steve has applied his statistical and software development background to create several original quantitative methods tailored to the needs of pharmaceutical marketers. From 1989—1998, Steve was an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Stern School of Business, New York University. From 2002—2016, together with Juan Falla, Steve was a Founder and Senior Partner of Bell Falla. Since June 2016, Steve has been Senior Partner of AplusA Bell Falla. Steve has a B.A. from Davidson College, M.S. from Texas A&M University, and an MBA and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Laetitia Bodivit, Lifescience Dynamics
Laetitia Bodivit, M.Sc., Director, Lifescience Dynamics
Laetitia is based in our UK office; she is a marketing professional experienced in both sales and product management. Ex-Bristol-Myers Squibb, she has worked at country and European level and is fluent in English. French is her native language.
She has worked in pharmaceutical and biotechnologies companies on a range of therapeutic areas such as CNS disorders, women’s health, haematology and infectious diseases as well as in in vitro diagnostics.
As an Associate Director, she manages market research, competitive intelligence and market access consulting projects at Lifescience Dynamics.
In her spare time, she likes being outside and hiking with her dog. She also enjoys travelling especially in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Singapore and Bali).
She holds an M.Sc. in Biotechnology from the Ecole de Biologie Industrielle Cergy, France, and a Specialised M.Sc. in Marketing Management for the Pharmaceutical Industry and Biotechnologies from the ESCP Europe Business school, Paris, France.
Meghna Chowdary, Relypsa, Inc.
Meghna Chowdary, Executive Director, Strategic Insights and Analytics, Relypsa, Inc.
Meghna leads Strategic Insights and Analytics at Relypsa. In her role, she serves as a strategic advisor to executive leadership, providing insights on product performance and contributing to portfolio planning. She was previously at Genentech for 10 years, where her last role was leading the Market Planning group supporting the Oncology business unit. The group was responsible for driving strategic planning efforts for 13 in-line products and late-stage molecules. Prior to Genentech, she worked at a boutique hospital strategic planning firm that assessed how new technologies would change the delivery of healthcare services. She holds a BS in Biology from Stanford and an MBA from Wharton.
Colleen Cutcliffe, Whole Biome, Inc.
Colleen Cutcliffe, CEO and Co-Founder, Whole Biome, Inc.
Colleen Cutcliffe is the CEO and Co-Founder of Whole Biome Inc. Colleen has over 15 years of experience managing and leading teams in biotech, pharma and academia. Before starting Whole Biome, Colleen served as the Senior Manager of Biology at Pacific Biosciences, which is where she met her two co-founders. Prior to that, Colleen was a Scientist at Elan Pharmaceuticals. Colleen completed her postdoctoral research at Northwestern’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University and received her B.A. in Biochemistry from Wellesley College. Colleen currently resides in Menlo Park, CA with her husband, 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 birds and 2 hamsters…all contributing to a diverse microbiome!
Johanna Faigelman, Human Branding, Inc.
Johanna Faigelman, Founding Partner, CEO, Human Branding, Inc.
Johanna Faigelman is the founding partner and CEO of Human Branding Inc., an innovative market research consultancy that has pioneered the use of applied anthropology thinking to create game-changing business results for international clients across a wide range of industries. Johanna has close to 20 years of strategic brand building and customer insight experience, in addition to a graduate and undergraduate degrees in cultural anthropology.
Greg Geddes, Seattle Genetics
Greg Geddes, Director, Market Planning & Analytics, Seattle Genetics
Greg Geddes is Director of Market Planning & Analytics for Seattle Genetics, an oncology therapeutics company. In his role, Greg leads a team responsible for global and US market research, sales forecasting, commercial analysis, and competitive intelligence for Seattle Genetics’ approved product, ADCETRIS, as well as all pipeline products.
Anne Hale, Pfizer
Anne Hale, Business Analytics and Insights NA Lead, Pfizer
Dr. Hale has been with Pfizer’s market analytics group for 10 years. In addition to this role, she also leads the Center of Excellence for HCPs, which is tasked with identifying innovative, efficient research solutions for business issues and decisions relating to our physician customers. She has held several other positions within Pfizer, including the Market Analytics Team Leader for Urology/Respiratory brands, as well as Global Market Analytics Team Leader for New Product Development for a wide range of therapeutic areas.
Prior to joining Pfizer, Anne was a Marketing Professor at both McGill University in Montreal and the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she taught such courses as Marketing Management, Marketing Research, Business Statistics, Advertising, and Retail Management at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, she also served a term as Dean of the Undergraduate Program at both McGill University and the University of Victoria, as well as teaching in the Executive Education Institutes of both universities.
Anne holds a Bachelor of Business Administration, Masters of Business Administration and a Doctorate in Marketing, specializing in quantitative methodology, all from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ashley Kline, Santen Inc.
Ashley Kline, Director, Product Marketing – Retina, Santen Inc.
Ashley Kline has more than a decade of experience in commercial leadership roles, including pharmaceutical market research to drive sales, product marketing, commercial operations, and business development. She joined Santen as the Director of Retina Product Marketing in 2016 and is leading the commercialization effort for intravitreal sirolimus, a novel local immunoregulatory agent that, if approved, will be the company’s first product to be launched in the United States. Prior to Santen, she led corporate and commercial planning for a gene therapy company, Adverum Biotechnologies, and held a variety of roles on the Lucentis® commercial team at Genentech. Before beginning her career in biotech, Ashley was a consultant for Bain & Company, in the San Francisco and Chicago offices, where she advised senior executives on customer-facing issues in a diverse set of industries. She earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jami Krueger, Align Technology
Jami Krueger, Director, Global Insights, Align Technology
Steve Lehrer, Cipla BioTec
Steve Lehrer, CEO, Cipla BioTec
Steven Lehrer is CEO of Cipla BIoTec. Cipla BioTec is “Reinventing Biosimilars” to make cancer treatments affordable worldwide. Steve has over 30 years of experience starting, growing and running life science based businesses focused on commercializing new technology. Steve has extensive experience in pharmaceutical R&D, regulatory and operations, biopharmaceutical R&D, regulatory, operations, commercialization and biosimilars, molecular diagnostics discovery, validation and commercialization, bioinformatics/health care econometrics analysis, health care reimbursement/establishing reimbursement for new medical technology and synthetic biology development and commercialization.
Prior to joing Cipla BioTec, Steve was an EVP Consulting Services at Optimal Strategix Group. Previously he was the EVP of Commercial Operations and CEO of Asia for Adamas Pharmaceuticals, CEO of Geneos, President of Glycominds, CEO of DNA Sciences and a Division President at Monsanto. Prior to his career at Monsanto, Steve worked for McKinsey & Co. and P&G.
Steve currently sits on the Board of Directors of 2 life science companies and provides strategy advise to several CEO/senior management teams on a wide range of topics from commercial strategy through operations /business development and portfolio planning.
Steve has a Master’s Degree from The Graduate School of Business at Harvard University and a BSE in Chemical Engineering and a BA in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Keith Lui, Versartis, Inc.
Keith Lui, Vice President, Marketing, Versartis, Inc.
Keith has over 15 years of healthcare experience, with a strong background in several US and global commercial-related areas including new product and medical device development, product and companion diagnostic launches, P&L responsibility, sales & marketing leadership, partnerships, and business development. As the VP of Marketing at Versartis, Inc., he currently leads all US and global market development and commercial planning efforts for somavaratan in multiple orphan indications. Keith joined Versartis from Pharmacylics (now a division of Abbvie), where as VP of Marketing, he led the commercial strategy and execution for the launch of the company’s first new therapy, Imbruvica® (ibrutinib) in multiple hematology/oncology indications. Previously, Keith spent over six years in marketing roles of increasing responsibility at Genentech, Inc., working on oncology teams for Avastin® and Rituxan® and the initial launch of ZELBORAF® and its companion diagnostic. Earlier in his career, he worked in oncology pharmaceutical sales at Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Biotech and prior to that in healthcare investment banking and genomics research. He earned his MBA, with distinction, from Vanderbilt University, and a BA in Integrative Biology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Steve Martino, M Health
Steve Martino, Co-Managing Partner, M Health
Steve is an award-winning advertising writer and creative director with 30 years of experience in helping marketers recognize opportunities, define strategies and build integrated campaigns in several industries. He began his career at consumer ad agencies working on CPG and automotive accounts. Since 2001 he has been working with global biopharma and healthcare clients. Steve combines a deep understanding of strategy with a highly creative vision.
In 2009 he co-founded M Health, an insight-based brand consultancy focused exclusively on healthcare.
Sarah McNab, Human Branding, Inc.
Sarah McNab, Partner, CSO, Human Branding, Inc.
Sarah McNab is Partner, CSO for Human Branding Inc., an innovative market research consultancy that has pioneered the use of applied anthropology thinking to create game-changing business results for clients across a wide range of industries. Sarah has over 25 years of strategic brand building and customer insight experience from working internationally in a variety of roles in the client, agency and research arenas. With this unique combination of marketing expertise, Sarah provides powerful and enduring brand and customer strategies to leading companies across the globe.
Guy Miller, BioElectron
Dr. Guy Miller, Chairman and CEO, BioElectron
Guy Miller, MD, PhD is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BioElectron Technology Corporation. The mission of BioElectron is to learn how biological systems use electrons to communicate and to use this knowledge to engineer solutions inspired by nature. By combining the understanding of electron communication with current biotech tools, BioElectron has developed more accurate models of dynamic biological systems. BioElectron is employing these proprietary and novel models to develop a broad array of products that are being licensed to the life sciences and industrial biology business ecosystems.
Dr. Miller holds a PhD in chemistry and an MD, with subspecialty training in critical care medicine. He completed his surgical internship at University of Chicago, and completed his residency and fellowship training at Johns Hopkins, where he was an assistant professor. His research has been funded by numerous organizations including DARPA. He is an attending physician in medical-surgical critical care at Stanford University Medical Center/PAVAMC.
Patti Dame Rohrmeier, Depomed, Inc.
Patti Dame Rohrmeier, Sr. Director, Market Research, Depomed, Inc.
Peter Simpson, Segmedica
Peter Simpson, Principal, Segmedica
Thirty five years of business experience have taken Peter all over the globe. He has lived and worked in the US, UK and Belgium. He has operated in most of the world’s major markets, including Japan and all of Europe. Most of his career has been spent in the Specialty Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Biotechnology areas. His experiences have included the General Management of major businesses, CFO of several companies, Strategic Planning Executive for businesses up to $2.5BN of revenue, as well as acquisitions and divestments, all within the precursor units of AstraZeneca. He is a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Management Accountants.
He has been Director of Marketing at Life Technologies Inc., a global supplier to the Biotechnology and Biopharmaceutical industry and Vice President of Consulting and Market Research at Lowe Healthcare, one of the world’s largest medical advertising agencies.
His client experience includes AstraZeneca, Schering Plough, Johnson and Johnson, TAP Pharmaceuticals, Boston Scientific, C R Bard, Pfizer, Merck and many more leading companies. He has also worked with HMO’s, Hospitals and Physicians’ Practices.
Peter’s skills include strategic planning processes, branding issues, healthcare marketing and innovative market research. In over a decade of consulting with the healthcare industry he has conducted numerous research projects of all types and is an experienced interviewer and facilitator. He has been researching and developing psychology based methodologies for medical market research for seven years and has developed a number of novel techniques and processes.
Will Simpson, Research Partnership
Will Simpson, Research Manager, Research Partnership
Will is a Research Manager at the Research Partnership. Will has worked for the Research Partnership for four years, during which time he has co-founded the company’s Digital Group, which looks to trial and develop innovative digital and mobile research methodologies in healthcare. Will has a breadth of experience in international healthcare research having worked with both major pharmaceutical companies and medical technology clients, across a range of quantitative, qualitative and mobile research approaches. Will was recently published in Pharma Exec, with an article that explores how researchers can cut through the “noise” and generate practical insights through social media.
Guy Smith, Branding Science
Guy Smith, Vice President, Branding Science
Guy Smith is Vice President of Branding Science US, a full service market research agency that predominantly works in the P2 / P3 space delivering emotional and actionable insights that feed into a brand’s positioning and launch preparations. Guy heads up its West Coast operations where his primary role is overseeing the qualitative and quantitative market research projects led out of the San Francisco office.
John Surie, M Health
John Surie, Customer Insight Director, M Health
John is a strategic brand planner and customer insight specialist with 20 years experience in the development of insight-led international brand positioning and communications concepts. He brings a deeper, more insightful understanding of patient, healthcare provider and payer mind states and attitudes, rooted in an in-depth knowledge of the key global healthcare markets.
In 2009 he co-founded M Health, an insight-based brand consultancy focused exclusively on healthcare.
Scott Tackett, Intuitive Surgical
Scott Tackett, Sr. Director, Global Healthcare Economics, Market Access & Customer Analytics, Intuitive Surgical
Lori Tarabek, Abbott Diabetes Care
Lori Tarabek, Global Market Research Manager, Abbott Diabetes Care
Lori is Senior Manager of Global Market Insights at Abbott Diabetes Care based in Alameda, California. In her current role she is responsible for leading the strategic and foundational market research team.
Lori has had an eclectic market research career in organizations small and large, and in a variety of industries including Consumer Packaged Goods, Healthcare, Diagnostics, Online Services and Medical Devices. She established the primary market research function in three companies and has led teams of primary and secondary market research, business analytics, market and competitive intelligence, demand forecasting and sales administration professionals.
Lori is known for her curious mind, breadth of research expertise and ability to synthesize information into a compelling story yielding strategic business recommendations.
She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Psychological Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Purdue University.
Harsh Tiwari, Genentech
Harsh Tiwari, Franchise Lead, Market Analysis & Strategy, Genentech
Harsh Tiwari currently leads the marketing science team for the respiratory franchises at Genentech. Prior to joining Genentech in 2016, Harsh led the market research and portfolio strategy team for two business units at Allergan covering six inline and two pipeline products. He also spent two years at Novartis covering market research and business analytics. Harsh started his career at ZS Associates where led a wide breadth of consulting engagements across commercial sales and marketing strategy and operations, business development, forecasting and managed care strategy.
Harsh’s educational background includes an Executive MBA from Columbia Business School, an MS in Computer Science from Cornell University, and a BS in Computer Engineering from American University Dubai.
Ruchi Varshneya, Abbott
Ruchi Varshneya, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing, Abbott
Ruchi is Senior Director of Global Market Insights and Strategy at Abbott Diabetes Care based in Alameda, California. In her current role she is responsible for driving insights based product innovation and strategic planning. Ruchi has led Insights function and teams in diverse industries including Consumer packaged goods, Application Software, Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices.
She has a reputation of being an authentic voice of the customer. She is regarded as an inspiring and collaborative leader who is respected for setting high goals for her team and consistently delivering on
them.
She earned her engineering degree from India Institute of Technology, India; an MBA from XLRI school of management, India and a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
Ruchi is passionate about volunteering in her local community and for a variety of causes in India.
Tom Winter, Research Partnership
Tom Winter, Director, Research Partnership
Tom has worked in healthcare market research for the last 14 years. Over this time he has built up experience working with both major pharmaceutical companies and biotech clients. He has developed expertise in research predominantly for pre-launch products, including opportunity assessment, branding research and patient insight mining. He has global experience, conducting research in the US and Europe, as well as emerging markets in Latin America and Asia.
Tom has a MA degree in Genetics from the University of Cambridge, and is a member of the Market Research Society, having been awarded the Advanced Certificate in Social and Market Research.
Denise Woltemath, Health Strategies Group
Denise Woltemath, Vice President/Custom Research, Health Strategies Group
Denise Woltemath is vice president of custom research at Health Strategies Group, where she leads services that maximize the interactions of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with physicians and other key providers. Denise led the development of the Oncology Performance Edge service, which advises leading companies on strategies for commercial success. She recently published a groundbreaking assessment on oncology office staff, “The Total Office Call in the Oncology Market.” In the last year, she assessed over 3,500 relationships between oncology representatives and their customers to identify what matters most in developing valuable relationships. She has been a featured speaker at the Society of Pharmaceutical and Biotech Trainers Annual Conference and at the Oncology USA Summit.
Prior to joining Health Strategies Group in 2008, Denise spent more than 10 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb, most recently as the Regional Vice President of Sales. In that position she hired, developed, and motivated over 500 representatives and district managers. Other key accomplishments included developing a training initiative that doubled the length of an average sales call, directing a programmatic approach that extended the impact of promotional education programs, and creating a company-wide framework for opinion leader development. She brings more than 20 years of healthcare experience to the firm, having held leadership roles in pharmaceutical sales, managed care, medical device, and hospital settings.
Lyon Wong, Spectrum 28
Lyon Wong, Co-Founder, Spectrum 28
Lyon Wong is Co-Founder of Spectrum 28, a $170M Silicon Valley VC fund with a focus on industries
undergoing massive change such as Finance, Construction, Real Estate and Genomics. Spectrum 28
has invested in companies such as Karius, Epinomics, Freenome, Vitagene and more. Prior to Spectrum
28, Lyon was an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners and Meritech Capital. Lyon has invented 30
patents during him time at Microsoft. Lyon received his MBA from Stanford and Engineering degree from
the University of Waterloo. Lyon is a regular speaker/guest at Stanford, Waterloo and a Creative
Destruction Lab Fellow.
Shawn Xie, Lifescience Dynamics
Shawn Xie, Sr. Business Analyst, Lifescience Dynamics