Speaker Biographies

Charles Alsdorf, Managing Director and Capital Efficiency National Practice Leader, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP

Charles Alsdorf is a director and Capital Efficiency Leader for Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP. Chuck has more than 20 years of experience in valuation, strategy, decision analysis, and corporate finance. He helps companies apply decision analysis and portfolio optimization to optimize capital projects and transactions, and provides portfolio valuation services for the alternative investment industry, including hedge funds, private equity funds, and their portfolio investments.

Richard Bayney, Ph.D., President & Founder, Project & Portfolio Value Creation (PPVC)

Dr. Richard Bayney is President & Founder of Project & Portfolio Value Creation, a consulting boutique providing training and education in project, program, portfolio, resource, and risk management as well as client services in strategic, business, and portfolio planning. He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Bayney is a 23-year veteran of the Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology industry at Merck & Co., Bayer Corp. and AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from University of London, MBA from Columbia University, and PMP from the Project Management Institute. In his last corporate position, Dr. Bayney was Head of Decision Analysis & Portfolio Management at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development.

Robert Boland, MBA, Associate Director, Emerging Science and Innovation Strategy, Johnson & Johnson

Robert J, Boland, MBA is currently Associate Director of Emerging Science and Innovation Strategy at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies. In this role Robert is responsible for driving Strategy and Operations for Emerging Science and Innovation (ESI) initiatives, leading External & Open Innovation, Opportunity Assessment & Scouting, and key Strategic operational initiatives while managing the ESI portfolio and measuring value creation for the Emerging Science and Innovation (ESI) function of Johnson & Johnson Consumer R&D. Additionally, Robert is responsible for driving the cultivation of a “culture of innovation” and cutting-edge research across the Consumer R&D organization and in developing an upstream portfolio of early science that will help ensure the long-term sustainability and growth of the Johnson & Johnson Consumer business. Responsibilities also encompass driving OI strategic partnerships, Crowdsourcing and key decision-making and execution of the ESI strategy along with business model innovation, business analytics, intelligence and bench-marking and value creation metrics; driving development of collaborative open innovation models, incubators/accelerators, catalyzers, and leading ESI communication initiatives, both internally and externally, and manage a new Scientific Advisory Board of internal and external key opinion leaders and experts. Robert is also leading and managing contracting and agreement-forming activities with external partners and navigation of the healthcare compliance approval process and serves as the primary point of contact for interactions with other Consumer functions (e.g., R&D Leadership Team, Franchise R&D and Platform Leads, Finance, Regulatory, Legal and External/Open Innovation) as well as with cross-sector functions/teams from Pharma R&D, and Medical Device and Diagnostics.

Stephanie Brown, MBA, Vice President, Head Specialty Business Unit, Takeda Pharmaceuticals US

Stephanie Brown is the Vice President and Head of the US Specialty Business Unit of Takeda Pharmaceuticals US. She is responsible for the strategy and execution of this newly formed Specialty BU, which supports our Entyvio business and includes marketing, dedicated analytics and insights, reimbursement hub services and patient support, and our specialty sales, training and operations teams. Her experience will be instrumental for supporting both Entyvio’s continued growth, as well as other medicines that may come our way in the future. She will work within the Specialty business unit to develop best-in-class capabilities in key account management, access and reimbursement, patient support & engagement, provider education and evidence generation. Prior to joining Takeda in February 2016, Stephanie was the vice president, global commercial strategy, rare & specialty therapeutics at Biogen. She led a new global marketing unit established to build a multi-therapeutic specialty business with a focus on rare diseases, including hemophilia. Prior to that, she spent three years at Genentech in marketing leadership roles, most recently as franchise head, sales & marketing, cystic fibrosis franchise. Stephanie spent nearly 20 years at Merck & Co. including time as a hospital sales representative and a variety of roles with P&L accountability for businesses/franchises, in addition to leadership of global franchises at corporate headquarters. Her franchise responsibilities spanned multiple therapeutic areas including cardiovascular, oncology, ophthalmology, infectious disease and diabetes/obesity. She has particular expertise in building new business units, collaborating in partnerships and guiding teams with successful outcomes. Her leadership spans managing product lifecycle from early clinical development to commercialization and mature brand management. She has successfully led businesses/franchises in the US and Canada by focusing on excellence in strategy development and tactical execution as well as experience providing leadership in international markets (Europe, Asia Pacific, US, Canada). Stephanie has a B.S. in chemistry with biology from Mount Allison University, Canada, and her M.B.A. from Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland.

Astrid Maria Dahl, Ph.D., MBA, Executive Business Development Director - Oncology, AstraZeneca

Astrid Maria Dahl is Executive Business Development Director, Scientific Partnering & Alliances – Oncology at AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceutical company operating in more than 100 countries worldwide. In this role she is responsible for global licensing and partnering with regards to oncology assets in early clinical development and research. Maria has a dual technical and business background and more than ten years’ experience in the US and UK biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, primarily in the areas of business development and portfolio management. Following a Ph.D. in Tumor Immunology from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund/University College London in the United Kingdom, she did her post-doctoral work in immunology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. She then obtained an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and moved into industry. She initially worked in the business development team at the San Francisco based biotechnology company Cell Genesys prior to moving to London to work for IPSEN from 2004 to 2012. At IPSEN she was responsible for oncology in the corporate business development team prior to being promoted in 2008 to Vice-President to head the entire oncology portfolio management team. She joined AstraZeneca’s business development team in early 2012 and is based in the offices in Cambridge, UK.

David Davidovic, Founder, pathForward; former VP and Global Head, Commercial Services, Genentech and Roche

David Davidovic has been involved in the commercialization of products and in building best-in-class commercial capabilities in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for over 36 years. Most recently, David Davidovic was Vice President and Global Head of Commercial Services for Roche and Genentech. Currently, he heads pathForward, providing strategic and advisory pro-bono support to non-profit organizations as well as start-ups focused on healthcare. He’s also on the Advisory Board of the Digital Health Coalition. David joined Genentech in 2005 as head of US Commercial Strategy; in 2007 he became head of the US Commercial Business Practices function; and in 2011 was appointed VP and Global Head of Commercial Services for Roche Pharma Medicines, which includes Genentech in the US. Prior to joining Genentech, he spent 23 years with Merck & Co. where he served in multiple marketing, sales, business development, medical education, and commercial operations leadership roles, including marketing, sales, business unit and franchise head positions, in Canada, the US, the Middle East and Africa and globally. David is based in San Francisco, CA and holds Bachelor of Science and a Masters in Business Administration degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Melquiades de Jesus, Director, R&D Operations, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Melquiades de Jesus is the Director, Business Capabilities at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he leads the team responsible for the design and operational support for the Planisware system (ePlan & eTime) at BMS. The group serves as the business and system stewards with the intent of standardizing the use of this enterprise project and resource management planning and tracking processes. The team’s focus is developing processes that improve data transparency, integrity and accuracy while minimizing the cost of system ownership by providing modular and expandable solutions. Prior to Bristol-Myers Squibb, he builds on over 15 years of industry and consulting experience at Merck, Abbot Labs and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Melquiades earned a B.S. in Pharmacy from Rutgers University and an MBA in Finance and Operations from Columbia University.

Ken Dobie, Ph.D., MBA, Founder, Skyemar Consulting LLC; former Director, Corporate Planning & Portfolio Management, Illumina

Ken Dobie is the Founder and Principal of Skymar Consulting and the former Director of Corporate Planning & Portfolio Management at Illumina. His responsibilities include supporting Illumina's Strategic, Operating & Portfolio planning processes. Prior to Illumina Ken was a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Salk Institute and an Associate Director at Ionis Pharmaceuticals. Ken holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and an MBA in Strategy & Healthcare.

Charles Dormer, Principal, APEX STP

Charles founded APEX STP, LLC, in 2014. This is an executive coaching and consulting business established to work with organizations to transform leadership and collaborations. He has been working for over 30 years in healthcare and pharmaceutical R&D and has worked for some of the top pharmaceutical companies including SmithKline Beecham, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth, Pfizer and AstraZeneca. During that time he held a number of roles in a wide range of activities including strategy definition and implementation, management, research, operations, reengineering, organization development, business redesign, portfolio management and chief of staff activities. He has been involved in major mergers and acquisitions within the pharmaceutical industry and major change efforts in R&D.

Tony Dybicz, Associate Director, Resource Management, Global Regulatory Affairs and Clinical Safety, Merck

Tony has worked at Merck for 18 years in a variety of roles. After spending the first portion of his career as a project engineer and project manager building and maintaining research facilities, he then transitioned into a series of strategic project and program management roles in the Vaccines and Biologics manufacturing organization. He then supported the development and deployment of enterprise portfolio and project management tools and processes, including the establishment of an ongoing cross network, cross product prioritization and portfolio execution process. Tony recently joined Merck’s Global Regulatory Affairs and Clinical Safety group. He has an MBA and is PMP certified.

Tim Dyer, Director, Program and Product Management, Edge Therapeutics, Inc.

Tim Dyer is the Director, Product Development & Commercialization at Edge Therapeutics. Prior to Edge, Tim has been responsible for program management, product development, and product integration activities at Otsuka and Pfizer. Tim earned an MS in Regulatory Affairs & Quality Assurance from Temple University, and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Gill Eapen, Managing Director, Business Advisory, Stout Risius Ross (SRR)

Executive with experience in diverse areas including finance, general management, engineering and software. Past experience includes senior positions at fortune 100, start-ups, consulting and private equity firms. Consulting experience with over 4 dozen companies across the world in diverse industries including life sciences, healthcare, energy, technology, aerospace, software and manufacturing. Decision Options (DO), the company I founded, is a pioneer in economic value based decision making, risk and portfolio management and has developed patent pending technologies that are broadly applicable in private and public markets. Decision Options Technology (DoT) is a software platform that integrates predictive and decision analytics with financial modeling to aid better and faster decisions in companies and organizations of all sizes and industries.

Samantha Fairbairn, Senior Manager Strategic Planning and Operations, Attribute Sciences, Amgen

Samantha Fairbairn is a Senior Manager in the Attribute Sciences function within Amgen's Process Development organization. Her responsibilities include the resource modeling and forecasting for a 300+ person function to ensure alignment within an extensive portfolio of products across early and late stage development, along with lifecycle management of commercial products.

Jared Fantasia, Head, Global Portfolio & Project Management Operations (GPPM), Johnson & Johnson

Jared Fantasia is currently the Head of Global Portfolio & Project Management Operations at Johnson & Johnson in their Consumer Products Sector. His entire professional career has been spent within the Johnson & Johnson family of companies where he started in the Pharmaceutical sector in upstream R&D Research, than transitioned to Product Development and Clinical Testing of Consumer products and over the last 5 years has been part of the GPPM organization. In his current role, Jared and his team of portfolio analysts have direct responsibility for managing the operations of the project portfolio systems for Consumer J&J globally, training and process improvement of the New Product Development Stage-Gating process, facilitating decision analysis at global cross-business unit governance, and multiple levels of Portfolio analytics reporting.

Michael Ferrante, Director, Global Regulatory, Safety and Biometrics, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Michael Ferrante is the Director, Business Operations in Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Global Regulatory, Safety and Biometric organization, including resource planning and time tracking. Prior to BMS, he served as Managing Director of Solutions at YourEncore, where he was responsible for expanding the life sciences business and transforming the company to a significant solutions-based consulting firm. Prior to that he spent over eight years with Merck where he held positions of increasing responsibility, including Senior Director, Business Operations where he supported clinical grants planning and budgeting, functional objectives development and execution, and strategic analysis for all global clinical development and regulatory functions. He also led R&D operations in Japan. Mike earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, an M.S, in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

John Fischer, MBA, Project Management Consultant, Integrated Project Management Company, Inc. (IPM)

John Fischer is a project management professional and device industry executive with significant operational leadership experience with both Fortune 500 and venture-backed start-up companies. John has successfully led numerous development efforts delivering mission critical Class II and Class III products that addressed patient and customer needs. He is an expert in medical device Design Control regulatory compliance requirements. John holds a Master of Business Administration, Master of Science Electrical Engineering (Biomedical Option), and a Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering.

Thomas Forissier, Deputy Director, Strategy Planning & Management, Global Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Thomas Forissier is the deputy director for strategy, planning, and management at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation, Thomas worked for 15 years as a strategy and management consultant to the pharmaceutical industry at Capgemini Consulting, a major consulting firm headquartered in France. His experience ranges from global corporate strategic planning to collaboration between R&D and commercial functions on product strategy, to product launch and local strategy and operational improvement projects. Thomas worked for several years in vaccines as a consultant for Sanofi Pasteur where he helped define global growth strategies and a corporate balanced scorecard for the company. He was also involved in defining new target product profile and lifecycle management strategies and processes for leading pharmaceutical manufacturers. Additionally, he contributed to the launch of major products such as Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug Victoza, and Sanofi Pasteur's vaccines Menactra and Adacel. As part of his consulting work, Thomas has been actively researching various healthcare topics. He has published several articles and presented at multiple conferences on patient adherence to drug prescriptions, effective approaches to change patient behaviors and the benefits of such initiatives for the industry. Thomas started his career in consulting in his home country of France after obtaining a Masters in Political Science from Science Po Paris and in Business from the European Business School (ESCP).

Jonathan Freeman, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Global Head, Strategy Development & Portfolio Management, EMD Serono

Jonathan is since 2012 SVP Head of Global Portfolio Management, Global Business Development & Strategy; previously he was Head of Licensing, Global Business Development. Before Rejoining Merck Serono in 2008 Jonathan was Director, Licensing and M&A (Europe/ECEMEA)at Baxter Healthcare from 2006. In 2000 he started at Serono as Director, Licensing & Strategy. He is a graduate from the University of Cambridge (UK) and has a Ph.D from the University of Edinburgh (UK).

Donna Gandt, Vice President, Unanet

Donna Gandt has over two decades experience developing leadership, technology and organizational change initiatives to help clients improve processes, gain operational efficiencies, structure organizational change and gain visibility to program and project data. Her current focus is helping teams collaborate more effectively with use of online tools to see and react to data in real time and transform their organizations with more proactive, informed decision making.  Donna currently leads business development in the northeast for Unanet, ONE software to manage projects, people and financials. She has an MBA from Boston University and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Gautam Gupta, MBA, Vice President, Strategy, Portfolio, Competitive Intelligence and Enterprise Operations, Worldwide Research and Development, Pfizer

Gautam is accountable for driving Pfizer’s R&D strategy as well as monitoring and enhancing the value of the R&D portfolio up to Proof of Concept. He ensures rigorous asset and portfolio-level decision-making linked to the overall strategy, priorities, competitive context and financial considerations. He is responsible for the smooth running of key planning activities within R&D, driving specific improvement initiatives at the Divisional and Corporate level. He also works closely with the R&D Leadership Team to ensure a timely and effective dialog with key stakeholders such as the Board, CEO, analysts, shareholders and the scientific community. Prior to joining Pfizer, Gautam spent ten years at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading global strategy consulting firm. As a Senior Principal in the firm’s Healthcare Practice, Gautam worked with a host of Biotech and Pharmaceutical companies on high priority issues such as portfolio ＆ innovation strategy, R＆D productivity, organizational redesign and post-merger integration. Gautam earned his M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India, with a focus on Strategy and Finance. He received his B.A. in Economics from St. Stephen’s College at the University of Delhi, India.

Cleat Jerden, Director Strategic Planning and Operations, CMC Integration, Amgen

Cleat Jerden is a Director of Strategic Planning and Operations for Amgen's Process Development organization. Over his 20 year career, he has helped to commercialize multiple products while also managing the functional resource planning and organizational portfolio management. Currently, Cleat is leading the CMC Integration group responsible for project and portfolio management of Process Development’s late stage pipeline.

Josh Kaminetz, Director, Resource Management, Global Regulatory Affairs and Clinical Safety, Merck

Josh spent the first dozen years of his career in roles of increasing responsibility, from bench chemist to lab manager, for the bioanalytical division of a major CRO, earning a MBA along the way. Josh began supporting research operations at Merck about 11 years ago, and has held a variety of demand/resource forecasting and planning roles. He has supported organizations across all phases of Merck’s pipeline, from discovery and preclinical research to regulatory affairs and clinical safety and pharmacovigilance. He currently serves as Resource Management Lead for Merck’s Global Regulatory Affairs and Clinical Safety sub-division, a 1650 person organization across almost 100 locations worldwide.

Elayne Ko, Director, Portfolio and Decision Analysis, Pfizer

Elayne Ko is the Director of the Portfolio and Decision Analysis group at Pfizer. She was formerly a Manager in the Strategy Group of Siemens’ Health Services (HS) Business Unit focusing on portfolio management and business planning. Prior to Siemens, Elayne worked as a Manager at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP to support client decision-making under risks, uncertainties and multiple objectives in the mining, financial services and pharmaceuticals. Before Deloitte, Elayne spent 7 years at Pfizer’s Portfolio and Decision Analysis (PDA) group where worked extensively on drug research and development investment decisions, long-term strategic planning, and disease area prioritization. Her project experiences spanned across a number of therapeutic areas including infectious diseases, neuroscience, urology, pain, oncology and cardiovascular. Elayne holds a BS in Management Sciences and MS in Decision Sciences from The London School of Economics.

Matthew Kokkonen, Associate Director, IT, BioMarin Pharmaceutical LLC

Matthew is an Associate Director responsible for the Enterprise IT PMO at BioMarin Pharmaceuticals, LLC. Previously, he served as a management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton and Maven Wave Partners. Matthew specialized in providing IT strategy, organizational design, and program/project management services to a range of public and private sector clients including AbbVie, NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Matthew is a veteran having served as a Captain in the United States Air Force. Matthew holds a MBA from the University of London as well as a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations. He holds Stanford University’s ‘Stanford Advanced Project Management’ certification. He is married with two daughters, and enjoys global travel and hiking in Northern California.

Geoff Kremer, Associate Director, CMR Informatics, Strategy & Operational Effectiveness, Novo Nordisk

Geoff has over 20 years of experience in reporting and analytics (15+ years in Healthcare/Pharma industry). He has experience with a variety of data visualization tools, such as Tableau, Qlik, and SAP Dashboards. He currently is the Associate Director of CMR Informatics (Strategy & Operational Effectiveness) at Novo Nordisk. He has an MBA from LaSalle University.

Mark Lane, Ph.D., Consultant, TayganPoint Consulting Group

A Consultant at TayganPoint, Mark Lane has an extensive background with 24 years as an experienced leader at some of the world’s leading research and life science organizations including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Merck, Wyeth, GE Healthcare, MedImmune (AstraZeneca) and Sanofi. Areas of expertise include strategy development and execution, program and project leadership/management, new product development (including R&D and clinical) and business development. Prior to joining the industry, Mark had a successful career as a scientist and internationally recognized speaker at the NIH Institute on Aging where his team published over 100 papers, articles and book chapters. His industry career includes roles in Project Management at Merck and Program Leadership and Management positions in product development, including preclinical-launch at Wyeth and MedImmune (AstraZeneca). Prior to joining TayganPoint, Mark implemented and led Program, Project and Portfolio Management offices at GE HealthCare, LifeCell and Sanofi Medical Affairs.

Jean Lee, Ph.D., Vice President, Portfolio & Project Management, Global Product Development, Pfizer R&D

Jean Lee is currently VP for Portfolio and Project Management, within the Global Innovative Pharma Business at Pfizer. Jean is responsible for the Portfolio Operations, the team of Project Managers & Planners and the Operations Excellence Group. Jean has recently been part of the leadership of an enterprise-wide implementation of an integrated Project Management and Resource Forecasting tool to improve the capabilities for running the R&D engine. Jean joined Pfizer as a Project Manager in 1998 and has served in a number of Portfolio and Project leadership roles over the past fifteen years. She has been part of a number of continuous improvement initiatives, including the enterprise Planning and Forecasting Initiative, Robust Decision-Making, Stage Gates and the Understand and Deliver Framework.

Fraser MacFarlane, Ph.D., Vice President, R&D Portfolio Management, GlaxoSmithKline

Fraser MacFarlane became Vice President, Portfolio Management in March 2011. Fraser is accountable for both strategic and operational portfolio management for the early and late stage Pharma R&D portfolio. He is also accountable for driving consistent, integrated, strategic cross-portfolio analysis to inform investment decisions. He also plays a lead role coordinating the formal portfolio governance boards within Pharma R&D. Over the last 2 years he has also played a lead role in the GSK/Novartis integration, leading the divestment of the Novartis divestment of the Oncology business and coordinating the entire Novartis integration across Vaccines, Consumer Healthcare and Oncology. Fraser joined GSK in 1999 and has held a variety of roles in Project & Portfolio Management, Business Consultancy, Change Management, Strategy Development, Corporate Crisis Management, Alliance Management and Process Re-Design. Prior to joining GSK, Fraser was a Benchmarking associate with CMR International. Fraser has a BSc in Pharmacology/Physiology, an MSc in Clinical Pharmacology and a PhD in Pharmaceutical and Business Sciences.

Andrew Middlecamp, MBA, Portfolio and Platform Lead, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

As the Portfolio & Platform Lead for Malaria at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Andrew integrates product development plans for drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and vector control into the over-arching strategy for global malaria elimination by 2040. Andrew previously worked at Amgen, where he was the Director of Strategic Planning and Operations for the Center for Observational Research (CfOR). Andrew also worked in the Global Program Management group, where he led a team responsible for the successful filing of the Prolia® Biologics License Application. He also worked with the Product Strategy Teams for XGEVA®, romosozumab and other products. Andrew has an MBA from Cal Poly and a BA in Biological Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego.

Grant Morgan, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Portfolio Planning, Systems & Analytics, BTG International Inc.

With over 16 years in the Pharma / Medical Device Industry Grant Morgan has in-depth knowledge in the areas of Portfolio, Project and Resource management. He focusses on improving productivity and operational excellence within an R&D environment of high risk, high reward behavior. Grant has successfully developed and implemented systems and tools within clinical development, portfolio planning and resource management. Grant has a Ph.D. in Microbiology and is PMP certified.

Jeff Mumford, Managing Director, East Region, Integrated Project Management, Inc. (IPM)

Jeff Mumford is responsible for developing and implementing the business strategy to drive growth and increase margin for IPM’s Eastern Region, including offices in Boston, MA and Parsippany, NJ. Jeff has over 29 years of experience in engineering, project management, operations, and senior management roles in numerous operating environments. Jeff is a graduate of Iowa State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering. He is certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI) as a Project Management Professional (PMP), and is an ASQ Six Sigma Green Belt.

Richard Murray, M.D., Vice President and Deputy Chief Patient Officer, Merck

Dr. Richard Murray is a physician scientist with experience ranging from basic science, discovery, clinical & outcomes research and pharmaceutical R&D and commercialization. Special areas of interest include asthma and respiratory disease, quality of care, health care disparities, continuous quality improvement, and patient centered approaches in science, medicine and R&D, patient advocacy, ethics and conflicts of interest, and health care policy. He is currently Vice President and Deputy Chief Patient Officer at Merck where he manages a team of physician scientists supporting the scientific and medical needs for the Office of the CPO at Merck across all therapeutic areas. He leads a cross-divisional and global effort to increase engagement with patients in all aspects of the business.

Derek Newberry, Business Anthropologist; Learning Director, Aresty Institute of Executive Education and Lecturer, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Author “Committed Teams”

Derek Newberry is a Lecturer at the Wharton School of Business, and teaches in Wharton’s Executive Education program on interpersonal communication, collaboration, and corporate culture. As a business anthropologist, he advises senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies and major non-profits on the human factors that drive organizational effectiveness. Derek has worked with organizations in a wide range of sectors, including energy, financial services, management consulting, and healthcare. Derek is the co-author (with Mario Moussa and Madeline Boyer) of Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance (Wiley Press, 2016); a practical, research-based guide for getting the most out of groups. His work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Quartz and leading industry publications. He has published extensively and lectured internationally on cultural barriers to organizational change, including speaking engagements at the World Bank, Copenhagen Business School, Stanford University, and the University of São Paulo, among others. Derek received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Chetan Panwala, Ph.D., MBA, Senior Director, Head of Project Management, Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc.

Dr. Panwala is currently a Senior Director, Head of Project Management at Halozyme Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing novel cancer therapies that target the tumor microenvironment. Dr. Panwala has over 15 years of experience in project and portfolio management in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. In addition to leading global development teams, Dr. Panwala has focused on developing processes and structural frameworks of project management groups to ensure operational efficiency and transparent alignment with the portfolio management function. Prior to working at Halozyme, Dr. Panwala consulted for pharmaceutical companies to implement project management solutions and establish processes in the project management function. He has also previously held positions at Allergan and Genzyme Biosurgery in project and portfolio management and business development. Dr. Panwala received his Ph.D. in molecular immunology from UCLA and his MBA from the Simon School of Business administration at the University of Rochester.

John Phillips, Managing Director, Life Science Lead for Capital Efficiency Practice, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP

John Phillips is a Director in the Business Valuation Consulting practice of Deloitte Transactions & Business Analytics. John’s expertise is in assisting Life Science and Healthcare clients in strategic decision making pertaining to portfolio optimization, M&A/L&A, risk assessment and business valuation. John has worked nationally and internationally with clients in the pharmaceuticals, medical device, diagnostics, health care delivery, and health care insurance industries. Prior to joining Deloitte, John spent 28 years in the Life Sciences industry in management roles in R&D, Sales, New Product Development, and Strategic Marketing.

Svetlana Pidasheva, Ph.D., Director, Global Scientific Communications and Publications, Sanofi

Dr Svetlana Pidasheva is Director, Scientific Communications and Publications at Sanofi. She joined Sanofi from Allergan where she was in charge of global medical publications for plastic surgery and medical dermatology. Prior to Allergan, she was Assistant Medical Director at the Omnicom Group responsible for partnering with top pharma and biotech companies to develop scientific strategy and medical communication across multiple therapeutic areas. She also spent four years at Genentech/Roche focusing mostly on identification and characterization of potential biomarkers for inflammatory and autoimmune disorders in R&D. She got her PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University and co-authored 7 peer reviewed publications. Svetlana’s key areas of interest are: mobile health (mHealth) technologie, digital medical communications, social media and KOL engagement. Currently, she is in charge of scientific communications and publications for established products and emerging markets.

 Larry Radowski, MBA, Managing Director, Strategy and Business Development, Integrated Project Management Company, Inc. (IPM)

Mr. Radowski has over 30 years of experience in operations management, engineering, project management, business development, and marketing. He has developed and implemented transformational business strategy solutions for companies in a variety of industries, including the life sciences, healthcare, consumer products, and industrial products industries. Larry currently oversees IPM’s nationwide strategic market and business development efforts. Larry is a frequent speaker at national conferences on the subjects of project, program, and portfolio management, lean, and six sigma and holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, an MBA, is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) by the Project Management Institute, and a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt via the American Society for Quality.

George Santangelo, Ph.D., Director, Office of Portfolio Analysis (OPA), Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI), The National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Dr. George Santangelo is the Director of the Office of Portfolio Analysis (OPA/DPCPSI/OD). George received a B.A. in Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Genetics from Yale University. He did his postdoctoral work on two University of California campuses (Irvine and Santa Cruz), and from 2000 to 2009 was Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi. His NSF-and NIH-funded research has focused on glucose signaling and the role of nuclear organization in transcriptional regulation. His research output includes a 2005 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was designated a “Must Read” by the Faculty of 1000 and featured in The Scientist that same year in an article entitled “A Nuclear Model of Gene Regulation.”

Richard Sonnenblick, Ph.D., CEO, Enrich Consulting

Richard Sonnenblick, the CEO of Enrich Consulting, has been with Enrich since its inception in 1998. The vision he brought to Enrich has been realized in the Enrich Analytics Platform. Prior to founding Enrich, he built a decision analysis consulting practice at Lumina Decision Systems, where he worked on integrated assessments of environmental legislation and R&D valuation models for high technology firms. Dr. Sonnenblick holds a Ph.D. and MS from Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy, and a BA in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Geert Vanhove, Founding Partner, bluecrux

Geert is founding partner at Bluecrux, a team of 40 experts in operations management. In 2015, Bluecrux launched Binocs, a cloud platform for resource management that was developed in close collaboration with leading fortune 500 global players. Binocs helps skilled people that work in a project/routine work environment to deliver on time.

Richard Wilner, Director, North America, Portfolio Management Office, Sanofi

Richard Wilner has over a decade of experience in project and portfolio management. His experience is broad, and has been garnered in a wide range of company sizes and industries -- 3-person start-ups, multi-nationals, web technology, architecture and engineering, consulting, systems integration, and biopharmaceutical. In his current role as Director of the North America PMO, Rich is responsible for governance of over $500M in capital projects worldwide, and leads a global network of PMO practitioners within the Specialty Care Operations division of Sanofi.

Justin Zamirowski, Sr. Director, Operational Excellence, Edge Therapeutics, Inc.

Justin Zamirowski, an experienced pharmaceutical and biotech veteran, has spent over 18 years in industry at Start up, mid-sized and large pharma and biotech companies. He has held positions across multiple functions including: Sales, Market Access, Commercial Development, Operations, Alliance Management, Product and Portfolio Management and Commercial Launch Excellence. In his roles Justin has lead the development and commercialization of products across multiple therapeutic areas including: Hospital based medicines, CNS, Cardiovascular Disease and Oncology. Currently, Justin is leading the product development and commercialization functions at Edge Therapeutics, Inc, a clinical staged biotech company focused on discovery, development and commercialization of hospital based therapies capable of transforming treatment paradigms in the management of acute, life-threatening conditions.

Daniel Zweidler, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Mack Institute for Innovation Management, The Wharton School, UPenn; President, DZA, Inc.

Dr. Daniel Zweidler is a leading strategy and portfolio optimization expert, who is also known as a futurist and a champion of open innovation and co-creation. Dr. Zweidler helps energy and health care organizations make better investment decisions by blending scenario planning, strategic thinking and portfolio option planning techniques. He has an exceptional ability to bridge cross-cultural, multi-national differences in collaborative team environments as a result of a career that spans 20+ countries across six continents and his multi-lingual fluency. Dr. Zweidler is currently a Senior Fellow at the Mack Center for Technological Innovation and is President of Daniel Zweidler & Associates, a boutique management-consulting firm. Prior to that, Dr. Zweidler was SVP at Merck & Head of Portfolio Management/Global Scientific Strategy. He previously had been at Royal Dutch Shell, holding diverse roles such as Head of Global Exploration Planning & Portfolio, Exploration Planning and Portfolio Manager, and Senior Exploration Consultant, after starting with the firm as an Exploration Geologist in The Hague, Netherlands. Dr. Zweidler studied at Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where he received both his master's and his doctorate in geology. He lectured extensively on the subject of strategic thinking and portfolio option planning as part of Shell’s executive education program at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Dr. Zweidler has presented numerous papers in both academic and industry settings, and co-authored the foundational paper on Probability Management in OR/MS Today. He is a member of the Long Now Foundation, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Swiss Geological Society. He also served as president of the Swiss American Society of New Orleans between 1997 and 2000. Dr. Zweidler is committed to identifying socially responsible strategies that help organizations maximize value, increase capital efficiency, and reduce enterprise risk while optimizing investments in their Innovation, R&D, and Exploration portfolios.