Speaker Bios:  (back to Event Summary)

Sami is currently VP for Global Alliances at BAE Systems – Applied Intelligence. His previous roles include: Global Director of Partnerships at a Google Ventures backed Series C funded Scale-up called Scandit. He has also held senior partnerships roles with Vodafone and BT Global Services. Sami has worked in the communications, IT and electronics industry for over 20 years in a variety of leadership roles. He specialises in developing technology solutions and the framework to sell them through and with partner organisations and has worked closely with some of the world’s leading technology brands. Sami gained an undergraduate degree from Leicester De Montfort University and holds an MBA specialising in Marketing from The University of Huddersfield.

Luigi joined GSK Vaccines 23 years ago after having spent 8 years in the chemical industry holding primarily Business Development roles. Luigi joined GSK as senior manager Business Development before being appointed to increasingly senior positions in Business Development, Supply Chain and Global Marketing. From 2007 to 2010 Luigi was in Verona, Italy, as Marketing Director for GSK Italy. Returning to GSK Vaccines Headquarters in Belgium in 2010, he held until 2014 various strategy roles within Global Marketing and Global Operations. In 2014 Luigi jointed the Integration Team in charge of preparing the acquisition of Novartis Vaccines business as part of the global deal between Novartis AG and GSK Plc. As of January 2015, he was in charge of ensuring the divestments of several vaccines as a mandatory condition for regulatory approval of GSK-Novartis deal.

Since January 2017, Luigi has been heading the DBU (Divestment Business Unit) which encompasses all GSK Vaccines divestments, discontinuations & some key partnerships.

Luigi now heads the Global Strategic Partnerships department with an enlarged scope to all transversal key partnerships on top of pre-existing responsibilities.

Mario Joao is a global leader in strategy and business transformation with over 24 years of experience in creating market & industry-driven digital strategic partnerships & ecosystems for major FTSE100 companies. A recognised leader focused on traditional and emerging technologies and building trust to enable greater value by driving transformational growth through strategic partnerships and digital ecosystems

Anne is an expert in data-driven innovation, who started her technology career at SAP and quickly progressed to a global role in the industry. Having held several roles within IoT as; Head of Business Strategy, Commercial Product Manager, and Director of Strategic Partnerships, at both SAP and CGI, while relocating across Spain, Germany and France. Currently Anne holds the position of Head of Strategic Partnerships at Danfoss.

In 2017 Anne was named one of the top 30 inspirational women in Technology by Inc.com and in 2019 she was elected official Goodwill Ambassador for the Greater Copenhagen Region, globally representing her country’s capital in technology.

Anne holds board seats in the technology space and is a frequent keynote speaker and business advisor on the topic of innovation.

Murat is the Global Innovations and Partnerships Director at General Electric Healthcare focusing on Digital Health Solutions, Analytics and AI.  He manages a global innovation and partnerships team who innovates Digital Health Solutions through co-development and validation partnerships. One of his key role is to externalize Edison Health Platform .

Murat has BSc in Computer Science, MBA and an MIT Executive Program graduate. Throughout his career he steps he worked as Business & Digital Consultant, Startup Founder and Digital Health Business Leadership roles at Arthur Andersen, EY and GE Healthcare.  

(Edison is an XaaS platform to aggregate, correlate, analyze, process, display and share multi-modal data (genomics, radiometric, workflow…) from various data sources such as medical devices (MRI, CT, PetCT, U/S, Xray, ECG…), sensors, EMRs, Lab, Path, Oncology, Radiology, Cardiology Information Systems...), develop AI algorithms, host and scale Digital Health Apps through in Edison Marketplace in a full secure and compliant way.)

Carolina Castillo is VP Strategic Alliances and Partnerships at American Express. In 2019 she won the Women in Sales Award - Professional Services.

Before working in sales, Carolina worked in Procurement sourcing marketing services for Fortune 500 companies. Having been in both sides of the negotiation table, Carolina has a wealth of experience in negotiating contracts.

Carolina is passionate about public speaking and founded a Public Speaking club in 2018: Centurion Toastmasters where she has served as President. She is an award-winning speaker herself and thoroughly enjoys helping others develop their skills.

She serves on the board of AGE UK HHB and is also a trustee of the 28thHammersmith Scouts Group in West London.

Houssain is currently Director Global Alliances at Philips. He was previously working both in account and alliance management at Deloitte, Accenture and Getronics.

Louis Rinfret is founder and CEO of allianceboard, the alliance management platform. Louis has over two decades of experience in the software industry moving from technical and product management roles to leading business units and strategy for organizations ranging from start-ups and research institutes to multi-nationals such as SAP Business Objects and Expedia CruiseShipCenters. Combining his passions for technology and alliance management, Louis is on a mission to empower alliance managers to succeed with their strategic alliances.

Louis has been active in managing, teaching about and researching strategic alliances for the past 15 years and has been a member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) since 2005. Louis holds a PhD in Strategy from Lancaster University (UK) where he wrote a thesis on the performance of strategic alliances.

Michael Roch is the Chief Commercial Officer of allianceboard, the alliance management platform. Michael loves helping organizations succeed with their partnership-based business models and has been working alongside partnerships, alliances and joint ventures in the knowledge services, technology, power generation and real estate sectors for most of his career as a consultant, attorney and entrepreneur.

Prior to joining allianceboard as Louis' partner, he served as Co-CEO Europe of a 4,000-member platform-based ecosystem originated in Australia. Michael also was co-founder and CEO of a London-based management consulting firm focused on partnerships and global alliances; within nine years, the firm served market leaders in more than 40 countries.

Laurent Valroff has the global responsibility for alliances with consulting firms and technology integrators (CSI) within Dassault Systèmes (DS).

He joined the company in 2005 to take responsibility for the creation of DS operations for Russia & CIS countries. He led it for 11 years to develop local teams and build a sustainable business in industries as diverse as aeronautics, automotive, shipbuilding, industrial equipment, civil nuclear, metallurgy and Retail. Back on the Paris DS Campus in 2016, he took the responsibility for building DS’s partnership program and developing market-winning alliance strategies with global, local and specialized partners.

Before becoming global head alliance management healthcare at Merck, Markus was Chief Business Officer Healthcare New Businesses, Global Head Strategy and Operations General Medicine & Endocrinology, and similar leadership roles at Merck including the Country General Manager for Merck Austria.

Markus also has worked in the PwC network and Procter & Gamble.

Paul is Head of Cloud Ecosystems at TIDWIT (a company that enables partner enablement and is a nominee for a 2022 ASAP Alliance Excellence Award).

Paul’s background includes Salesforce and Microsoft where he held business development roles.

Urs is currently Global Head Alliance and Asset Management at Roche , based in Basel.

Previously, he was VP, Global Product Strategy Inflammation / Ophthalmology at Genentech, and earlier was VP, Head of Strategic Marketing Inflammation at Roche Palo Alto.

Prior to this, he was VP Sales and Marketing Speciality Care at Roche Canada.

He holds a PhD in Pharmacy, Toxicology & Immunology from ETH Zurich

Frank is the SVP Global Head of Alliance Management and European Head Business Development at Everest Medicines and currently based in Paris, France.

He used to be the VP, Head of R&D Alliance Management & Transactions and later VP, Alliance Management, General Medicines, Emerging Markets and Consumer Health Care at Sanofi. During his time at Sanofi he has also been the Risk Management leader of the Strategy & Business Development group and a permanent member of the Sanofi Corporate Risk Committee. Furthermore he served as an Advisory Board member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (“ASAP”).

Prior to Sanofi he was serving Roche in a number of Business Development roles. As Executive Director, Pharma Partnering, he co-led the formation of Business Development in Asia Pacific based out of Shanghai. Before moving to China, he led the Lifecycle Management Partnering group in Basel.

Before switching to Business Development, he served in various Research positions for Roche in Switzerland and for Boehringer Mannheim in Germany. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from TU Munich (summa cum laude, MPI Biochemistry, Martinsried, lab of Nobel laureate Robert Huber).

Knut is leading the Novartis Global Alliance Management, a team of seasoned alliance professionals at Novartis Pharma, Oncology, Sandoz Biopharma, and NIBR. The team’s vision is to ensure Novartis’ partnering readiness by establishing a collaborative leadership system.

Knut joined Novartis in 2002, first in product development before taking on various roles in business development. Between 2008 and 2013, Knut managed the broad alliance portfolio of the ophthalmology and neuroscience franchises, including the highly successful alliance between Novartis and Genentech for Lucentis®. Between 2014 and 2019, Knut headed all BD&L efforts of the respiratory and ophthalmology franchises. His BD&L experience includes a wide range from identifying and assessing partnering opportunities, closing many deals of different structures and various complexity, managing long-term successful alliances across all life-cycle stages including several blockbuster products, and being responsible for portfolio management in M&A transactions.

Floris is an experienced leader with focus on strategy (execution), strategic partnerships, ecosystems, innovation and new business models.

Before his current role at Arcadis as Global Ecosystems Director, he was Head of Strategic Partnerships and Proposition Management at ABN AMRO.

Thomas Hainzel, Head of Digital Industries Evolution & Partnerships at Nokia Customer Experience, leads the incubation, development and lifecycle management of digital industries and vertical solution portfolios for enterprises. With his team he also manages the global ecosystem partners in industries such as automotive & road, manufacturing, transportation (rail, aviation, maritime, space), logistics & retail, energy, oil & gas, mining, public safety, and defense. In the past Thomas held various leadership, project management, sales and business development roles at Nokia and A1 Telekom Austria. Based in Vienna/Austria, he comes with 13+ years of experience in the European telecommunications and enterprise market.

After working in both the industry and IT consulting, Ekrem Yigitdöl took over the management of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance. Especially his experience of the last 13 years in the Voith Group qualifies him for the current OI4 Alliance Managing Director tasks. In the Voith Group, he was responsible for the processes and IT systems of a Voith Group Division as the central IT contact. During the build-up of a new Voith Digital unit, Ekrem Yigitdöl took a major role as the central IT & process responsible for the new Group Division. In this role, he was responsible for setting up processes and IT systems for six legal entities in the various Voith regions belonging to the new Group Division.

Ekrem Yigitdöl was also responsible for setting up the international IIoT development teams and technologies belonging to the digital unit, which serves all Group Divisions with digital solutions and services.

Jukka Muhonen has over twenty (20) years of experience in dealing with a variety of alliance issues in the pharma industry. During his tenure at Orion Corporation (Espoo, Finland) he has led organizations from Legal Affairs and IPR to Alliance Management and Business Development. Through his varied global practice he has developed deep knowledge in creating and preserving value through different deal structures and managing collaboration interfaces. His core expertise lies in transactions and M&A, complex commercial negotiations and in building, managing and restructuring commercial contractual relationships. He is also a CEDR accredited mediator.

Patrick Benz, Senior Director Alliance Management, manages all global commercial and R&D key alliances for Neuroscience in all different global regions. Patrick joined Johnson & Johnson in 1998 at Janssen Switzerland. He progressed through several commercial roles into the board of the Swiss Operating Company as Business Unit Director CNS, and then moved to Italy, holding several commercial roles at board level, advancing to EMEA Franchise Leader for Neurology, overseeing the entire EMEA Neurology Franchise. Since October 2008, Patrick has been a member of the Janssen Business Development team. In this group, he was holding the position of Senior Director, Business Development & Licensing for the Neuroscience Franchise until 2013, where he was negotiating several transactions for commercial as well as R&D assets. Patrick holds a Master Degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in Organic Chemistry.

Jan Twombly, CSAP, is president of The Rhythm of Business, a service provider with expertise in partnering, alliances, and collaboration offering consulting, education, data-rich assessments, and workflow automation. For over 20 years, she has been a leader in advancing the practice of alliance management. Her current emphasis is on ensuring alliance professionals focus on delivering the services of greatest value to stakeholders; upskilling alliance managers, alliance leaders, and team members, and digitizing alliance management workflow. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), overseeing its editorial and content strategy. She is a frequent contributor to Strategic Alliance Quarterly, regularly speaks on collaboration and partnering, and is co-author of The Partnering Guide™ blog and numerous whitepapers. Visit rhythmofbusiness.com/insights for our most recent publications.

After several leadership roles in business transformation, Sophie founded Consensa Consulting in 2009. Helping companies transform and grow by harnessing the power of ecosystems, strategic alliances, and partnerships and implementing collaborative platforms. Sophie has an MSc in Organizational Psychology, a Master in Business Administration, and is a certified NeuroLeadership coach. Besides the need for a solid collaborative framework, Sophie emphasizes the importance of collective leadership and group dynamics as a cornerstone of the success of alliances and partnerships. Consensa Consulting operates globally and delivers services in various sectors, including banking & insurance, pharma, healthcare, public government, and the construction industry.

Derek has over 21 years of experience in global high technology organizations including Signify, Sony & Samsung. Derek’s focus is in bringing technology to market where it truly adds value for the users and bringing large market share growth in the process. Derek is now responsible for strategic alliances in Signify (Formerly known as Philips Lighting).

Hannes Erler is an international key-note speaker with extensive knowledge of innovation management, especially as it relates to the front end of innovation. In previous functions, among others, Hannes was responsible for the operation of a cross-functional innovation incubation group, called i-LAB as well as heading up the product development department. This 1960 year born mechanical engineer has participated in several executive development programs, among others, at the Harvard Business School and at the IMD in Lausanne; including trainings in systematic organisational development as well as in systematic coaching.

Christoph has close to 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in different roles at Bayer (Germany), Berlex Biosciences (USA) and Schering AG (Germany). He has been responsible for alliances and consortia in Europe, the US and China for more than 10 years, covering various therapeutic areas. He is also a founding member of Bayer's Alliance Community Excellence team focusing on alliance management capability development, and has served as member of the Pharma Industry Benchmarking Forum and the EFPIA Industry Liaison Group.

Jasper has a background in legal (antitrust, commercial law) and strategy/M&A roles. In 2017/2018 he acted as co-lead for the Akzo Nobel Specialty Chemicals Dual Track (listing or private sale) process resulting in the intended sale of the Specialty Chemicals to Carlyle. Before this he gained extensive experience setting up and managing joint ventures in Europe and the Middle-East. He is currently Chief Transformation Officer at Dümmen Orange.

Tabasum supports complex drug discovery alliances between Cancer Research UK's innovation engine (Cancer Research Horizons), pharmaceutical partners and our university network. She oversees a varied portfolio spanning different themes to address unmet need in cancer medicines, and leads the strategic discussions and decision making processes to effectively progress these external collaborations and partnerships. She’s continuously applying innovative alliance management capabilities and strategy, and developing business relationships with existing and potential strategic partners (across a range of sectors).

She is a former Post-Doctoral biomedical scientist, who has acquired 12 years broad business development and technology transfer experience spanning search and evaluation, transactions and licensing and post-deal management

Jeremy Carmichael joined Astex as associate director business development in October 2001.  He has more than 25 years of business development experience in the biotech and academic research sectors.  His extensive agreement experience spans the range from drug discovery and development lliances with global pharma companies and leading academic research institutes to all other agreements supporting R&D activities at Astex.  Prior to joining Astex he was director of a biotechnology centre at the Queens University Belfast and the University of Ulster focused on technology transfer of life science research, and before that he was a senior molecular biologist at Cantab Pharmaceuticals, one of the earliest UK-based biotech companies, having completed a postdoc at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Cambridge.  He has a BSc in Genetics and Microbiology from the Queens University Belfast and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Australian National University.

Ard-Pieter de Man PhD is a board room consultant and professor of Management Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in the areas of organizational forms, ecosystems, platforms, and alliances. As a consultant he advises organizations on these issues on a strategic level. He is the author of over a hundred articles and fifteen books: How to survive the organizational revolution, that helps managers make sense of new organizational forms, and the widely used Alliances: An executive guide to designing successful strategic partnership.

Annick De Swaef is CEO of Belgian Road Research Center. She joined BRRC in 2017, bringing more than 20 years of management experience in the public sector and consulting industry.

Previously, De Swaef founded Consensa Consulting in 2009, a Belgian based company specialized in strategic partnerships and alliances. Prior to that, she spent 7 years at the Public Administration of the Brussels Capital region, where she held a variety of management roles from leading a team of road contract managers to implementing organizational change programs.

Annick De Swaef graduated from Ghent University in 1995, earning her master’s degree in construction engineering. She is passionate about guiding organizations on their journey to build and operate successful long term business collaborations. She’s been an active member of ASAP and a strong advocate for the added value of the ASAP community and best practices for business leaders.

Julie has extensive health industry knowledge and experience gained from a career spanning pharma, biotech, academia, and consulting. She has held different roles at Boehringer Ingelheim, today in Germany and previously in Canada, focusing on research strategies, business development and alliance management to progress innovative science towards application. Today, Julie’s focus is on leading alliance execution in various therapeutic areas globally to maximize the value of research alliances at Boehringer Ingelheim.

Holger has worked at Parexel in various roles for 22 years. This includes General Manager roles, Senior Director Project Management, Senior Director e-Clinical Solutions

Reza has been in different roles such as R&D, industrial partnerships, new business development and marketing during the last 25 years. He is currently leading a collaborative innovation approach, which is focused on key players in different industries and sectors. This activity is a part of Evonik’s collaborative innovation methodologies

Antoine leads the Alliances and Technology team within Biosamples to manage the externalised delivery and alliance partnerships for central laboratories and identify/deliver future technology opportunities to develop clinical sampling.

His experience is in: Alliance management, People management, coaching, resource management, stakeholder management, Project management, client communication, GLP, GCP, immunology, sample management, system development, process improvement/optimisation

Stéphane Gervais has more than 25 years of experience in the high-tech industry as global marketing, business development, project management, and product designer.

He has worked for multinational companies in Europe and in Asia. Stéphane also has experience in emerging technologies and markets. His current position is executive EVP Strategic Innovation at LACROIX Group : Industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT), new technologies, electronics, smart mobility and smart city are some of his favorite’s topics.

Stéphane holds a Doctorate degree (Ph. D) in Electronics from the University of Bordeaux (France) and an MBA degree from Newcastle University, Australia.

David leads the strategic business development and licence-in projects in order to develop a competitive biosimilar portfolio, explore and establish strategic partnership with biopharmaceutical companies and manage alliances.

He is Member of the Supervisory Board of the Hungarian Association of Immunbiological producers (Védettség)

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