Changing Faces – Digital and supplier hires – April 2025

We saw a range of hires in April in pharma-adjacent sectors like manufacturing and clinical research. Read on for the full update.

New CEO for CRO. Oncodesign Services, a French CRO specialising in drug discovery and preclinical development, announced a new CEO: Dr Aidan Synnott. Synnott most recently served as corporate VP of global discovery services at Charles River Laboratories. Throughout his career, he has led multidisciplinary teams across North America, Europe, and Asia, and played a central role in integrating acquired organisations.

Pfizer vet takes on top role at Gifthealth. Chip Parkinson is in as CEO at Gifthealth, an Ohio technology-driven pharmacy care company dedicated to making prescription access easier and more affordable. Parkinson has held senior leadership roles such as EVP of strategy and innovation at Myriad Genetics and president of OmedaRx and MedSavvy at Cambia Health Solutions, as well as Pfizer, where he led large sales and market access teams.

Two clinical trial companies hire technology leads. A pair of pharma-facing tech companies made C-Suite appointments in April. Usama Dar has joined CluePoints – a Pennsylvania-based Risk-Based Quality Management (RBQM) and Data Quality Oversight Software provider – as chief product and technology officer. Dar’s broad leadership background includes roles at Westwing, Sciensus, Elsevier, The Guardian, and Huawei. And over at San Francisco’s Unlearn, which partners with pharma and biotech companies to design and optimise clinical trials using AI-powered digital twins, Krates Ng has been appointed CTO. Ng most recently served as CTO at ProducePay. Before that, he was SVP of engineering at RapidAI and co-founder of CliniCast, an oncology-focused machine learning and software start-up supporting value-based care, which was successfully acquired.

Device-focused CRO adds two SVPs. Avania, a US and Netherlands-based CRO with a focus on medical devices, IVDs, biologics, and device-drug combination products, has announced two key appointments. Josh Blacker has been named SVP, global business development. Blacker built business development programmes at Chiltern, Worldwide Clinical Trials, and Evestia Clinical, where he was most recently executive vice president of commercial. Joining Blacker is Jasmine Saba, who has been named SVP, strategic relationships.

Manufacturing, storage firms expand sales teams. A pair of commercial hires up next. Dr Nathalie Huther has joined High Force Research as chief commercial officer. She brings more than 15 years of commercial experience to the UK-based provider of specialist chemical R&D and manufacturing services. Also in the UK, Ryan Smith has been appointed global head of sales at Astoriom, a UK-based expert in sample storage. Smith most recently led the global sales team at Azenta Life Sciences (formerly Brooks Life Sciences).

Asahi Kasei taps new healthcare leadership. Asahi Kasei, a Japanese multi-sector business with pharma assets in the CRO and CDMO spaces, has hired Ken Shinomoya as healthcare sector lead. Shinomoya previously served as VP of strategy at ZOLL Medical Corporation and president of Asahi Kasei Medical.

New partner brings diverse credentials to firm. Dr Kate Hillier has joined Los Angeles law firm Latham & Watkins LLP as a partner of healthcare & life sciences. Hillier, an anaesthesiologist-turned-lawyer, will advise public and private life sciences companies on complex licensing and collaboration transactions, with a particular focus on counselling clients on strategic partnering and related intellectual property (IP), business, and legal issues.

Amgen’s Abberley to lead APBI. Russell Abberley has been appointed president-elect of ABPI, an industry group that supports drug discovery and development in the UK. The general manager of Amgen UK & Ireland, Abberley has more than 25 years of life sciences industry experience across a range of geographies. He has also served on the ABPI Board since July 2020 and has played a prominent leadership role in industry negotiations and engagements with the UK government over the past five years.

That’s it for our pharma and biotech hires for April, but stay tuned for our other hires round-ups and remember, you can send your own hires to editorial@pharmaphorum.com for inclusion in this column.