Changing Faces: Pharma supplier hires from May & June 2023

Welcome to the third part of our hires roundup for May and June, where we look at digital health and medtech hires, as well as various suppliers and support functions in life sciences, like CROs, CDMOs, and more.

Two CDMOs see changes at the top. Two manufacturers, Fujifilm Diosynth and Veranova, announced leadership changes at the very top of their organisations. Tokyo-based Fujifilm is replacing outgoing CEO Martin Meeson with new President and CEO Lars Petersen, a veteran of Biogen, Novo Nordisk, and Genentech/Roche. Meanwhile, Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Veranova has selected Mike Riley, who brings 19 years of CDMO experience, to replace Niek Stapel.

Four more leadership shakeups. A few other top leadership moves came through this cycle:

London’s Global Access Diagnostics announced that its 20-year leader and founder Mark Davis would step down. The company has not yet named a successor, but has contracted with the Clinton Health Access Initiative to lead the company through the transition and spearhead the CEO search. CHAI’s Randy Allen and Alan Staples will lead the company until a new CEO is appointed.
Meeting Protocol Worldwide, which provides meeting services to the life sciences industry, announced a CEO transition from founder Pat Bingham to Paige Bingham, Pat’s daughter and the company’s chief operating officer.
Medical imaging company Polarean tabbed Christopher von Jako to be its new CEO, taking over for Richard Hullihen, who is retiring. Von Jako has served as CEO for a number of other medical device companies: Brainsway, Dynatronics, and NeuroTherm.
UPS Healthcare, the healthcare division of the logistics company, announced the appointment of its new president after the retirement earlier this year of Wes Wheeler. The new president, John Bolla, has led operations at Adare Pharma Solutions and Lantheus Holdings and worked for 22 years at GlaxoSmithKline.

Three C-Suite hires for CRO. Velocity Clinical Research, based in Durham, North Carolina, added three new members to its executive leadership team. Nick Campbell, whose previous CRO experience includes Covance and IQVIA, is the company’s new chief commercial officer. Syneos Health vet Nick Spittal joins as chief operating officer. And Steph Anderson, who joined Velocity through its acquisition of Meridian Clinical Research last year, has been promoted to chief of staff.

ArisGlobal adds two to C-Suite. Drug development tech vendor ArisGlobal announced two C-Suite appointments to support a growth phase. Glenn Renzulli, former CFO of Paya, joins as chief financial officer. The company also named a new chief technology officer: Ann-Marie Orange, who recently served as CIO for Europe at TransUnion.

Two top fills at ANGLE. Liquid biopsy firm ANGLE has made two additions to its C-Suite. Brett Swansinger, formerly of DxTerity Diagnostics, is in as chief commercial officer. He got his start at Bristol Myers Squibb. And Karen Miller is the company’s new chief scientific officer - her 30-year pharma experience includes executive stints at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, UCB Pharma, and GlaxoSmithKline.

AI marketing vendor staffs up. ODAIA, which uses AI and predictive data to help advise pharma companies in their sales and marketing efforts, has made several appointments: chief financial officer Rebecca Skvorc, SVP Sales Jim Diefenbach, and Mike Goulart, senior director of business acceleration. The new team members will support sales for the company’s SaaS platform MAPTUAL.

QuantHealth preps for US expansion. QuantHealth, an Israeli AI platform for predicting clinical trial performance, marked its entry into the US market with a new CCO and some other leadership shakeups. David Dornstreich, a seasoned digital health exec with tenures at ConcertAI, ASCO’s CancerLinQ, Dr. Evidence, and Allscripts, joins as chief commercial officer and general manager of US operations. The company has also made several other staffing changes: co-founder Arnon Horev will take on the new role of chief strategy and operations officer; Omri Matalon has been promoted to VP of clinical data science, and Julien Benchetrit is in as VP of engineering.

H.E.L. Group makes spat of director-level hires. London-based life sciences tech vendor H.E.L. Group announced three senior appointments in May. Hasan Hallaq, who comes from UK Biobank, joins as European Sales Director. Victoria Ordsmith, who has held both technical and commercial roles at Microsaic Systems, will be director of marketing. And Sarenah Longworth-Cook was promoted internally from training and development manager to director of people.

More medical, scientific, and technical leaders. The C-Suite was heavily represented in the hires for these two months, including on the technical side, which saw a slew of CMO, CSO, and CTO appointments:

David Mauro, who spent seven years each in director positions at Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb, joined TechBio company Recursion, which specialises in tech-enabled drug discovery, as chief medical officer.
Swedish med-tech Capitainer, which develops consumer-facing sampling solutions, tabbed Mathias Karlsson as its new chief medical officer. Karlsson most recently served as CEO at Equalis, an EQA provider for laboratories. Capitainer also hired a new sales and distribution manager, Yvonne Zar Berglund, in May.
CRO Richmond Pharmacology has appointed former deputy chief pharmacist for Barts Health NHS Trust James Rickard as the new chief science officer of the Richmond Research Institute, its non-commercial research unit.
LEON, Munich-based maker of nano-encapsulation devices for advanced drug delivery, named Dr Setu Kasera to its CSO post. She was formerly LEON’s head of science and engineering and she succeeds Dr Frank Stieneker, who will stay on in an advisory capacity.
Vancouver’s Zephyrus Innovations, a medtech that makes safety syringes and Closed System Transfer Devices, announced a new chief technology officer, David Whitaker. A 20-year med device veteran, he most recently held the post of operations director at Atlas Genetics.

Five commercial and operations hires. And that’s not all for the C-Suite appointments for May and June – we also saw our share of commercial, financial, operations, and product hires:

UK-based organ-on-a-chip company CN Bio named a new chief financial officer, Dr Samantha Macro. Her last position was VP of Finance at Mestag Therapeutics, and prior to that she served as global head of finance at Horizon Discovery.
CRO Emmes created a new executive position, chief growth officer, for Kristin Judge, who joined in late May. Judge comes over from Veeva Systems, where she led CRO and clinical data management systems sales.
TechBio Closed Loop Medicine, a London outfit working on combination drug and software therapy products, appointed Kate Woolland as chief operating officer. Her 13-year healthcare background includes a stint as chief delivery officer at ieso Digital Health.
Two digital health companies appointed chief product officers. Authenticx, which uses AI to enhance customer interactions, named Eric Prugh, who comes from PactSafe, as CPO. And Edifecs, which provides data management services for payers and health systems, appointed Chris Lance to the role. Lance previously led product at Evolent Health Services and Change Healthcare.

Board of directors appointments. May and June saw some movement on boards as well, including two chairs and a resignation:

Single cell analysis company Sphere Fluidics appointed a new board chair in early May. Kenneth Hitchner, a former US naval aviator who spent most of his career at Goldman Sachs, brings experience positioning companies and fundraising in the life sciences sector.
ANGLE, a liquid biopsy company, announced the resignation of its board chair Garth Selvey after 16 years of leadership. The role will pass on to Dr Jan Groen, CEO of Intravacc, who already sits on the board as an independent non-executive director.
Vancouver-based AI drug creation company Absci made a high-profile addition to its board with Frans van Houten, who served as CEO of Philips during a crucial time in the transformation of the company’s medical device business.
Dr Ronny Hashmonay, a managing general partner at P74 Ventures, who formerly served as chief digital officer at Novartis, has joined the board at RxWare (formerly HelpAround). The company provides digital infrastructure for specialty pharma brands.
Diagnostics company Immunovia put out a notice of the resignation of Philipp von Hugo from the board, though the reason for his resignation was not shared.
In advisory board news, medical wholesaler Alliance Healthcare announced the formation of a four-member advisory board, chaired by Chris Martin. It includes former UK Health Minister Lord O’Shaughnessy; former head of pharmacy for the Department of Health and Social Care Jeannette Howe; Claire Ward, who is among other things a former MP; and Fin McCaul, managing director of Prestwich Pharmacy and Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Other miscellaneous hires. We’re almost done with our roundup of May and June hires, but there’re just a few more that didn’t really fit anywhere above, but are still worth a mention:

Clinical trial tech company uMotif named Willie Muehlhausen as scientific advisor. An early innovator in decentralised trials, Muehlhausen founded SAFIRA Clinical Research and served as head of innovation at ICON.
Tech-enabled CRO Cresset added Nick Foster, formerly of Metrion Biosciences, to the team as VP of their Discovery CRO business, a newly created position.
Executive search firm WittKieffer has recruited a new practice lead for life sciences: Nils Hopper brings 30 years of experience in executive search and leadership consulting.
Pharma supplier PBSC added a new engineering technician to its US office: Stanley Schoeffel most recently rose through the ranks at Eos Energy.

That’s it for this roundup. Remember, if you’ve had a recent appointment and you work in or around the pharma space, we want to hear about it. Please send your press releases to editorial@pharmaphorum.com to be included in future editions of Changing Faces.