Johanna Allston, Ph.D.     bioCapture
Vicente Anido Jr., Ph.D.    ISTA Pharmaceuticals
Mara Aspinall    On-Q-ity
Glenn Bilawsky    i3
Jay Bolling    Roska Healthcare
David Brennan    AstraZeneca
Nick Colucci    Publicis Healthcare
Communications Group
Lynnette Cooke    Kantar Health
David Dunn    ApotheCom
Deborah Dunsire, M.D.    Millennium:
The Takeda Oncology Co.
Cameron Durrant, M.D.    Anavex Life Sciences
Erin Gainer, Ph.D.    HRA Pharma
Peter Gassner    Veeva Systems
Richard Gliklich, M.D.    Outcome
Alex Gorsky    Johnson & Johnson
Yusuf Hamied, Ph.D.    Cipla
James Hoyes    EMD Serono
Joe Jimenez    Novartis
Rick Keefer    Publicis Touchpoint Solutions
Bill McEllen    Echo Torre Lazur
Robert McNally, Ph.D.    GeoVax
Joel Morganroth, M.D.    eResearch Technology
David Ormesher    closerlook
Joe Pieroni    Daiichi Sankyo
Ahnal Purohit, Ph.D.    Purohit Navigation
James Pusey, M.D.    Omnicare Clinical Research
Alan Reicheg    Qforma
Clifford Reid, Ph.D.    Complete Genomics
Una Ryan, Ph.D.    Diagnostics for All
Mike Soenen    ClearTrial
John Spitznagel    Oceana Therapeutics
Larry Star    Harrison & Star
Chris Viehbacher    Sanofi-Aventis
Tim Walbert    Horizon Pharma
Michael Weintraub    Humedica

Endurance is a valuable characteristic in the high-paced world of healthcare communications, And David Dunn has that in abundance.
A former competitive distance swimmer, Mr. Dunn maintains that discipline, hitting the water to swim an ungodly number of laps every single morning — no matter where in the world he is that day — to stay in shape and do some of his best thinking.
It certainly seems to be working. Mr. Dunn has an innate ability to light up a room. A natural-born leader and competitor, Mr. Dunn has charisma and tenacity that have inspired the ApotheCom team to help him grow the business into one of the largest medical communications agencies in the world.
His direct reports describe him as high-energy, honest, direct, creative, approachable, and decisive. He challenges them to think outside of the box and to continually come up with new ways to enhance the services that they provide to clients, before the clients think of asking, which is why ApotheCom clients love him.
With no desire to slow down, Mr. Dunn has ambitious plans and dreams. Asides from eating his way through Italy, he has a goal of swimming a continuous 100 laps on his 100th birthday. He jokes that since his first job in the industry was as a bench scientist in an endocrine lab at McGill, he suspects there will be many rats and rabbits waiting for him at the pearly gates after he swims those 100 laps. F
David Dunn
David Dunn is a former ­competitive distance ­swimmer, and he still hits the water every ­morning at 5:30 to swim an ungodly number of laps.
A born leader,
David Dunn, CEO of ApotheCom, has the ­experience and ability to chart new directions in medical communications.
Name: David Dunn
Current position: CEO, ApotheCom
Education: MBA, McGill University
place of birth: Montreal
First industry-related job: Bench scientist, McGill
Dream job: Professional chef or comedian
Words to Live By: Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery
A born leader,
David Dunn, CEO of ApotheCom, has the ­experience and ability to chart new directions in medical communications.

Always one step ahead, Nick Colucci has been proactive in developing unique solutions to anticipate client needs as they arise in an evolving market. He has been at the forefront of reinventing the healthcare communications model, developing new ways for agencies to stay connected to their clients and the relevant stakeholders in healthcare delivery.
During a 25-year career in healthcare, Mr. Colucci has achieved an outstanding track record of success, building Publicis Healthcare Communications Group (PHCG) into an innovative global healthcare marketing network focused on delivering solutions to boost customer brands and improve health.
He has created a vision of how PHCG can better serve the needs of the industry and is empowering employees to deliver on that vision by creating a culture focused on innovation. Today, PHCG is one of the largest global health-oriented agency networks, with almost 3,000 employees managing 20 agency brands through 41 offices located in 10 countries.
Mr. Colucci admits there have been challenges to building a network of this size. His focus has been on fostering global collaboration among all the network agencies, including the two flagship healthcare brands Publicis/Medicus Life Brands and the Saatchi & Saatchi Health agencies, as well as the Publicis Medical Education Group and Publicis Selling Solutions Group agencies. Mr. Colucci’s goal is to make sure that clients’ vast communications needs can be met globally, not by one agency, but across the vast PHCG network.
Mr. Colucci’s focus on the delivery of healthcare is unwavering. This was most evident during the past year when the healthcare industry and the nation faced great uncertainty around healthcare reform. As the bill took shape on Capitol Hill and in the White House, Mr. Colucci turned to legal experts for their perspective and collaborated on a series of meetings and webcasts to keep PHCG senior leadership apprised about the legislation and its impact on the healthcare marketing industry. As a result, his colleagues were able to effectively counsel clients about implications to their businesses, brands, and, most importantly, patient care.
By creating a collaborative cross-service organization, he ensures that clients’ brands remain the highest priority, and he reinforces this philosophy by enabling all of the companies under his leadership to invest in innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve.
One of the things industry leaders must learn to do to remain profitable and relevant, he contends, is to transform their approach to meet the demands of a society that will drive toward personalized/customized healthcare delivery and information exchange.
He sees change as a positive, not a negative, citing the FDA’s facilitation of healthcare product innovation and the information transfer to patients and consumers in the early 1990s as truly industry-defining moments.
His vision, passion, and drive to always do what is right for clients and the brands PHCG supports have earned him significant respect with colleagues and clients alike.
Part of great leadership is about putting people at ease and creating a collaborative environment so that people can perform at their best, and Mr. Colucci’s down-to-earth and approachable personality makes that easy. Though embodying leadership, he remains humble and involved in the business on a day-to-day level. F
Nick Colucci
Nick Colucci, President ­and CEO, Publicis ­Healthcare ­Communications Group, finds the best in people and ­­
­reaffirms their ­success in his action and words.
Innovating for Change
Name: Nick Colucci
Current position: President and CEO, Publicis Healthcare Communications Group
Education: MBA, Loyola College of Maryland, 1990; B.S., Neuroscience, University of Rochester, 1981
Date and place of birth: May 1959, Jamestown, N.Y.
First Job: Loading boxes at UPS
First Industry-related Job: Sales rep, ­­Hoffmann-La Roche
Dream job: Teaching children
Professional Mentors: Jean-Yves Naouri and Robert Parisi
Professional Associations: Coalition for ­Healthcare Communication, Healthcare ­Businesswomen’s Association, and the 4A’s
Words to Live By: No regrets
Nick Colucci played Division III ­football and was named to the AP ­Little All ­American Team his senior year in college.

Whether it is the molecule, the ­technology, the marketing, or the ­patient population, Cameron Durrant, M.D., challenges the status quo to bring an innovative perspective to ­medical and health advances.
Dr. Durrant is skilled at instilling success in both large, world-class organizations as well as in dynamic small companies and start-ups, thanks to his ability to bring breakthrough thinking and the art of possibility to others. Colleagues speak to his highly focused and fast-paced work style, while being able to pay attention both to details and to strategic issues.
A wonderful spokesman for the industry, Dr. Durrant has been a visionary in his roles as a leader of new organizations and divisional head in large companies. He continually looks for ways to do things differently, be it faster, more cost-effectively, or more creatively, but always with an unwavering focus on the customer. His myriad successes result from his intellect, energy, persistence, and emotional intelligence. His restlessness and continual challenge of the status quo drives him and others around him to strive to do better. Rather than wonder about either working harder or working smarter, his approach is to do both.
His leadership track record equips him well as he turns his attention to a new wave of challenges, including medications tailored for hospitalized pediatric populations throughout the world, innovative technologies to image and treat cancer, and novel approaches to Alzheimer’s disease.
To that end as executive chairman of Anavex Life Sciences, he is pursing taking an oral, disease-modifying, first-in-class treatment for Alzheimer’s disease through clinical trials. He is also looking to establish PediatRx as a successful specialty pharma and ultimately create new public-private-partnerships that first bring and then transfer the assets to the most underdeveloped countries for the benefit of the least-privileged children in those countries. And he has his sights set on starting a new company a year for the next few years to tackle some of the most pressing issues in medicine.
His nominators point to a desire to do what is right by patients as a key driver. They speak to his style of working with intensity, enthusiasm, and a passion to succeed. And they laud his ability to empower fellow workers and associates to grow, stretch, and develop to maximize their contributions and achievements for team success.
Equal to his commitment to the organizations he leads is his willingness to offer mentorship and to act as an advisor. Dr. Durrant never fails to respond to a call for help.
He epitomizes the qualities of an effective leader. He encourages the participation of his team, and he is receptive to challenging and cutting-edge ideas. In an age when many leaders focus only on managing up or across, Dr. Durrant cares for the little guy. He takes the time to meet with individuals, understand their desires, aspirations, and deepest fears, and then makes sense out of it with a path forward.
Those who have worked with him say they would follow him anywhere.
Energetic and highly involved in the industry, Dr. Durrant is a board member of Anavex; PediatRx, where he also is taking on operational roles; and Bexion Pharmaceuticals, as well as being on the advisory board and investment committee for Saxa Private Equity Partners.
The respect he garners is evident in the accolades he receives. Now a four-time honoree of the PharmaVOICE 100 and a national finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005, Dr. Durrant is a committed and energizing entrepreneur, company-, and people-builder and a driving force in the life-sciences industry. F
Grounded in Excellence
Dr. Cameron Durrant
Dr. Cameron Durrant was once ­mistakenly arrested while on a work shift in the ER.
Name: Cameron Durrant, M.D.
Current position: Executive Chairman, Anavex Life ­Sciences Corp.; Founder, PediatRx
Education: M.D., Welsh National School of Medicine, Cardiff; Diploma of the Royal College of ­Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London; ­Member of the Royal College of General ­Practitioners, London; Diploma of Clinical ­Hypnotherapy, Australian Academy, ­Melbourne; MBA, Henley Management College, Oxford
First job: Clearing tables at an airport restaurant
First industry-related job: Merck representative
Dream job: Law
Connected Via: Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo,
and Twitter
Driven. Creative.
Erin Gainer, Ph.D., brings to the ­leadership of HRA Pharma a unique ­perspective, having developed strong skills in international public health as a volunteer for a U.S. Peace Corps assignment in ­Zimbabwe.
This background is particularly valuable for a company that designs products, devices, and supporting services in reproductive health and endocrinology. HRA Pharma strives to make its products accessible everywhere, including the developing world, and, as such, has put into place a series of targeted social marketing and product access programs.
Dr. Gainer was instrumental in the company’s launch of its next-generation emergency contraception (EC), ellaOne (ulipristal acetate).
Her innovative vision in developing ellaOne represents a tremendous step forward in confirming EC as a viable therapeutic category and in spearheading the development of new methods and concepts in contraception for women that are better adapted to their needs and lifestyles.
Women were once obligated to use unreliable and improvised methods of EC, such as strong doses of estrogen or oral contraceptives taken at frequent intervals. Ulipristal acetate is the first compound ever developed specifically for use as EC, and its development represents the first major significant advance in this therapeutic area since the morning-after pill was first introduced.
Under Dr. Gainer’s leadership, the company has been helping to drive awareness and accessibility of EC across the globe, in particular in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, where access to and awareness of this type of product has long been limited. The company has generated and contributed to a number of educational and logistical programs with partners to help give women greater control over their own reproductive health. These include, for example, the launch of the Mona Lisa Afrique program, which provides intrauterine devices free of charge to several West African countries, trains personnel, and educates women in these locations about the use of these devices.
Next on her list of goals is to licence in new products for HRA’s European commercial network.
She rose rapidly within HRA to director of R&D in 2003, became a member of the executive board in 2007, and ultimately was named CEO in April 2009.
Dr. Gainer is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Public Health Association, the European Society of Contraception, the American Society for Emergency Contraception, the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, and the Delta Omega Public Health Honor Society.
Dr. Gainer began her career as a research associate at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md.
Following her two years in the U.S. Peace Corps, she worked as an epidemiologist at The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and a risk analyst at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. F
Socially Committed
Name: Dr. Erin Gainer
Current position: CEO, HRA Pharma
Education: MBA for Executives, INSEAD; Ph.D. in ­Epidemiology, University of Paris XI; Master’s of Public Health, The Johns Hopkins University; B.A., Biology and English, Rice University
Date and place of birth: October 1973, Raleigh, N.C.
First job: Molecular biology research, The Institute for Genomic Research
First industry-related job: International project leader with HRA Pharma
Professional mentors: André Ulmann, founder, long-time CEO of HRA Pharma
Professional associations: American Public Health ­Association, Delta Omega Public Health Honor ­Society, ­Healthcare ­Businesswomen’s
­Association, ­European ­Society for­ ­Contraception
Focused. Visionary.
Dr. Erin Gainer was a U.S. Peace Corps ­volunteer in Zimbabwe.
Leading a socially ­committed ­pharmaceutical company is a superb fit for Dr. Erin Gainer, CEO of HRA Pharma.
Dr. Erin Gainer

Regarded by many as a lifesaver for HIV patients in the developing world, Yusuf Hamied, Ph.D., inherited not only a ­company but a passion for his country from his father.
Khwaja Abdul Hamied, an organic chemist who founded Cipla in 1935, was a fervent follower of Mahatma Gandhi’s brand of peaceful nationalism. When his father died in 1972, Dr. Hamied took the helm at Cipla.
Described by those who know him as a shy man who shuns publicity, Dr. Hamied has ensured many more AIDS sufferers receive the treatment they need. In 1992, recognizing the devastation AIDS could reap on India, he began reverse-engineering AIDS drugs, spending four years to get lamivudine right.
Dr. Hamied’s involvement in a European Commission meeting on AIDS in 2000 was instrumental in making HIV drugs available to patients in poor nations. Today, HIV drug prices are a fraction of what they were back in 2000, though Cipla still produces the drugs for less than half the price of those made by brand-name companies.
Though much has been made of disagreements on patents, Dr. Hamied says he is not against patents; rather, he recognizes that India cannot afford them, and he is opposed to monopolies.
Arguing that the rules of wealthy nations shouldn’t apply to those of poor nations, he is eager to push for different intellectual property laws for countries such as India. And he notes that since the vast majority of a company’s profits come from industrialized nations, this is likely to have little impact on the bottom line.
His contribution to providing affordable drugs in developing nations has been recognized by many, including the Indian government, which in 2005 gave him the Padma Bhushan award, one of the country’s highest civilian honors, and by his alma mater Christ’s College, which elected him an Honorary Fellow of the College.
In 2009, the college opened the Yusuf Hamied Centre, made possible by a donation from Dr. Hamied.
He is also a member of the Cambridge India Partnership Advisory Board and of the Mumbai Cambridge Society. F  A Generic Battle
Name: Yusuf Hamied, Ph.D.
Current position: Managing Director, Cipla Ltd.
Education: Ph.D., Chemistry, Christ’s College, ­Cambridge University
Philanthropic. Passionate.
Dr. Yusuf Hamied has been close friends with ­internationally famous conductor Zubin Mehta since his youth.
Dr. Yusuf Hamied

One of the true champions of outcomes research, Richard Gliklich, M.D., has inspired many in the industry to ­reconsider the benefits of the discipline and has led the way to demonstrate not only its value in monitoring safety and risk, but also in improving the quality of patient care.
The tendency within the industry is often to sit back and wait, but when it comes to comparative effectiveness and postapproval safety, Dr. Gliklich says this could be a major error. He has worked hard to bring about a proactive response to outcomes rather than a reactive one.
He remains committed to enhancing the postapproval area and, going forward, he is eager to create a means by which healthcare decision-makers can understand the most appropriate methods to address their comparative effectiveness questions and sponsors/researchers will know what types of real-world information decision-makers need.
Dr. Gliklich is renowned for his work in developing the handbook Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes: A User’s Guide for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It was far from a simple assignment; he had to work with many diverse collaborators to summarize a new and dynamic field into a practical textbook.
But aside from its importance in improving the understanding around patient outcomes, it’s finally enabled him to explain to his mother what he does as president of Outcome.
Among his many accomplishments is his role in developing and managing the American Heart Association’s Get With the Guidelines registries, which is being used by more than 2,000 hospitals and estimated to save more than 80,000 lives per year. The program received the 2004 Innovation Award from the Department of Health and Human Services.
On a philanthropic front, Dr. Gliklich is involved with the R.O.S.E. Fund (regaining one’s self esteem), donating his surgical services to victims of domestic violence. This enables him to make a meaningful difference with his time and skills.
Curious by nature, Dr. Gliklich is interested in a broad range of disciplines, and he enjoys finding new ideas that can be applied creatively in his own work. At the same time, he is practical and focuses his time on things that he believes can be accomplished. F
Dr. Richard Gliklich
Focused on Outcomes
Name: Richard Gliklich, M.D.
Current position: President, Outcome
Education: M.D., Cum Laude, Harvard Medical School, 1988; B.A., Yale University, 1983
Date and Place of Birth: February 1961, New ­Jersey
First Job: Surgical intern
First Industry-related Job: CEO, Outcome
Dream Job: Writing a novel
Professional Mentors: Samuel Martin, M.D.
Professional Associations: International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), DIA, several medical and surgical ­associations
Words to Live By: You can make your own path
Curious. Practical.
Dr. Richard Gliklich is a practicing ­surgeon and member of the ­Harvard teaching faculty in Boston.
An accomplished leader in ­outcomes research, Dr. Richard ­Gliklich, President of Outcome, ­focuses his time on things that he believes can be accomplished.
The team is the nexus to great ­outcomes for Jim Hoyes, whose ­leadership style is fashioned strongly by collaboration and transparency.
As chief commercial officer at EMD Serono, Mr. Hoyes fosters openness through monthly office hours for employees to use as a forum to share their ideas, provide feedback, and ask him questions directly.
He says the opportunity to lead a large group of talented individuals in such an exciting environment during challenging times is a privilege. He thrives on working with a leadership team filled with highly professional individuals, who are also people he respects and with whom he has developed friendships.
Mr. Hoyes is committed to employee development and growth, and he encourages employees to take advantage of EMD Serono’s award-winning training and education center, LEAD Academy.
His role at EMD Serono ranks as the highlight of his career, though being with Sanofi when the company entered the U.S. market and participating in building a new organization in preparation of major product launches was also a moment to relish. And, Mr. Hoyes adds, his first product launch in field sales, back in 1986 with Omnipaque, was an unforgettable experience because nothing quite captures the excitement and energy of a first launch.
In leading EMD Serono’s commercial operations, Mr. Hoyes has been heavily involved in several co-promotion relationships. He says while collaborations and joint ventures are a way of life in the industry and yield positive benefits, building multifunctional alignment across two organizations takes a strong commitment from both sides. For a co-promotion venture to be successful, Mr. Hoyes says both parties need to take time up front to agree on common outcomes and build the right structure to ensure optimal teamwork — one true team versus two teams from two companies trying to work as one. And when the team gets it right, the results are very satisfying.
Leading with a combination of steadiness and curiosity, Mr. Hoyes says he is able to stay calm and collected in a crisis. He also has a natural urge to seek alternatives and find out how challenges could be handled differently and better.
Going forward, Mr. Hoyes is firmly focused on helping the company to launch several new products in multiple sclerosis and HIV in the next 12 months, helping to take EMD Serono to the next level of success, and, ultimately, in leading a U.S. organization. F
James Hoyes
Clear Intent
Name: James Hoyes
Current position: Chief Commercial Officer, EMD Serono
Education: B.S., Pennsylvania State University; Executive ­Education Modules: MIT (Sloan School of Management), ­Thunderbird (The Garvin School of Management), ­Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and INSEAD
Date and place of birth: March 1962, Paterson, N.J.
First Job: Boy Scout camp counselor
First Industry-related Job: Sales representative, ­­
Winthrop-Breon Laboratories
Dream Job: Teacher or archaeologist
Professional mentors: His dad, Fereydoun Firouz, Dan Welch, Mariana Palacios, Sander Flaum, Roger Hawley, and EMD Serono executive committee members
Words to Live by: Dream the impossible — make the dream possible
Steady. Curious.
Jim Hoyes is an Eagle Scout.
Having a fresh perspective on the ­pharmaceutical industry has ­unshackled Joe Jimenez from staid industry norms and enabled him to bring a dynamic new approach to his leadership of Novartis.
With a background in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, Mr. Jimenez brings a new perspective to his role as CEO of Novartis, both with regard to understanding patients and developing products and business models. A down-to-earth leader, Mr. Jimenez is always willing to listen to unorthodox suggestions no matter who has the idea or what their title is.
Despite his busy schedule, Mr. Jimenez makes a point to connect with associates at all levels in all geographies through networking lunches and happy hours during his travels. He also writes a blog on the company’s intranet each week to ensure he reaches out to all staff members in dispersed geographies.
His goal in his new role is to build something that will last beyond his time at Novartis. He is continually inspired by the stories of how the company’s medicines have improved the lives of patients, and these accounts drive him to want to do more.
In his previous role as head of Novartis’ pharma business, Mr. Jimenez instituted a number of initiatives to empower associates and cut down unnecessary bureaucracy in the organization; he reduced the number of layers between the lowest level and the CPO head to no more than five.
One of the biggest highlights of his career to date, Mr. Jimenez says, was during his time as head of the pharmaceuticals business when he worked with the entire leadership team to lead Novartis Pharma to become one of the fastest-growing pharma companies, with a number of new medicines launched on the market.
Now as CEO of Novartis, he is rejuvenating the portfolio across all the businesses.
He is also transforming the way teams interact with patients and customers through tailored commercial models. As the environment for healthcare evolves, Mr. Jimenez has charged his teams to take a closer look at every new customer segment and develop a focused, integrated approach for each to ensure Novartis delivers the best value.
And he is using technologies and social media to create meaningful connections with patients. For example, Mr. Jimenez began a partnership with the social networking site PatientsLikeMe, which helped with recruitment efforts for an MS clinical trial and is now working to create a network to support the transplant community.
As a heavy promoter of new technologies, his people developed new ways to deliver positive outcomes, such as the company’s first iPhone application, VaxTrak, which helps families store medical records and reminds patients about routine vaccinations.
Employees say Mr. Jimenez inspires with his hands-on leadership style and focus on team-building.
Goal-oriented and a good listener, Mr. Jimenez has always believed in setting a stretch target, working hard toward that outcome, and then beating it. Above all, though, he thinks it’s important to listen more. It’s a lesson the entire industry needs to learn, he says: doing a better job of listening to what patients and customers want and need. In so doing, companies can work collaboratively with them to help improve patient outcomes. F
Joe Jimenez
A Breath of Fresh Air
Name: Joe Jimenez
Current position: CEO, Novartis AG
Education: MBA, University of California, Berkeley, 1984; B.S., Economics, Stanford University, 1982
Date and Place of Birth: December 1959, ­California
First Job: Captain of the swim team at Stanford University
First Industry-related Job: Nonexecutive ­director, AstraZeneca
Professional associations: Member of the Board of Directors for Colgate-Palmolive
Connected Via: PatientsLikeMe, Vaxtrak, a new Novartis iPhone application
Joe Jimenez, CEO of Novartis, is always willing to listen to unorthodox suggestions no matter who has the idea or what their title is.
Goal-Oriented. Good Listener.
Joe Jimenez was a collegiate ­
all-­American swimmer at Stanford.
The team is the nexus to great ­outcomes for Jim Hoyes, whose ­leadership style is fashioned strongly by collaboration and transparency.
As chief commercial officer at EMD Serono, Mr. Hoyes fosters openness through monthly office hours for employees to use as a forum to share their ideas, provide feedback, and ask him questions directly.
He says the opportunity to lead a large group of talented individuals in such an exciting environment during challenging times is a privilege. He thrives on working with a leadership team filled with highly professional individuals, who are also people he respects and with whom he has developed friendships.
Mr. Hoyes is committed to employee development and growth, and he encourages employees to take advantage of EMD Serono’s award-winning training and education center, LEAD Academy.
His role at EMD Serono ranks as the highlight of his career, though being with Sanofi when the company entered the U.S. market and participating in building a new organization in preparation of major product launches was also a moment to relish. And, Mr. Hoyes adds, his first product launch in field sales, back in 1986 with Omnipaque, was an unforgettable experience because nothing quite captures the excitement and energy of a first launch.
In leading EMD Serono’s commercial operations, Mr. Hoyes has been heavily involved in several co-promotion relationships. He says while collaborations and joint ventures are a way of life in the industry and yield positive benefits, building multifunctional alignment across two organizations takes a strong commitment from both sides. For a co-promotion venture to be successful, Mr. Hoyes says both parties need to take time up front to agree on common outcomes and build the right structure to ensure optimal teamwork — one true team versus two teams from two companies trying to work as one. And when the team gets it right, the results are very satisfying.
Leading with a combination of steadiness and curiosity, Mr. Hoyes says he is able to stay calm and collected in a crisis. He also has a natural urge to seek alternatives and find out how challenges could be handled differently and better.
Going forward, Mr. Hoyes is firmly focused on helping the company to launch several new products in multiple sclerosis and HIV in the next 12 months, helping to take EMD Serono to the next level of success, and, ultimately, in leading a U.S. organization. F
James Hoyes
Clear Intent
Name: James Hoyes
Current position: Chief Commercial Officer, EMD Serono
Education: B.S., Pennsylvania State University; Executive ­Education Modules: MIT (Sloan School of Management), ­Thunderbird (The Garvin School of Management), ­Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and INSEAD
Date and place of birth: March 1962, Paterson, N.J.
First Job: Boy Scout camp counselor
First Industry-related Job: Sales representative, ­­
Winthrop-Breon Laboratories
Dream Job: Teacher or archaeologist
Professional mentors: His dad, Fereydoun Firouz, Dan Welch, Mariana Palacios, Sander Flaum, Roger Hawley, and EMD Serono executive committee members
Words to Live by: Dream the impossible — make the dream possible
Steady. Curious.
As CEO of Harrison & Star, Larry Star has positioned the agency to focus exclusively on serving ­professional audiences in specialty areas,
distinguishing it from so many other healthcare ­marketers.
In a crowded marketplace, success is about finding a niche, and Larry Star has been able to do that with aplomb for his innovative agency.
Mr. Star has set his company’s focus on serving professional audiences in specialty areas, distinguishing the agency from so many other healthcare marketers.
Ensuring that his staff is well-versed in the nuances of different specialties, as well as in the defining characteristics of the professionals who populate them, breeds excellence in every area of client service and creativity.
This approach is gleaned from years of experience and a critical eye for the underlying factors that determine the success or failure of a marketing effort.
This eye for success extends to the way in which Mr. Star runs his agency; he believes in finding the best people, guiding them, and then giving them the latitude to achieve great things.
But digging deeper into Mr. Star’s leadership style reveals an extraordinary effort to cultivate an agency culture of commitment, creativity, collaboration, and a code of ethics. That this culture has survived year after year, underscores just how deeply it is ingrained in the agency’s DNA.
It’s also apparent in the A-list clientele and the innovative brands the agency has supported over the years.
For Mr. Star one of the most rewarding launch campaigns to be involved with was Genentech’s Avastin, a targeted anti-angiogenesis colorectal cancer drug.
Next on his list of goals to accomplish is to create a healthcare advertising presence and expertise in China. F
Larry Star
Larry Star rode his bicycle
260 miles from Boston to New York over three days for an AIDS charity event.
Name: Larry Star
Current position: CEO, Harrison & Star
Education: M.A.; B.A.; SUNY, Binghamton
Date and Place of Birth: April 1952, Brooklyn, N.Y.
First Job: Movie theater usher
First Industry-related Job: Junior copywriter
Dream Job: University professor
Professional Mentors: Sal deRouin, Rolf ­Rosenthal, Marjorie Vincent
Connected Via: LinkedIn
Curious. Competitive.

Whether he is leading a small team or a 200-plus-person agency, Bill McEllen exudes calm confidence. He’s never “that guy" who constantly talks through a meeting; when Mr. McEllen contributes, he contributes value.
Clients trust him innately for his ability to understand their perspective and needs, while agency teammates appreciate his vision and insightful translations of pharma-speak.
His experience on the client side has given him a perspective of what an agency should bring to the brand team, which allows him to do work that makes a difference.
During his tenure at Torre Lazur McCann, Mr. McEllen helped the company achieve double-digit growth.
In 2007, Mr. McEllen was part of the TLM leadership team that partnered to rebrand TLM from the ground up, culminating in a highly acclaimed campaign, Launch Intensity.
He now brings these learnings to Echo Torre Lazur, which is in the throes of an innovative campaign restructuring and is enjoying its most successful period to date. After only 18 months as president of Echo, Mr. McEllen has already grown the agency’s business and staff to the point of requiring larger office space. He is a step ahead of trends, leading rather than following in his hires of cross-functional resources.
He sets ambitious goals, seeking to establish Echo as one of the premier creative agencies in the healthcare arena.
Success for Mr. McEllen, however, means more than resources and revenue; he has also fostered a unique culture. His employees are relaxed and enthusiastic and the atmosphere is fun-loving.
He has a passion for pushing teams to craft unique strategies, and enjoys working closely with creative teams. In fact, Mr. McEllen has quickly become the cohesive conduit between client services, creative, and strategy. To him, the agency is more than just a partner to the client; the agency is the thinker, the keeper of the brand strategy, and the driver of creative ideas and creative strategies.
Above all, collaboration is critical to success, and he follows some excellent advice in his leadership: if you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others. F
Name: Bill McEllen
Current position: President, Echo Torre Lazur
Education: MBA, Health Services Administration, Marywood University, 1997; B.S., Marketing, Bloomsburg University, 1993
Date and place of birth: March 1971; Hackensack, N.J.
First Job: Paperboy
First Industry-related Job: Sales representative, Knoll
Pharmaceutical Co.
Dream Job: Park Ranger
Connected Via: LinkedIn, Plaxo
Words to Live by: Well-done is better than well-said
Determined. Adventurous.
One Step Beyond
Bill McEllen did a swan dive off the largest free-standing bungee jump in North ­America — 21 stories high.
Challenging times call for ­inspirational and bold leadership, and Rick Keefer embodies all the key ­leadership principles needed to lead in uncertain times and have his company thrive. Mr. Keefer has a knack for ­turning problems into opportunities.

Mr. Keefer joined Publicis Strategic Solutions Group, now Publicis Touchpoint Solutions, at a time when the organization was struggling. With his commitment to excellence, his vision, his tenacity, and his humanity, he has reinvigorated Publicis into a dynamic and growing company.
For the past year, Mr. Keefer has been in the process of leading the re-engineering of the company, moving it from what was a single-focused supplier into a diverse and multi-dimensional organization. He has approached this effort with several objectives: be courageous in order to navigate unchartered waters; be proactive in transforming the business model; routinely challenge the business approach; communicate a clear vision, strategy, and direction; have the right teams in place; and then get out of the way and let them do their jobs.
His years of biopharma experience give him much to draw on, and his down-to-earth approach makes people feel comfortable around him and open to what he is saying.
His ability to reach out to and inspire others is palpable. For three consecutive years, Mr. Keefer has been a PharmaVOICE 100 honoree because of his ability to balance the needs of industry with that of patients, his dedication to improving the industry, his ability to be both a leader and mentor to his employees, and his willingness to go the extra distance for others.
Collaboration is important to Mr. Keefer and he works with his executive team to leverage everyone’s strengths. He helps each person to see how his or her role is critical to the organization, letting them get on with the job without micromanaging. He trusts his immediate subordinates to make good business decisions.
While he is always focused on achieving company objectives, he never loses sight of the people who are running the business and is interested in their well-being. And he motivates through commonsense ideas, meaning people trust him and buy into what he is saying. He is generous with praise, while holding everyone accountable, and he never accepts failure in himself or his team.
He is willing to share his wealth of knowledge and ideas with others every day, whether it’s with clients, colleagues, or even competitors. And he’s not afraid to throw his clout behind an idea that he believes in, even if it isn’t the most popular.
By leading by example, he has increased the level of dedication and commitment from his staff. Mr. Keefer is honest in all he does, and those who work with him say his word is his bond. He has drawn leadership lessons from many valued mentors over the years, referring to himself as a lifelong student of great leadership. Over the years, he has learned from both great leaders and poor leaders, and he has come away with a few takeaways: always treat people with respect; never compromise your integrity; and demonstrate to people that you know the way forward and are going to lead.
Committed to the advancement of women in the industry, Mr. Keefer is a longtime member of the HBA, serving as an advisory board member to the HBA Metro Chapter.
His commitment extends beyond the industry to the community, where he champions quarterly company volunteer days and has established strategic relationships with several New Jersey nonprofits, including HomeFront, a nonprofit agency caring for the poor and homeless in central New Jersey, and Isles, a Trenton, N.J.-based nonprofit community development and environmental organization.
He and his wife are also committed to the work being done by the National Breast Cancer Association. It’s a cause close to Mr. Keefer, whose sister-in-law is a breast cancer survivor, and whose friend and Chief Operating Officer Laura Lynner is a two-time breast cancer survivor. Mr. Keefer and his wife also participate in a number of Alzheimer’s Association and American Heart Association events.
And sometime in the future, Mr. Keefer says, he would love to start a pharmaceutical company — perhaps it will be a retirement project, he adds. F
Rick Keefer
As a teenager, Rick Keefer was featured in his local ­newspaper — the Charleston Daily Mail in Charleston, W.Va. — as a Good Samaritan for helping a lady who had fallen in the street and broken her leg.
Name: Rick Keefer
Current position: President and CEO, Publicis Touchpoint ­Solutions
Education: Certified Medical Representative, Certified Medical ­Representative Institute, 1982; B.S., Marketing/Accounting, West Virginia State College, 1974
Date and Place of birth: Sept. 14, 1952, South Charleston, W.Va.
First job: Mowing lawns and a morning paper route at age 12
First Industry-related Job: Sales rep for A. H. Robins Co.
Dream Job: Furniture designer
Professional Associations: Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association
Connected Via: LinkedIn
Words to live by: Actions speak louder than words
Creative. Relentless.
Culture shock, it would seem, can be a two-way street. When James Pusey, M.D., relocated to the United States from New Zealand 13 years ago, he was hit instantly by the culture shock that is a frequent phenomenon for immigrants.
While he is now a happy U.S. citizen, in September 2009 the staff of Omnicare Clinical Research experienced a culture shock of their own when Dr. Pusey joined the company as president and CEO. He immediately captured employees’ attention with his outgoing style, charismatic personality, and accent — that of a New Zealander who had worked extensively in Britain.
Some even spotted him breeze into the parking lot at corporate headquarters on his motorcycle in a leather jacket. But it didn’t take long for Dr. Pusey’s new colleagues to realize a brilliant leader had taken the helm. And in just a few short months, he has ignited a fire of whirlwind change in the organization.
Almost immediately, he initiated a shared services model between Omnicare Clinical Research and Clinimetrics Research Associates, also a wholly owned subsidiary of Omnicare Inc.
The synergies of the two CROs enhanced and strengthened resources across both organizations. Even better, he removed the issue of the businesses competing against one another for revenue. Taking the process one step further, Dr. Pusey recently orchestrated the formal integration of both companies into one CRO, which operates under the Omnicare Clinical Research brand name.
Additionally, Dr. Pusey quickly structured the organization into five distinct business units: Early Phase, Phase II/III, Late Phase, Medical Devices, and Pharmaceutics. Each business unit is led by an expert operational team focused on client satisfaction. And thanks to Dr. Pusey’s strategic guidance, Omnicare Clinical Research has a solid direction on the types of projects that are the right fit for profitable growth as well.
Early in his career, Dr. Pusey was VP and general manager of the Clinical Trials Center (CTC), a global CRO owned by SmithKline­Beecham. The business was successfully sold at the time of the merger with Glaxo. These achievements, at CTC and now Omnicare Clinical Research, are among his most rewarding so far, along with his leadership in helping to develop MDS Pharma’s capabilities in late-stage clinical trials. F
Dr. James Pusey free dives without an Aqua-Lung.
Dr. James Pusey
Name: James Pusey, M.D.
Current position: President and CEO, ­Omnicare Clinical Research
Education: M.D., Royal Free Hospital, London ­University; MBA, London Business School
Date and Place of Birth: December 2, Purley, United Kingdom
First Job: House physician
First Industry-related Job: International ­medical advisor to The Wellcome Foundation
Dream Job: Lawyer
Professional Associations: U.K. Registered Medical Practitioner, British Medical Association
Words to Live By: Life is not a dress rehearsal
Outgoing. Risk-Taker.
Bringing dreams to reality, Chairman,?President, and CEO Clifford Reid, Ph.D., and his diverse and talented team at Complete Genomics are shaking up the world of genomic sequencing and leading the effort to conduct human genome sequencing on a large scale for the first time.
Everything fell into place the day the company got the results back from sequencing its first human genome and Dr. Reid realized that they had done it.
This endeavor required more than great science; it also required skilled leadership to bring together a team of experts in hardware, software, bioinformatics, biochemistry, nanotechnology, and factory automation technology, all of whom have different priorities, timelines, technical languages, and approaches to their work.
That’s been the most challenging aspect of the job, Dr. Reid says, but also the most rewarding.
Dr. Reid is directing this diverse team to build the world’s highest-throughput commercial human genome sequencing center.
Complete Genomics is striving to reach  that goal: it sequenced 50 human genomes in 2009 (of the more than 100 genomes sequenced in the world), and it expects to  sequence 400 human genomes per month by December 2010.
Complete Genomics has more than 30 customers, which range from pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Lilly, to academic institutions and genome centers.
Dr. Reid made two smart but unexpected business decisions, which greatly contributed to the company’s success. He insisted that Complete Genomics focus solely on human genome sequencing, enabling its systems to be optimized for analyzing human data and to benefit from the economies inherent in a large-scale, high-throughput operation. He also came up with Complete Genomics’ unusual business model: the company offers genome sequencing, bioinformatics, and analytics as services instead of selling instruments and reagents to customers and expecting them to generate and analyze their own data.
His goal is to sequence 1 million genomes — 1,000 genomes in 1,000 diseases — that may lead to significant insights into human disease, and result in earlier detection, more accurate diagnoses, and, potentially, new cures.
A driven and visionary leader, Dr. Reid has founded three successful companies since 1988: the corporate search engine company Verity Inc., which was sold to Autonomy in 2006; the Internet video communications company Eloquent Inc., which was sold to Open Text in 2003; and now Complete Genomics, which he co-founded with Chief Scientific Officer Rade Drmanac, Ph.D., and Senior VP of Financial Operations John Curson. In each case, Dr. Reid could see the market niche immediately and was driven to make the company a success.
With the issues of carbon emissions and energy shortages prominent or looming, Dr. Reid believes the next great frontier of technology entrepreneurship that will change the planet is alternative energy.
And, as someone who grew up in Mobile, Ala., he is increasingly concerned about the environmental and societal impact that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will have on the coastal communities in that region. F
The King of Genes
At the age of 14, Dr. Clifford Reid won the state competition for best timpanist; he left music to pursue mathematics.
Through several successful
entrepreneurial endeavors, most
recently as Complete Genomics ­
Chairman, President, and CEO, Dr. ­Clifford Reid is ensuring his contributions are ­anything but redundant.
Name: Clifford Reid, Ph.D.
Current position: Chairman, President, and CEO, Complete Genomics Inc.
Education: Ph.D., Stanford University, 1994; MBA, Harvard Business School, 1983; B.S., ­Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979
Date and place of birth: Jan. 3, 1959, ­Philadelphia
First Job: Software engineer for Systems Control Inc., designing and building large-scale software systems for strategic defense applications
Dream Job: Entrepreneur in the next wave of innovation in life sciences: alternative energy
Professional mentor: Dr. Rade Drmanac, ­
co-founder, Complete Genomics
Professional associations: Advisory Board, Mountains of Hope Foundation; Advisory Board, Xconomy
Words to Live by: Never give up
Visionary. Driven.
A technology pioneer, Peter Gassner has spent the past 20 years designing products that help organizations become more nimble without ­compromising quality.
For the past three years as CEO of Veeva Systems, he has turned his expertise to the life-sciences industry where he has helped shape a new business model for IT and sales.
For decades, life-sciences companies were unofficially organized into silos that rarely talked to one another. Even within commercial operations, groups such as managed markets account executives, key opinion leader reps, and specialty sales kept to themselves, all the while missing out on opportunities to collaborate for increased growth, revenue, and success.
Mr. Gassner has helped to bring all of these groups together, including clinical, hospital sales, and more by pioneering a flexible multi-tenant SaaS CRM solution specifically for life-sciences organizations. He has made it possible, if not easy, to create efficient working relationships between all of the related teams in a commercial sales operation at a life-sciences organization regardless of size.
Mr. Gassner envisioned a SaaS solution that would help pharmaceutical companies of all types and of all sizes overcome the many obstacles in their path to success.
His vision excited investors and leaders from other technology and pharmaceutical companies. Together, they have created an agile, cost-efficient CRM solution that allows organizations to meet the increasingly complex demands of the life-sciences industry, now and into the future. Having an affordable, yet powerful CRM solution is all the more critical as the industry is starting to splinter into smaller specialty companies.
Mr. Gassner is deeply proud of his achievement in founding Veeva Systems and helping it to grow from an idea into one of the leaders in the pharmaceutical CRM market in just three years.
Underlying all of his technology success is Mr. Gassner’s ability to drive real change and encourage the adoption of a new technology by an industry notorious for its resistance to change. The big challenge lying ahead for pharmaceutical companies, he says, will be to maintain innovation levels in a rapidly changing global environment that is demanding reduced healthcare costs. F
Name: Peter Gassner
Current position: CEO, Veeva Systems
Education: B.S., Computer Science, Oregon State ­University
Date and place of birth: February 1965, Portland, Ore.
First job: Paperboy
First Industry-related job: Software developer, IBM
Professional mentors: Don Haderle, IBM fellow; Dave Dufffield, CEO, PeopleSoft; Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce.com
Connected via: LinkedIn
Words to live by: Always do the right thing
Pioneer. Visionary.
Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner’s vision for the future includes creating SaaS solutions that enable ­pharmaceutical companies of all types and of all sizes to overcome the many obstacles in their path to success.
Peter Gassner speaks Thai.
Likeable, charming, engaging, and a pleasure to be around, John Spitznagel has built an extraordinary reputation in the lean and scrappy world of ­specialty pharma.
Mr. Spitznagel has led one successful company after another thanks to his ability to build teams, his marketing and salesforce creativity, and a rare ability to achieve more with less. These skills have enabled him to find opportunities and rewards with products that would never be developed by big pharmaceutical companies.
Over the past few decades and at several different companies, Mr. Spitznagel and his teams have launched numerous products that benefit patient groups underserved by conventional pharma companies, all the while enjoying an environment of intense creativity and warm collegiality. The result is an office environment that is conducive to open ideas and approaches that are new and innovative. That is only possible because Mr. Spitznagel willingly gives employees the freedom to fail.
In every way a team player, Mr. Spitznagel frequently attributes the success of the companies he has led to the way his employees interact. At personal functions or parties held in honor of holidays or office party achievements, Mr. Spitznagel makes it the first order of business to thank each and every one of his employees and colleagues for all of their hard work and efforts, noting that without a team effort the celebration being enjoyed would not be possible.
Mr. Spitznagel’s personable, engaging nature is also apparent during presentations and public speaking events, where his great delivery and sense of humor, no matter what the topic or how long the speech, effortlessly holds the attention of his audience.
Mr. Spitznagel is a second-time PharmaVOICE 100 honoree, having previously been on the list in 2006. F
John Spitznagel
Armed with Charm and Serial Success
Name: John T. Spitznagel
Current position: Chairman and CEO, Oceana ­Therapeutics Inc.
Education: MBA, Fairleigh Dickinson; B.A., Rider ­University
Date and Place of Birth: Sept. 3, 1941, Auburn, N.Y.
First Job: Newspaper delivery
First Industry-related Job: Sales rep, Warner Chilcott Labs
Dream Job: Author
Professional Mentors: John Aherne, Bob ­Devanna, Irv Lerner, Ben Canavan, and Lee Hymel
Professional Associations: Board of Trustees, Rider ­University
Words to Live By: It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, only how often you get back up
Creative. Passionate.
Chairman and CEO of Oceana ­Therapeutics John Spitznagel’s ­marketing and salesforce creativity inspires and teaches others to achieve more with less.
John Spitznagel played ­semi-pro hockey in high school.
When Una Ryan, Ph.D., was 5 years old, she watched a film about a boy whose family had leprosy and it ignited in her a yearning to save lives.
But unlike many who forget those youthful dreams, that small voice of her childhood has remained with her throughout her life.
Dr. Ryan has had a hugely successful career as both a scientist and an executive. Among her many scientific highlights are localizing the enzymes responsible for the control of blood pressure to the vascular endothelium and culturing vascular endothelium.
On an executive level, Dr. Ryan has demonstrated exceptional leadership in directing several biotech companies, including Avant Immunotherapeutics, Waltham Technologies, and now Diagnostics for All.
Her accomplishments have been such that in 2002 she received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from the Queen.
Among the biggest challenges Dr. Ryan has experienced in her career are executing on mergers and acquisitions and dealing with people issues. Dr. Ryan recognized the value of M&A in the biotech sector before the trend was popular, helping the fledgling company TCell Sciences move from its focus on complement inhibitors to become a vaccines company, which was renamed Avant Therapeutics and ultimately merged with Celldex.
One of her greatest accomplishments is the role she has played in battling for the long-term success of the biotech industry — in particular, the influence she is able to bring to bear on the Massachusetts legislature.
For many years, Dr. Ryan was on the boards of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MBC). Among her achievements were impacting biodefense legislation by ensuring vaccines were included in BioShield One and Two, and helping to make Massachusetts a more friendly environment for biotech companies. She achieved this by helping to push the legislature to adopt an economic stimulus package long before it was fashionable, which provided grants and low-interest loans to biotech firms.
But it’s not surprising, given her commitment to saving lives, that the defining moment for her is the worldwide distribution of Rotarix, resulting in 2 million lives saved each year. Rotarix is GSK’s vaccination against rotavirus, which is the most common cause of severe diarrhea among infants and young children. While Dr. Ryan was at Avant, the company was involved with taking the cell line for what became Rotarix through Phase II trials.
Next on her list is to launch Diagnostics for All’s inexpensive liver function test in the developing world. This test is designed for people who have HIV or TB and who may have liver damage due to their drugs. The company then will move on to tests multiplexed to pinpoint specific disease from a group of likely causes that have led to a hard-to-diagnose problem. F
Maintaining the Dream
Name: Una Scully Ryan, Ph.D.
Current position: President and CEO, Diagnostics for All
Education: D.Sc., Bristol University, U.K., 2009; Ph.D., ­Cambridge University, U.K., 1968; B.S., Bristol University, U.K., 1963
Date and place of birth: December 1941, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
First Job: Investigator for a medical institute
First Industry-related Job: Director of health sciences, ­Monsanto
Dream Job: Author and illustrator of books
Professional mentors: Sir Bernard Katz and Professor
George Whitesides
Professional associations: MassBio; BIO
Connected Via: LinkedIn
Words to Live by: Never, never, give up
Creative. Energetic.
Dr. Una Ryan was born
in an air raid shelter.
Dr. Una Ryan, President and CEO of Diagnostics for All, inspires those around her as both a scientist and an executive, as well as for her commitment to ­influencing legislation.
Mike Soenen, CEO of ClearTrial, loves the thrill of jumping from one proverbial rock to another, as is required in running a young, fast-growing ­company.
Name: Mike Soenen
Current position: CEO, ClearTrial
Education: B.S., Electrical & Computer ­Engineering, University of Notre Dame
Date and place of birth: May 1967, Chicago
First Industry-related Job: Andersen ­Consulting
Dream Job: Architect
Professional Associations: DIA; Tufts ­Executive Roundtable; Illinois Technology Association; Irish Angels
Connected via: LinkedIn
Words to Live By: Bite off more than you can chew, and then chew like hell
Driven. Diverse.
Juggling multiple roles while jumping from rock to rock to surmount ­challenges, Mike Soenen brought his software company from marginal to magnificent in a very short period of time.
CEO Mr. Soenen has taken ClearTrial from a few employees, a product idea, and no customers to a company whose software today is relied on by seven of the top 10 biotech companies and many of the largest companies in the industry to plan, source, and track their clinical trials faster and more accurately.
When he co-founded the company in 2004, he had to manage multiple roles: CEO, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, head of sales, marketing, and engineering, and product management. He even found enough time to make his own coffee.
Founded on a mission of developing software that would help biopharmaceutical companies run clinical trials more efficiently, ClearTrial was well ahead of the curve in developing solutions to the pressures that are now shaping the industry.
The first time Mr. Soenen heard from a happy customer it was like a shot of adrenalin, but stories of successful outcomes from clients are still as meaningful because it means the company is helping its clients develop and produce treatments in a faster, more cost-efficient manner.
Balancing all he does with a healthy irreverence, Mr. Soenen thrives on the excitement of building and sustaining a fast-growing company. He learned a lot from his first start-up, where he says he was fortunate to be rewarded with a very successful exit.
It became clear to Mr. Soenen where his passions lay after spending a few years at a Fortune 500 company, where the most challenging aspect was adjusting to a slower culture that resisted taking a risk. He likes being able to quickly put into motion adjustments or ideas that can solve a challenge.
His experience is probably best summarized by a quote from Dan Bricklin, the inventor of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet application, who said, “In big business, when you need to cross a river, you simply design a bridge, build it, and march right across. But in a small venture, you must climb on the rocks. You don’t know exactly where each step will take you, but you do know the general direction you’re moving in. If you make a mistake, you get wet. If your calculations are wrong, you have to inch your way back to safety and find a different route. And, as you jump from rock to slippery rock, you have to like the feeling."
It didn’t take long for Mr. Soenen to realize he enjoys jumping from rock to rock. F
Leaping In
Mike Soenen once ran with the bulls in Pamplona, which he would like to chalk up to youthful ­immortality, except he’d do it again.
Leadership and learning go hand in hand for Ahnal Purohit, Ph.D.
Having spent years as a professor teaching research methodology and statistics, she clearly understands the impact of leadership that harnesses knowledge. Whatever therapeutic category or area of healthcare her team is working in, Dr. Purohit is never satisfied with less than a comprehensive understanding so she can offer insight and recommendations to clients, developed through vast experience and diligent inquisitiveness.
And for Dr. Purohit, learning is a two-way street; she always shares the knowledge she has gained.
Through mentoring and an open-door policy, she provides an environment that allows people around her to grow. Her actions have placed her on the PharmaVOICE 100 list for the second consecutive year.
Her genuine concern for people makes her the type of manager employees throughout the organization aspire to be.
Dr. Purohit’s innovative spirit permeates the agency, and her ability to see what lies ahead and put a plan into place comes quite naturally. The company that started with two individuals sharing a single desk in a borrowed office space was just the beginning for what is now one of the largest independently owned agencies in the United States.
More recently, one of those insightful decisions was rebranding the agency, a defining moment for both Dr. Purohit and the organization. It’s an achievement she is particularly proud of because of all of the uncertainties in the industry. The agency’s reputation for quality work has helped evolve and solidify its identity in the marketplace. Under Dr. Purohit’s leadership, the agency has won new accounts, maintained organic growth, and achieved industry acclaim with some of the most award-winning years since the agency’s establishment about 25 years ago.
Clients are practically mesmerized by her insights and ability to develop and mold these into sound strategy.
Using qualitative and quantitative techniques, from preproduct development or late-stage development, launch planning to postlaunch marketing, she helps enhance clients’ certainty in brand planning and strategy.
Most critically, she instinctively knows what it takes to get and keep good clients. As a result, the company has a roster of clients that have become long-term advocates for the company, returning time and again with new brands. Yet Dr. Purohit remains modest. In fact, she attributes the success of Purohit Navigation to the team of professionals within the company.
Dr. Purohit is always looking ahead, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the expansion of the company’s offerings, for example with emerging technology. In a year filled with uncertainties in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Purohit is forging new ground in technology and investing in the future. The spark of her innovative, entrepreneurial spirit continues to flourish as Purohit Navigation extends its services to offer a full gamut of interactive services, including digital and online communication capabilities. Whether clients are looking for more common traffic drivers such as banner campaigns, media buys, and e-mail blasts, or for emerging communications including digital conversations, e-details, and mobile outreach, Dr. Purohit has made sure the interactive group is ready and able to assist.
Steve Jobs noted that innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower, and that quality resides in abundance in Dr. Purohit. F
A True Renaissance Woman
Dr. Ahnal Purohit has a degree in Bharat Natyam, classical Indian dancing.
Name: Ahnal Purohit, Ph.D.
Current position: Founder, President/CEO, Purohit Navigation
Education: Ph.D.; Research Methodology, University of Delaware, 1975; M.A., Behavioral Sciences, University of Delaware, 1972; B.A., Industrial Sociology, ­University of Baroda in Gujarat, India, 1967
Date and place of birth: Dec. 25, Baroda in Gujarat, India
First Job: Encyclopedia salesperson
First Industry-related Job: Professor at The University of Illinois Medical ­Center
Dream Job: An artist, painter, or dancer
Mentors: Mother, husband, daughter, Dr. Barker Bausell, Dr. Richard ­Hutchinson, and Ed Donahoe
Professional Associations: Asian Women in Business, American Medical ­Marketing Association, Healthcare Marketing and Communications Council Inc.
Connected Via: LinkedIn
Words to Live by: Do the right thing
Dedicated. Hardworking.
The long list of accomplishments Dr. Ahnal Purohit, Founder, CEO, and President of Purohit Navigation, has to her credit is nothing short of inspirational.
Name: Joe Pieroni
Current position: President and CEO, Daiichi Sankyo
Education: M.A., Fordham University; MBA, Rutgers University
Date and place of birth: Feb. 11, 1947, Jersey City, N.J.
First Industry-related Job: Research chemist, Sandoz
Professional mentors: Senior ­managers at Merck
Professional associations: ­Healthcare Institute of New Jersey; ­Pharmaceutical Research and ­Manufacturers of America
Prepared. Tenacious.
Joe Pieroni, President and CEO of Daiichi Sankyo, has created a unique culture in the company that encourages his employees to come to work every day to contribute to ­keeping that culture alive and give 100% of their talent to secure the success of the organization.
Joe Pieroni’s first job took him to Pakistan, Hong Kong, ­Taiwan, and Australia.
Combining a background in science, extensive knowledge on the business side, years of expertise at the C-level, and a natural rapport with people, Joe Pieroni is the type of leader who not only gets things done but gets things done with the enthusiasm and support of his staff.
Mr. Pieroni operates with an open-door policy where even entry-level colleagues can access him to share their thoughts on the company and their jobs.
Charismatic and motivational, Mr. Pieroni has created a unique culture in the company that encourages his employees to come to work every day to contribute to keeping that culture alive and give 100% of their talent to secure the success of the organization.
A people person, Mr. Pieroni values face-to-face communications and strives for simplicity versus bureaucracy and quality versus quantity. He sees the good in people and, regardless of the outcome, he will recognize the true efforts of his people and inspire them to do better, at a faster pace.
Mr. Pieroni is also very accomplished at understanding cultural nuances, not only with regard to how people operate, but also with regard to what classes of products are likely to be more successful in one market than another.
Mr. Pieroni gained these insights over the course of his career, thanks to the diverse global experience he has enjoyed, spending 25 years on the international side, starting with the Far East, then Latin America and Europe.
His vast experience in working within other cultures and being responsible for many global product launches has given him insights that have been invaluable to Daiichi Sankyo.
An internationalist by nature, Mr. Pieroni says what truly worries him most is the downturn in the global economy and continued conflict in the Middle East.
Since taking the helm of the combined Daiichi Sankyo entity in 2005, Mr. Pieroni has been instrumental in helping not only the company grow, but helping his employees grow as well.
Mr. Pieroni ensures he continues to evolve as a leader by working with his management team and through involvement in industry associations such as PhRMA and the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey (HINJ). F
Name: Robert McNally, Ph.D.
Current position: President and CEO, GeoVax
Education: Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1978; MSE, University of Pennsylvania, 1974; B.E.E., Villanova University, 1970
Date and place of birth: March 1948, Fort Campbell, Ky.
First Job: Engineer
First Industry-related Job: Cardiac pacing division, Atlanta ­Richfield Co.
Professional mentor: Dr. Hixson, University of Pennsylvania
Professional associations: Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers; Member, Advisory Board of Kennesaw State University; Chair, Georgia Tech Petit Institute for Bioengineering and ­Biosciences; Member, Georgia Tech Dupree College of Management; Member and Former Chair, Georgia Biomedical Partnership; Board of Directors, GeoVax Labs
Words to Live by: Be fair, honest, and ethical
Making Inroads
Since taking the helm at GeoVax, Robert McNally, Ph.D., has had to overcome a mountain of challenges as he chips away to fill an unmet need in medicine today: an HIV/AIDS vaccine.
Thanks to Dr. McNally’s hard work and persistence, GeoVax Labs, which creates, develops, and tests innovative HIV/AIDS vaccines, is starting to make real progress.
A motivating leader, Dr. McNally’s willingness to be actively involved as a hands-on leader has spurred his team to achieve important milestones for the company.
It’s been a long road, and Dr. McNally says the very long lead time for vaccine commercialization has been a significant challenge, not least because of a lack of willingness to support Clade B vaccine development; Clade B is the prominent HIV subtype in North America.
Recently the FDA gave the company the go-ahead to begin a Phase I clinical trial for a therapeutic vaccine, which is being developed for individuals infected with HIV. The company will begin a nonblinded study in HIV-infected individuals who started treatment during their first year of infection.
GeoVax’s vaccines, initially developed by Dr. Harriet Robinson at Emory University in collaboration with researchers at the NIH, NIAID, and the CDC, incorporate two vaccine delivery components: a recombinant DNA and a recombinant poxvirus, known as modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), both of which deliver genes that encode inactivated HIV-1 derived proteins to the immune system.
Finding a therapeutic vaccine would provide significant new hope and help to people with HIV/AIDS. The current treatments, including anti-retrovirals, are really a form of chemotherapy, which keep people alive longer, but ultimately only succeed in prolonging life. Their only real hope for living a long life with the disease, or beating it, is to find new therapeutic treatments, Dr. McNally says.
Time is of the essence, says Dr. McNally, as there are 33.4 million people who are currently living with HIV/AIDS. F
Dr. Robert McNally’s willingness to be actively involved as a hands-on leader as President and CEO of GeoVax stimulates others to follow.
Dr. Robert McNally attended grade school in a one-room schoolhouse in a small country village in France and had to be tutored in English upon his return to the United States.
Five separate times, Michael Weintraub has been an integral part of a ­successful start-up, and each ­experience has been quite different from the previous one.
Without a doubt, he considers the most challenging, yet significant, of these start-ups to be the founding, launching, and building of Humedica. The idea behind Humedica is to revolutionize the way healthcare is delivered in the United States by putting vital patient-level data into the hands of physicians as well as life-sciences companies.
The company’s clinical informatics platform assembles, standardizes, and analyzes clinical, operational, and financial data across varied treatment settings and time periods to generate a truly longitudinal, comprehensive view of patient care.
These offerings address the specific needs of inpatient and outpatient healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, and medical-device manufacturers.
Mr. Weintraub says healthcare organizations can no longer resign themselves to the fact that they are decades behind other industries with respect to overall efficiency and effectiveness. The challenge lies in moving the industry as a whole up the technology innovation curve.
Passionate and competitive, Mr. Weintraub goes by the philosophy that you have to love what you do, and that while you’re at it you might as well play to win. That philosophy has helped Humedica to win accolades from clients for its ability to address real needs in the industry.
Making a difference in healthcare is important to Mr. Weintraub on many levels and for many reasons. At the age of 19, he spent 17 days in the ICU at Mass General Hospital. The quality of care he received motivated him to enter the industry to ensure such care was available to the general population.
Outside his professional pursuits, Mr. Weintraub is involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) in support of his eldest son, Greg, who has Type 1 diabetes. Family is central to Mr. Weintraub. In addition to Greg, 17, Mr. Weintraub and his wife, Leslie, have 11-year-old triplets, Connor, Lauren, and Ryan. F
Name: Michael Weintraub
Current position: President, CEO, and Co-Founder, Humedica
Education: MBA, Harvard Business School; B.A., Economics, Brandeis University
Date and place of birth: March 1959, Israel
First Job: Working in the jewelry district in New York
First industry job: Associate at healthcare IT start-up, Amherst Associates
Dream Job: Teaching
Professional mentors: Father and kids
Words to live by: Work to live — don’t live to work
Passionate. Competitive.
English is Michael Weintraub’s third
language after Hebrew and Hungarian.
President, CEO, and Co-Founder Michael Weintraub’s next goal is to ensure widespread adoption of Humedica’s next-generation clinical informatics solutions throughout the healthcare industry.
In his 21 years in the pharmaceutical sales and marketing fields, Al Reicheg has developed a reputation as an ­innovative leader in establishing, ­repositioning, and growing brands for specialty pharmaceutical companies.
He has an uncanny ability to look at old issues and see new solutions for them. That’s been apparent time and again in his role as chief commercial officer at Qforma. His brainchild at the company, or at least one of them, is the concept of using Qforma’s iQMap solution, which identifies the most influential physicians in every market by therapeutic area, to make promotional medical-education speaker programs more product by ensuring that local action leaders, who impact the behavior of colleagues, are in the audience at these events.
He is always on top of challenges facing the pharma industry and seeks ways to address these. Equally, though, he recognizes that those challenges can sometimes be the industry’s own making, and he is excited by the opportunity to change current thinking.
Leading a scientific team made up predominantly of physicists who have worked in areas outside of pharmaceuticals, Mr. Reicheg says the team brings tremendous amounts of brainpower and creativity to the creation of Qforma’s solutions, and they have no preconceived notions of how things have been done in the past. He finds it humorous when clients demand new and innovative solutions, yet want case studies to back them up; he has to remind them they can have innovation or case studies, but they can’t have both.
With Mr. Reicheg, at the helm, the company has built a strong reputation and his goal is to make Qforma a household name, though he suspects the company’s selection as USA Today’s healthcare analytics partner has put it on the map.
Colleagues describe Mr. Reicheg as a creative, outside-the-box thinker, who blends business acumen and knowledge with unparalleled professionalism and ethics.
Whether participating in a healthcare conference or in a client meeting, he’s always trying to come up with creative new ways to help organizations accomplish objectives and move forward. He is hands on and always willing to get involved in every step of the sales process.
Throughout his career, he has enjoyed success in all areas of brand management and product development. At Qforma, he has made important contributions to the science of data analysis and predictive modeling in the pharmaceutical industry.
His constant positive spirit is infectious and has a huge influence on the team he leads. With energy and enthusiasm, he inspires his staff to strive for new ideas and solutions to better serve the company’s customers. And he always puts his team first. F
Name: Alan G. Reicheg
Current position: Chief Commercial Officer, Qforma Inc.
Education: B.A., Economics, Rutgers University
Date and place of birth: April 1967, Paramus, N.J.
First Job: Paint store stock boy
First Industry-related Job: Medical sales rep, Carter Wallace
Dream Job: Photographer
Professional associations: Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP)
Connected Via: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Words to Live by: Never give up
Optimistic. Tenacious.
Al Reicheg, Chief Commercial Officer of ­Qforma, is all about opportunity and action; he is a rainmaker, he makes things happen.
Al Reicheg loves coaching and watching kids ­surprise themselves with what they can ­accomplish with hard work and ­practice.
“Healthcare" means one thing for Dave Ormesher: changing people’s lives by giving them access to the tools, ­information, and inspiration they need to live healthier, more productive, and longer lives.
His passion for the healthcare industry is second to none, and he is well-respected within the pharmaceutical industry as both a thought leader and an innovator who helps develop marketing strategy, communications, and interactive solutions that influence the way healthcare is bought and sold.
As an entrepreneur, Mr. Ormesher saw an opportunity to build a new type of marketing firm. He recruits professionals who carry forward his vision of developing innovative programs that connect professionals and consumers with the health information they need to make better and smarter healthcare choices.
The greatest professional reward for Mr. Ormesher, CEO of closerlook, has been growing an agency that is tightly focused on strategic marketing for healthcare in this period of major industry transformation.
But Mr. Ormesher is far more than a strong leader; he is also an inspiring philanthropist who is deeply concerned about the long-term effects of poverty in developing countries. Mr. Ormesher believes that health, education, adequate housing, good governance, strong communities, and social stability are all benefits of an expanding middle class, and his answer in emerging economies is to inspire and strengthen the entrepreneurial sector.
In 2007, Mr. Ormesher co-founded Global Relief and Development Partners (GRDP) to build mentoring relationships between successful U.S. entrepreneurs and promising entrepreneurs in developing countries. The goal is to enable strong entrepreneurial leaders to emerge and help build a self-sustaining middle class. He travels quarterly to Rwanda to coach 50 Rwandan entrepreneurs through a strategic planning workshop he named Bigger Future. On his last trip, Mr. Ormesher took with him two other entrepreneurs who led modules on leadership and finance/operations, and two women who worked on plans to renovate a 150-child orphanage for genocide and AIDS orphans. GRDP’s hands-on, practical focus on transferring knowledge and entrepreneurial experience is having a tremendous economic impact and is transforming the lives of those taking part on both sides of the program.
Mr. Ormesher also has been instrumental in building i.c.stars, a nonprofit organization that gives young urban adults professional opportunities in business and technology. Through his work with i.c.stars, where he is chairman of the board, Mr. Ormesher helps create opportunities across educational and economic boundaries for the next generation of leaders.
Ten years ago, he embraced the vision of i.c.stars’ business, leadership, and technology training "boot camp," gave the organization its current home, built out its training space, provided infrastructure support, encouraged his employees to volunteer as coaches for i.c.stars’ participants, served as a mentor to the organization’s management team, and is now helping to guide the board of directors in the creation of a vision and plan for national expansion.
Beyond his charitable work with GRDP and i.c.stars, Mr. Ormesher is a strong supporter of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, serving as president of the guild board of directors. As a fan of theater, and in particular, opera, he is eager to support the Lyric through fundraising and as an ambassador for this rich art form.
Over the years, his commitment to having a positive impact on the world and his constant willingness to make opportunities for others has set a wonderful example. Mr. Ormesher represents the best of the nation’s entrepreneurs, providing exceptional service to his clients, outstanding leadership for his employees, and an inspiring example of innovative philanthropy for the world. F
David Ormesher, CEO of closerlook, is a true leader who inspires others to think outside the box and to ­contribute to social change on both the local and ­global level.
Name: David Ormesher
Current position: CEO, closerlook inc.
Education: M.A., Ethics and Society, GETS, 1985;
B.A., Wheaton College, 1980
Date and Place of Birth: June 1958, Burlingame, Calif.
First Job: Newspaper delivery
First Industry-related Job: TV and Radio Producer, Writer, and Director
Dream Job: Jungle pilot
Professional Mentors: Dan Sullivan, The Strategic Coach program
Connected Via: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and blog
Words to Live By: You have to touch the heart to move the mind
Dave Ormesher seems to attract undue attention from the ­authorities: he’s been strip-searched entering Turkey from Greece, stopped for speeding in Jordan, and ­interrogated by undercover police in Rome.
Optimistic. Curious.
A Close Look at Integrity
A globally recognized cardiologist, Joel Morganroth, M.D., has been ­bringing his innovative ideas to ­eResearchTechnology Inc. (ERT) for more than 30 years.
Starting in the late 1970s, he has been instrumental in shaping the direction of ERT when the company, known then as Cardio Data Systems, was providing centralized cardiac services to healthcare. In fact, the company was the first core lab engaged in cardiac safety for clinical research to centralize the analysis of data obtained from cardiac diagnostic testing.
Later, in the 1980s, Dr. Morganroth’s centralization of cardiac safety lab concepts were expanded into worldwide Holter Rhythm and ECG trials, which led ERT to a global market-leading position.
In the 1980s, Dr. Morganroth also developed a concept for computer-assisted new drug applications (NDA), which was implemented by one of ERT’s predecessor companies, Research Data Corp. This resulted in the creation of the first electronic NDA submission to the FDA and one of the fastest FDA approvals of an NDA — 18 days. His electronic NDA concept was the start of EDC as the industry knows it today.
Dr. Morganroth also was the company’s principal investigator in the landmark NIH-funded Beta Blocker Heart Attack Trial.
Under Dr. Morganroth’s leadership, ERT has become a forward-looking and action-driven company committed to redefining how clinical trials are conducted and determining the safety of new products.
Passionate about doing things right, Dr. Morganroth focuses on delivering expert results, being collaborative, and having a reputation as a proven and responsive performer.
His organization provides clients with the confidence and trust in knowing that ERT’s solutions empower them to make quick and accurate product development decisions.
Dr. Morganroth is always looking to broaden the company’s offerings and capabilities. Recently ERT announced its expansion into the centralization of efficacy and safety results using spirometry in respiratory studies through its the merger with the research services division of CareFusion.
The combined expertise allows ERT to provide devices that help sites comply with protocol requirements, thereby improving the quality of research safety and efficacy data and providing even cleaner data faster for decision-making.
Overall, Dr. Morganroth has been instrumental in assembling a unique blend of people, processes, and technologies as well as leading ERT to its position as one of the research industry’s largest cardiac safety services companies.
Over the years, Dr. Morganroth has contributed greatly to the advancement of ERT employees, as well as individuals and scientists in a number of different roles, from faculty, government, and consultant positions.
Outside of his many contributions to ERT, Dr. Morganroth, an acclaimed academic cardiologist, also provides his expertise to up-and-coming doctors and researchers. Dr. Morganroth was a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and he is an adjunct professor of medicine, pharmacology, at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University.
Dr. Morganroth has served as a member or in an advisory position in virtually every cardiology-related professional and scientific society. For his vision, leadership, and expertise he was listed in Who’s Who in Frontiers of Science and Technology. Furthermore, Dr. Morganroth holds the U.S. Government Patent on ERT’s Expert Technology Platform, which is the operational core of ERT’s business. F
Dr. Joel Morganroth, Chief Scientific Officer and ­Chairman of eResearchTechnology Inc. (ERT), has been affiliated with ERT and its predecessor companies since 1977.
Heart of the Matter
Name: Joel Morganroth, M.D.
Current position: Chairman and Chief Scientist, eResearchTechnology Inc.
Education: M.D., Cum Laude, Valedictorian, ­University of Michigan School of Medicine, 1970; B.S., with high distinction, by Joint Program in ­Liberal Arts and Medicine, University of Michigan, 1966
Postgraduate training: Intern (Medicine), Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, 1970-71; Junior Assistant Resident in Medicine, 1971-72; Clinical Associate, National Heart and Lung Institute Bethesda, ­1972-74, Cardiology branch, 1973-74; Fellow in ­Cardiology, Hospital of the University of ­Pennsylvania, 1974-75
Passionate. Results-Driven.
With a blockbuster launch and a history of successful deal-making to his name, one might expect Tim Walbert to be recognized for his ­business prowess.
In fact, what most stands out about Mr. Walbert, chairman, president, and CEO of Horizon Pharma, is his connection to the real reason for the existence of the pharma industry: helping to bring treatments to patients that will improve their lives.
Through hard work and determination, Mr. Walbert rescued a treatment for a rare childhood cancer from almost certain failure while at the oncology biotech company IDM Pharma. It was the most challenging assignment in Mr. Walbert’s career. After a negative outcome from the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) in May 2007, Mr. Walbert and his team spent almost two years redoing the regulatory application for Mepact, for the treatment of osteosarcoma, and navigating a complicated European regulatory process. The culmination was the European approval of Mepact in March 2009, and the eventual sale of IDM Pharma to Millennium: the Takeda Oncology Company.
During this time, Mr. Walbert was heavily involved in every aspect of the business, including meeting with patients and advocates and working with researchers who had devoted their entire lives to finding a treatment for this disease. This was all the motivation he needed.
Mr. Walbert says when he took the president and CEO job at IDM Pharma in May 2007, he didn’t know what was going to happen with Mepact.
He did know that if young children with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, were ever going to have the opportunity to benefit from this treatment, the drug needed a champion. While it was an extremely challenging and taxing time, the outcome for children, their families, and the company was well worth the effort, he says.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Walbert counts the European approval of Mepact in 2009 as one of the highlights of his career. The other was his work with Abbott’s Humira. Moreover, his leadership in the global launch of Humira, Abbott’s blockbuster treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and several other autoimmune diseases, was a career breakthrough.
Mr. Walbert built the immunology division and led the launch of a truly groundbreaking treatment, which today enjoys global sales of more than $5 billion.
While Mr. Walbert had worked on blockbuster brands in the past, Humira provided him with his first opportunity to build a great team from the ground up and lead the global organization to an incredibly successful launch.
The experience with Humira, as well as personal experience with the debilitating consequences of rheumatoid arthritis, has prompted a long commitment to finding cures for the disease. Mr. Walbert is dedicated to raising money for the Arthritis Foundation to help drive research advancements.
And having worked on products that have the potential to transform lives, Mr. Walbert says he is deeply inspired by the strength, determination, and positive attitude of patients — those with rheumatoid arthritis or osteosarcoma — which inspires him to work harder and faster to help find potential treatments or advances for their diseases. It truly is a humbling experience, he says.
Today, Mr. Walbert leads Horizon Pharma, an emerging biotechnology company that is developing drugs to treat pain and inflammation.
The opportunities afforded by small pharmaceutical and biotech companies enthralls Mr. Walbert, who says were he not directly in the business he would be inclined to be a healthcare investment banker or venture capitalist, which would allow him to apply his broad experience base.
What worries him most is the overall macroeconomic instability of the global financial market and its impact on biotech’s ability to fund and develop innovative therapies. F
Tenacity Wins the Day
The strength, determination, and positivity that Tim Walbert, Chairman, President and CEO, Horizon ­Pharma, sees in patients inspires him to work harder and faster to help find potential treatments or advances for their diseases.
Tim Walbert built a great team from the ground up to lead the global launch of Humira.
Name: Timothy P. Walbert
Current position: Chairman, President, and CEO, Horizon Pharma
Education: B.A., Muhlenberg College, 1989
Date and place of birth: March 1967, Bethlehem, Pa.
First Industry-related Job: Sales representative, Wyeth
Dream Job: Healthcare investment banking or venture capital
Professional mentors: Dr. Jeff Leiden, Clarus Ventures; Barry Moze, Crystal Clear Consulting; Michael MacLeod, Torre Lazur McCann
Professional associations: Arthritis Foundation, Super Jake Foundation, iBio, BIO, PhRMA
Connected Via: LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, and Twitter
Words to Live by: Hope is not a strategy
Passionate. Dedicated.
The goal for Deborah Dunsire, M.D., is to improve the lives of cancer patients — this is at the forefront of everything she does. And as CEO of Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company she is in the right place at the right time to make this mission a reality.
Her distinctive leadership style has had a tremendous impact on Millennium and all of its employees. She brings great energy and passion to her role, which inspires those around her to stretch themselves to reach beyond what they thought was possible.
She leads by example, as she herself was part of a team that achieved a goal that had previously been beyond the reach of the most gifted researchers and clinicians.
Dr. Dunsire had the rare opportunity to be part of a medical first. She helped to launch and deliver a first “cure" for certain types of cancer. She had the privilege, as she says, to be part of the team at Novartis that launched Gleevec, a product that has transformed chronic myelogenous leukemia into a treatable and possibly curable disease.
She had the equally rare opportunity to capture lightning in a bottle a second time. At Millennium she was able to duplicate her success with the launch of Velcade, the first new therapy in more than four decades to actually extend the survival for myeloma patients, a claim approved by the FDA and EMA.
Dr. Dunsire is infinitely inspired by people suffering from cancer who need better medicines; she says they are the reason she comes to work every day. Recognizing the havoc the disease wreaks on the individual, family, and community — everyone is affected in one way or another by cancer — she is stalwart in her dedication to improving the lives of patients.
She is also inspired by working alongside great people, and being part of a team that changes the world — even just their part of it — is energizing and exciting.
Dr. Dunsire would like to complete the trifecta of medical accomplishments by having a Millennium molecule specifically designed at the bench during discovery for a particular targeted group of patients make it to market. She says Millennium is on its way to making this happen, and success would mean real progress to make personalized medicine a reality.
With a career already filled with so many accomplishments, one would think assuming the role of CEO would be a natural transition, but Dr. Dunsire says it was not only one of the biggest professional undertakings of her life but one of the most daunting.
But in typical Dunsire fashion, she faced the challenge head-on. Almost immediately, she built a strong commercial organization and made some other significant internal changes in order for the company to become more efficient, productive, and sustainable.
She had significant industry and leadership experience, but had never been the CEO of a publicly traded company — a new, exciting, and humbling experience. Dr. Dunsire had a limited amount of contact with Wall Street and the investor community and she was following a founding CEO, who was inspirational and loved by all. Fortunately, she says she found herself surrounded by talented and passionate people.
With a strong team in place, together she says they have been able to succeed through constant change. Today, Millennium is part of the Takeda family, focused on oncology, with one blockbuster drug on the market and 16 promising compounds in its pipeline.
Dr. Dunsire’s passion for helping others is also evident in the vast array of causes that she supports.
She is involved with a church mission in India that takes care of destitute women who are widowed at a young age and left penniless.
Another cause that is close to Dr. Dunsire’s heart is the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF). She has worked in the field of MM for almost 15 years throughout her career in pharma and biotech, and she has witnessed how therapies have evolved to improve survival. Dr. Dunsire has been inspired by Kathy Giusti, the founder of MMRF and a myeloma survivor, since they met over a decade ago.
Working in the field of cancer, she has seen the quality of support CancerCare Inc. provides cancer patients of all walks of life — professionally and with care — guiding them through this challenging time of their lives.
Based on her vast accomplishments, strong leadership, willingness to mentor up-and-coming women leaders, and a passion for giving back, it’s no wonder that the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association named Dr. Dunsire its 2009 Woman of the Year. F
Making a Real Difference
Dr. Deborah Dunsire’s distinctive leadership style in her role as CEO has had a tremendous impact on Millennium: The­ ­Takeda Oncology Company and all of its employees.
Dr. Deborah Dunsire was on her college crew team, which is also how she met her husband.
Name: Deborah Dunsire, M.D.
Current position: CEO, Millennium: The Takeda ­Oncology ­Company
Education: M.D., University of the Witwatersrand, ­Johannesburg, South Africa
Date and place of birth: June 4, 1962, Harare, ­Zimbabwe
First Job: Private and hospital practice, Johannesburg, South Africa
First Industry-related Job: Medical expert, clinical research (oncology/hematology, endocrinology, ­neurology, dermatology), Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, Johannesburg, South Africa
Dream job: Professional musician
Professional Mentors: Roger Trythall, Thomas ­Ebeling
Professional Associations: Board of Directors, ­Allergan ­Pharmaceuticals; Board of Trustees, Boston Museum of ­Science; Board of Directors, G&P ­Foundation, a nonprofit foundation for patients with blood cancers; Board of ­Directors, CancerCare; Boston Biotech CEO Roundtable; Board of Directors, ­Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO); Healthcare Businesswomen’s ­Association; ­Massachusetts Women’s Forum
Connected Via: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Words to Live By: We are what we repeatedly do — ­excellence then, is not so much an act, as a habit — ­Aristotle
Curious. Optimistic.
With an impressive resume, ­encompassing a fast-track career, ­Lynnette Cooke finds herself at the top of the research pyramid as Global CEO of Kantar Health, which was formed by uniting five unique entities — Consumer Health Sciences, MattsonJack, TNS Healthcare, Ziment, and All Global.

The task of integrating the myriad expertise that each company possesses to put Kantar Health in a stronger position when partnering with its clients is one of her greatest, yet most satisfying, challenges to date.
Ms. Cooke, noted for her energy and passion, will have to draw upon both to navigate the radical changes — ranging from how to communicate with stakeholders to the increased difficulty of launching new drugs — the industry is undergoing.
She says social media and social networking are creating a new dimension when it comes to communicating to and with stakeholders, and while it’s not fully understood yet how these game changers will impact consumer confidence, there is a need for the industry to become more consumer-centric.
Ms. Cooke says other trends impacting all companies, as well as providing opportunities, are the reduced pipelines, which have resulted in a patent cliff, and the greater reliance on niche-busters.
Furthermore, she says increasing demands for risk assessment and outcomes will present greater barriers to market access.
Ms. Cooke is credited for daring to think differently about healthcare market research, and she truly embraces the global nature of the industry.
Throughout her career, Ms. Cooke has held senior positions in research and product management. In addition to pharmaceutical and medical/surgical marketing research, her background spans a broad range of industries, including consumer packaged goods, financial services, and child and family products.
Today, she provides life-cycle planning and marketing consultation to healthcare clients on issues ranging from early-stage opportunity assessments to portfolio and communication strategy plans. Her colleagues and reports say she is a quiet supporter of excellence, not just in her organization but across the industry. She is on the board of directors for CASRO, known as the “Voice and Values" of the survey research industry. As co-chair of CASRO Education and an advocate for professional development, Ms. Cooke plays an active role in training and mentoring programs.
On the flip side, Ms. Cooke says she is fortunate because she gets to represent such a great group of people, and that it is she who is inspired by her colleagues throughout the industry.
Away from the office, Ms. Cooke devotes time, energy, and resources to two causes to which she has a personal connection: Angel’s Place and the Center for Women’s Reproductive Care (CWRC) at Columbia University.
Angel’s Place provides people-centered services, including homes and professional support, for adults with developmental disabilities. Her sister lives in an Angel’s Place home, so it’s close to her heart.
Ms. Cooke is a former patient of CWRC,   and it’s because of them that she and her husband have their son. She is currently chairing the upcoming Kiddie Karnival for all of the alumni families. Ms. Cooke says this is a great way for her to give back for all CWRC has done for her and her family. F
Name: Lynnette Cooke
Current position: Global CEO, Kantar Health
Education: BBA, Finance, Saginaw Valley State ­University
Date and place of birth: November 1963, ­Michigan
First Job: Retail sales clerk
First Industry-related Job: Researcher in data collection, The Creative Group
Dream job: Teach or speak at schools to ­educate the kids about how to work with/accept/
understand people with disabilities
Professional Mentors: Dennis Howard and Howard Ziment
Professional Associations: Board of directors, CASRO; PMRG; PBIRG; Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association
Connected Via: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
Words to Live By: Work hard, play hard
Energetic. Fortunate.
The Great Unifier
Lynnette Cooke enjoys archery, and
she has a custom re-curve bow.
Lynnette Cooke, ­Global CEO of Kantar Health, has been ­identified as one of the most ­important people in the industry today because of who she is, and who she will be tomorrow.
With visionary leadership, CEO Glenn Bilawsky helped differentiate i3 by focusing on therapeutic specialization and leveraging its healthcare database for clinical trials, comparative ­effectiveness, and drug safety.
Glenn Bilawsky believes there are three things in life you can never have too much of:  love, time, and horsepower; he continually strives to maximize all three.
True leaders are great communicators — they not only set the direction but tell their employees how they’ll get there. This describes Glenn Bilawsky, CEO of i3, to a t. While dealing with the ­
day-to-day, Mr. Bilawsky recognizes that it’s critical not to waiver from the strategy.
It’s an approach that has reaped results for i3 since Mr. Bilawsky joined the organization almost eight years ago and is what has helped him thrive in his role as CEO.
With visionary leadership, Mr. Bilawsky is differentiating i3 by leveraging its healthcare database for clinical trials, comparative effectiveness, and drug safety. His leadership led to the introduction of i3Cube, the first fully integrated, end-to-end clinical trial and data management software that is helping the entire clinical trial process work more efficiently.
He enabled the scientists, clinicians, and business leaders in the company to develop their ideas and concepts around the use of data and build capabilities and technology to mine the information, and then created a division within the company, i3 Pharma Informatics, to provide customers with access to the information.
Under his guidance, i3 has expanded its presence to more than 50 offices in more than 30 countries. He has astutely managed accelerated demand for outsourcing and a turbulent economic downturn that had major repercussions in pricing and sponsor demand.  He saw that the sponsors’ world changed and he charted a course for i3 to be able to continue to effectively serve customers, in spite of the new environmental pressures.
Recognizing there was growing concern among worldwide payers relative to the cost of healthcare and how to truly assess cost versus comparative effectiveness, Mr. Bilawsky led the decision to build a global scientific capability at i3 Innovus to help inform decisions around product cost-effectiveness and develop commercialization strategies to help sponsors get their products reimbursed.
At every step, Mr. Bilawsky has set the vision and created the environment for his team to excel. The result is that i3 continues to receive accolades for its technology innovations, its professionalism, and service to customers, and its recent Great Place to Work designations for offices in Spain and France.
His goal going forward is to provide clinical, scientific, technology and data-driven solutions to maintain quality and compliance in clinical trials and address the growing questions surrounding the safety and comparative and cost-effectiveness of treatments. This issue will continue to take on broader significance, paralleling efficacy and safety as the standards for approval in the global arena, he says.
The industry needs to better incorporate the concepts of total cost of care and reimburseability in product development planning. He strongly believes that pharmaceutical, biologic, and medical device products, if well-developed and positioned, can positively impact the consumption of global healthcare resources and drive costs down. With the continual downward pricing pressures, the industry cannot continue to invest at the current rate in R&D to improve healthcare unless it diverts the discussion from raw cost to overall effectiveness to justify pricing and value.
For Mr. Bilawsky, who was a Pharma­VOICE 100 honoree in 2005 when he was chief operating officer of the company, i3 remains a work in progress. He says the most important thing he needs to know is what he doesn’t know, so he can go out and hire, build, or acquire what he needs to deliver for his customers. F
Name: Glenn Bilawsky
Current position: CEO, i3
Education: Notre Dame, 1990
Date and Place of Birth: May 1968, ­Joliet, Ill.
First Industry-related Job: Territory sales rep, McNeil Pharmaceuticals
Dream Job: Manage a professional sports or racing team
Professional Mentors: James Burke, Dennis Gillings, Richard Anderson, Stephen Hemsley
Impassioned. Focused
Skilled Communicator
Alex Gorsky, worldwide chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics Group and a member of the company’s executive committee, is a champion of inclusion and ­diversity.
He has always believed a leader’s performance is best judged by how many individuals he or she has personally touched and developed along the way and, throughout his career, and, he has aspired to be that type of leader — qualities that are not lost on his colleagues throughout Johnson & Johnson.
For his dedication to mentoring and providing guidance to others, he was recognized by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association as its 2009 Honorable Mentor. The HBA created the Honorable Mentor Award in 2001 to recognize one individual each year who demonstrates long-term support of the advancement of women in the healthcare industry; has a personal dedication to developing, mentoring, and promoting women in the industry; and who has been supportive of the HBA.
Humbled by the honor, Mr. Gorsky says he is proud to be associated with an industry organization that nurtures and inspires women to lead others. Mr. Gorsky, who also serves on the HBA Global Advisory Board, counts this recognition as a highlight of his career.
Currently, he is the executive sponsor of the J&J Women’s Leadership Initiative, and during his tenure with Novartis, he established the Novartis CEO Award for Diversity and Inclusion.
Mr. Gorsky began his J&J career as a sales representative with Janssen Pharmaceutica more than 20 years ago. He says the experience of calling on physicians every day was incredibly valuable because he got to see the healthcare system “up close and personal" in a way that can never happen by sitting in an office. He still makes it a point to visit with customers as often as he possibly can to hear directly from them about what the company is doing well and what it needs to improve.
Advancing through positions of increasing responsibility in sales, marketing, and general management, in 2003, he was promoted to president of Janssen Pharmaceutica in the United States. In 2003, he became company group chairman, based in London, for the Johnson & Johnson family of companies’ pharmaceutical business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Mr. Gorsky left Johnson & Johnson in 2004 to serve as chief operating officer for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. In 2005, he was named head of pharma North America and CEO for Novartis.
Under his leadership, Novartis received approval for and launched a number of key new products. Under his leadership, Novartis received approval for and launched a number of key new products and was instrumental in the successful launch of a comprehensive Medicare Part D plan to ensure access for seniors.
Mr. Gorsky returned to Johnson & Johnson in 2008 as Ethicon’s group chairman and was then made worldwide franchise chairman for the Surgical Care Group. He was appointed to his current position in 2009.
Having held a series of roles of increasing responsibility over the years, it’s no surprise he believes that the most challenging assignment of one’s career should always be the current assignment, and that’s certainly the case for him.
Mr. Gorsky says he has the privilege of leading an organization within Johnson & Johnson that includes about 50,000 talented, passionate employees around the world. He is proud that J&J’s medical devices and diagnostic products touch the lives of hundreds of millions of patients every day, yet, we still have incredible opportunities to improve the standard of care in so many areas.
Even after more than 20 years in this industry, he says the opportunity to make a real difference in patient’s lives continues to get him out of bed every morning.
Mr. Gorsky’s straightforward leadership style was no doubt influenced by his time at West Point, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. Mr. Gorsky spent six years in the U.S. Army, finishing his career with the rank of captain.
During that same time, he earned the Ranger Tab, Airborne Wings, and served in Europe, the United States, and Panama.
Giving back to the community is paramount for Mr. Gorsky. He serves on the board of directors of the Doylestown Hospital in Doylestown, Pa. The hospital does great work in the community where he and his family live.  Moreover, his wife is a nurse, who  previously worked at the hospital and now does a significant amount of volunteering and fundraising. This provides both of them with a way to give back to the community and to stay closely connected with an important service organization. F
Alex Gorsky spent six years in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with the rank of captain.
Alex Gorsky Taking Mentoring to a New Level
Name: Alex Gorsky
Current position: Worldwide Chairman of ­Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Devices and ­Diagnostics Group and a member of the ­Company’s Executive ­Committee
Education: MBA, The Wharton School of the ­University of ­Pennsylvania; B.S., U.S. Military ­Academy at West Point;
First Industry-related Job: Sales ­representative, Janssen Pharmaceutica
Professional Associations: Healthcare ­Businesswomen’s Association; board of ­directors of the Doylestown Hospital; West Point Association of Graduates; Wharton Leadership Council; The Boy Scouts of America
Alex Gorsky, who is the Worldwide Chairman of ­Johnson & ­Johnson’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics Group and a ­member of the Company’s Executive Committee, began his career at J&J in 1988.
Vicente Anido Jr., Ph.D., has had a remarkable career building companies into leading organizations in their therapeutic categories.
Today, he is turning his attention to taking ISTA Pharmaceuticals to the next level.
Dr. Anido joined the company in 2001 as CEO and president, at which time, ISTA Pharmaceuticals had fewer than 50 employees, little money, no marketed products, and only one product in its portfolio. Dr. Anido turned the development-stage company into a fast-growing commercial company with more than 300 employees. Today, ISTA is the fourth-largest ophthalmic pharmaceutical company in the United States, with four products on the market, and 2010 revenue expected to be between $147 million and $165 million. The company also has a deep pipeline of clinical assets to fuel its growth for years to come.
Dr. Anido says one of his biggest career highlights was when ISTA’s revenue topped $100 million for the first time, a remarkable feat, since the company was only eight years old.
Those who have worked with Dr. Anido are inspired by his dedication to his staff and customers, his enthusiasm, and his ability to create a vision and sell it to the most skeptical member of the audience. While he has strong ties to some of the leading names in the pharmaceutical industry, he always has time to provide guidance and career advice to the youngest members of his team.
Dr. Anido’s ties to Marion Laboratories go back to his days as director of marketing and international marketing manager; he also was instrumental in the merger with Merrell Dow.
One of the most challenging assignments of his career came during his 10-year tenure at the company. He says after years in line management at Marion Labs, he was asked to become the director of program management, while working for the chief operating officer. He had no direct reports, no major decisions to make, but had to influence the progress of all of the major programs through the organization.
Not easily distracted when it comes to the things that are important to him — from both a business and personal perspective — Dr. Anido’s eye remains firmly on the prize: building ISTA to a $1 billion company.
While his new hobby may not totally prepare him to reach this new business stratosphere, he is certainly having a good time all same — he has just started to fly jets. F
Name: Vicente Anido Jr., Ph.D.
Current position: President and CEO, ISTA ­Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Education: Ph.D., Pharmacy Administration, ­University of Missouri; M.S., Pharmaceutical Sciences, B.S., Pharmacy, West Virginia University
Date and Place of Birth: December 1952, Havana, Cuba
Dream Jobs: Lead guitarist in rock ‘n roll band; ­fighter pilot
Professional Mentors: Jean R. Sperry, Marion ­Laboratories; Ewing M. Kauffman, founder of ­Marion Labs; Gavin Herbert, the founder of Allergan Inc.
Professional Associations: Board of Directors of ISTA Pharmaceuticals and BIOCOM
Connected Via: Facebook and LinkedIn
Words to Live By: You miss every shot that you don’t take
Focused. Risk Taker.
The Sky’s the Limit
Vicente Anido Jr., Ph.D., as President and CEO of ISTA
Pharmaceuticals has his eye on building ISTA into a $1 billion company.
Leading a transformative effort to ­discover ­opportunities for growth during an ­unparalleled period of patent uncertainty, Chris Viehbacher, CEO, has ­positioned Sanofi-Aventis for the future.
Rather than focus on the patent cliff of 2012, Mr. Viehbacher has asked his organization to diversify and maintain the same levels of sales growth despite the loss of key products. He does this through honesty, transparency, and well-received optimism.
Since joining the French pharmaceutical company, Mr. Viehbacher has been instrumental in bringing about 25 acquisitions for a total of around $17 billion. In fact, last year the company made about two or three acquisitions a month, preferring to stick with small to midsized deals.
An astute and forward-thinking leader, Mr. Viehbacher has identified several key areas as integral to the company’s continued growth, including consumer health, emerging markets, new prescription drugs, vaccines, and diabetes.
Despite this focus on diversification, one primary area of focus for the company has remained cancer, with four cancer drugs on the market, five in the final stage of human testing, and at least nine in early- to mid-stage trials.
Cancer research has been a priority for Mr. Viehbacher. In June he spoke about the “stunning" results in a trial for BSI-201, a novel product aimed at lung and breast tumors, saying when he looked at the company’s oncology unit, he saw the transformation of Sanofi-Aventis. To ensure the company can offer a broad attack on cancer, Mr. Viehbacher is investing in both early-stage treatments that potentially could transform cancer research, as well as licensing deals and acquisitions of new products that work with existing drugs to fight the disease. That commitment to fighting cancer is evident in endowments Mr. Viehbacher has led. For example, the company donated $2 million to a new cancer hospital at UNC-Chapel Hill, in recognition of the hospital’s strong research capabilities. He is deeply cognizant of the role academia plays in advancing medical research and is eager for Sanofi-Aventis to collaborate with academia more closely on potential new products for the future. F
Future Focus
Chris Viehbacher, CEO of ­Sanofi-Aventis, drives change in the ­company through ­honesty, ­transparency, and ­well-received ­optimism.
Name: Chris Viehbacher
Current position: CEO, Sanofi-Aventis
Date of birth: March 26, 1960
Education: Degree in Commerce, Queen’s ­University, Ontario
Forward-Thinking. Optimistic.
Chris Viehbacher was made a knight of the French Legion of Honor in 2003.
David Brennan’s screensaver says it all: “Making the most meaningful ­difference to patient health through great medicines."
In his more than three decades in the industry, Mr. Brennan has watched the companies he has worked for evolve and grow, and he has played a key role in moving some of those changes forward. Since being named CEO of AstraZeneca in 2001, Mr. Brennan is bringing the global lessons he learned along the way to guide the company to address unmet patients’ needs, a goal that is of paramount importance to the executive.
Before being named CEO, Mr. Brennan was president and CEO of AstraZeneca LP, the company’s North America subsidiary. He was appointed executive board director of AstraZeneca in 2005, with responsibility for the United States, the company’s largest market, as well as all North American operations.
Mr. Brennan’s respect for the value of medicine and the importance he holds for acting honorably and with integrity are just a few of the many outstanding traits his staff, colleagues, and peers find admirable.
In an interview in April 2009, Mr. Brennan told PharmaVOICE he envisions a time in the not-too-distant future when all people in need are diagnosed and treated, fewer patients are hospitalized, and medicines will be seen not as the cost of sickness, but as an investment in improving health.
Every day, the industry’s medicines improve people’s lives, especially the lives of those afflicted with serious, highly prevalent diseases such as cancer, he says. Now, with the potential for the right kind of healthcare reform, even more people may soon be helped. .
Developing medicines that make a meaningful difference in patients’ lives has been a constant theme of his career. It’s what gets him out of bed every morning.
The pharmaceutical industry has made enormous strides in managing some of the world’s most devastating diseases, and he’s proud to be a part of that effort, Mr. Brennan says.
At the same time he is pragmatic and recognizes that the industry faces an interesting mix of great opportunities and real challenges.
For AstraZeneca, he says the route to competitiveness is to remain an innovation-driven, global, prescription-based biopharmaceutical business. However, he notes that there is a need for greater focus in R&D; building new capabilities to take advantage of new science to improve productivity; and above all recognize that his company is only a small part of the whole healthcare system, so building strong collaborations with others will be critical.
Mr. Brennan brings a unique perspective to his role as CEO. He began his pharmaceutical career as a field sales representative.
After “carrying the bag" for Merck for four years, he was promoted to an inside position, where he met Elliott Margolis, who was in charge of field administration for the company. Mr. Brennan says there was never one specific moment when Mr. Margolis became his mentor; rather, there was an air of openness between the two. As result, Mr. Margolis became his lifelong teacher. Mr. Brennan learned a lot by asking questions, how to ask questions, and how to formulate a solution based on the responses, but he also found a lot of value in watching Mr. Margolis and his techniques, which made a huge impact on his management style.
Being creative and approachable are just two key traits he learned from his old friend, which Mr. Brennan brings to his leadership style and hopes to pass along to his management team, who are constantly inspired by his willingness to go to the mat for the patients the company serves.
Mr. Brennan has just finished his year-long chairmanship of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a time during which he and his fellow board members moved through healthcare reforms’ uncharted waters.
In his comments to the 2010 PhRMA annual meeting, Mr. Brennan in typical fashion thanked the many CEOs who communicated at all hours of the day and night, dealing with constantly changing — and rumored to be changing — reform initiatives. He also acknowledged the efforts of the industry’s partners — from organized labor, patient groups, think tanks, healthcare providers, and professional associations to organizations primarily formed to improve the values and delivery of American healthcare.
As usual, with patients at the forefront in all he does, Mr. Brennan will take the insights gained from working with and coming to understand the perspectives of so many good, talented people to increase his ability to promote change that’s good for his company, the industry, and the nation. F
For the People
Name: David Brennan
Current position: CEO, AstraZeneca
Education: B.A., Gettysburg College
Place of birth: New York
First Job: Prepared picnics for patients of a state mental ­hospital
First Industry-related Job: U.S. sales representative, Merck
Professional Mentors: Elliot Margolis, field administrator, Merck
Professional Associations: Former Chairman of the Board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of ­America (PhRMA); Member of the Executive Board of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and ­Associations (EFPIA); Member of the European Roundtable of Industrialists; the National Institutes of Health Roundtable on Evidence Based Medicine; a Commissioner of the UK ­Commission for Employment and Skills; advisory board of the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management; Former Chairman of the Board of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Heart Association; Honorary Board member of the U.S. CEO Roundtable on Cancer
Connected Via: Yammer
Patient-Oriented. Committed.
David Brennan is ­married to his childhood ­sweetheart.
The leadership and entrepreneurial drive of Johanna Allston, Ph.D., have inspired many fledgling entrepreneurs to persevere in their efforts to start a company.
She is driven, energetic, and continues to be excited by overcoming challenges, and above all she loves a success story.
A serial entrepreneur, Dr. Allston has started three companies. One of her most challenging assignments was managing these companies with small groups in three different time zones and three different cultures — Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Her entrepreneurial spirit extends back to her childhood when at the age of 12 she ran her own concession stand on the potato washing and packing shed that her father ran on Yonges Island, one of the barrier islands south of Charleston, S.C.
She shares her expertise through her involvement in several professional organizations, including chair of the Clinical Science Committee of the Board of Directors of the Personalized Medicine Coalition in Washington, D.C. In that role she was a resource for all stakeholders interested in personalized medicine.
Dr. Allston is the former president of the board of directors and director of Camphill Soltane Foundation, a college community for young adults with special needs.
In that capacity she has raised more than $1 million for the benefit of
Camphill. She also works with or supports charities dedicated to fighting childhood obesity, and she supports the needs of children with life-threatening diseases. Obesity is an issue that particularly concerns Dr. Allston, who says industrialized farming is one of the big contributors to this epidemic.
She also is involved with feeding the homeless and helping children with life-threatening diseases through several different organizations, including Magic Moments, the Rusty Staub Foundation/Catholic Charities, Drueding Center Project Rainbow, and The Food Trust. She has helped to raise more than $20 million for these causes. What drives her is the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people who are less fortunate than she.F
Dr. Johanna Allston • A Champion for Others
Family: Husband, two daughters
Reading List: The Stieg Larsson trilogy; The ­Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan; The Knack by Norm Brodsky; Tufte’s books of visual display of data; cookbooks and bird books
Hobbies: Golf, bird watching, wine, and cooking and ­consuming sustainable organic produce
Giving Back: President of the Board, Camphill Soltane; Magic Moments; The Rusty Staub ­Foundation; Catholic Charities; Drueding Center ­Project Rainbow; The Food Trust
Bucket List: For bioCapture to be successful at ­improving stem cell separation, the purification of therapeutic proteins, and increase the sensitivity of diagnostic tests; provide happy and successful futures for her grandchildren; play golf with her ­husband at the world’s great courses
Inspiration: Ray Owen
Screensaver: An amaryllis she grew
Most Unusual Place Visited: Mountains and ­turbulent waterfalls in Guizhou, China
Life Lessons: Only fight a battle when you know the rules that your opponent is playing by
Getting Personal with
Dr. johanna Allston
The intersection of science and business is where Joe Pieroni has spent his career.
Mr. Pieroni was drawn toward organic chemistry, but he decided three years into his Ph.D. to change tracks somewhat. Instead, he got his master’s in organic chemistry and then began an MBA.
For more than 35 years, Mr. Pieroni has brought that combined insight to the pharma industry and helped to bring about far greater communications between departments than in the past. In fact, even as far back as the 1970s and 1980s he was driving home the value of interdepartmental communications between commercial operations and research. It led to Merck being recognized as one of the industry leaders of marketing and new product planning, because it was one of the first companies to integrate the commercial and research and development aspects into a common global development plan.
It was at Merck that Mr. Pieroni learned many valuable lessons and where he found great mentorship.
Later at Parke-Davis, Mr. Pieroni was able to turn the company’s processes around and help it become a cohesive decision-maker with a string of successes to its name: Accupril, an ACE inhibitor; Neurontin, a pain treatment; and, the biggest of all, Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering agent, all now marketed by Pfizer.
Mr. Pieroni says his experience as VP of global marketing at Parke-Davis, where he oversaw the commercial development and launch of Lipitor, was one of the great moments in his career.
It was while at Parke-Davis that Mr. Pieroni was first connected with what was then Sankyo.
He was asked to put together a joint venture between Parke-Davis and Sankyo, which resulted with an agreement for a new company, Sankyo Parke Davis, in 1996, as well as the right to co-promote Rezulin for treating diabetes.
To start with, it was a business of Mr. Pieroni and four others and the team had to put together a salesforce of 180 representatives, all the support staff, and processes, and bring them to the launch meeting in April 1997.
In 2005 when Daiichi and Sankyo merged, Mr. Pieroni took the role of president and CEO of the U.S. subsidiary. F
Joe Pieroni • MultiLevel Insights
Reading List: Historical fiction
Hobbies: Golf, international travel
Bucket List: Learn how to play the piano, master painting with watercolors
Inspiration: Golfers who continuously shoot under par
Screensaver: Microsoft’s stock screensaver
Life Lessons: Do your job well and develop a ­reputation as someone who can be relied on
Getting Personal with
Joe Pieroni
Peter Gassner is one of those rare executives who combines deep technical expertise with a high level of business acumen. Yet he remains extremely humble and approachable to everyone from Fortune 100 CEOs to entry-level employees alike, which means he listens to people with varying perspectives.
It’s this skill that gives him the insight into how technology can improve the life-sciences industry.
Thoughtful, well-spoken, and highly regarded among technology visionaries, Mr. Gassner is helping pharmaceutical companies of all sizes to make good decisions about their constantly changing IT landscapes, delighting users and saving millions of dollars for these organizations in the process.
His three-year-old company, Veeva Systems, is his first venture into the life sciences, but already he’s making a huge impact and boasts a growth rate that is unparalleled in the IT industry.
Recognizing the increasing globalization of the industry, Veeva is expanding into China, and to make sure that he understands the culture and people, he is reading about Chinese history.
Before becoming CEO of Veeva, Mr. Gassner was senior VP of technology at salesforce.com where he was responsible for building the salesforce.com platform, including product, marketing, and developer relations. Before salesforce.com, Mr. Gassner was with PeopleSoft for nine years as its chief architect and general manager, leading a team of more than 450 professionals who provided the development, strategy, marketing, and customer support for PeopleSoft’s technology platform. PeopleTools was widely regarded in the industry as the best application platform of its day. He began his career with IBM in relational database development and research at IBM Silicon Valley Lab and then at IBM Almaden Research Center, where he worked closely with some of the inventors of relational database technology. F
Peter Gassner • Everyman’s Visionary
Family: Married, two sons ages 8 and 13
Hobbies: Skiing, mountain biking, hiking, reading
Reading list: Chinese history; Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer; classic American literature
Most Unusual Place Visited: A five-day canoe trip down a river in northern Sumatra
Getting Personal with
Peter Gassner
An ability to connect with people on a personal level sets Nick Colucci apart as a leader. He encourages people to strive higher and is interested in unlocking their full potential as organizational leaders and as leaders in healthcare.
He gains respect by coaching, not demanding, by good will, not imposing force, and by his own enthusiasm, hard work, sense of duty, and uncompromising commitment to quality.
Mr. Colucci cultivates an environment where employees feel their contributions are valued and their efforts are appreciated, which inspires them to exceed expectations.
He has an open-door policy where no question or idea is considered too small, and he always finds the time to provide guidance or mentorship to those who work with him. He has the ability to recognize and nurture strengths in others and provides people with the tools they need to overcome obstacles.
Though he has a passion for excellence, he doesn’t fault people if he believes they truly give their all but still fall short of their goals. On the contrary, he regards both successes and failures as learning experiences for his people.
He is a thoughtful and engaging communicator and respects the opinions of others, and then, gives clear and consistent direction. Though a veteran of the biopharma industry he is constantly eager to engage, teach, and learn from professionals at all levels.
Mr. Colucci believes fervently in finding a career that speaks to one’s passion, and those who have worked with him say it is evident he loves what he does. He considers being named CEO of Publicis Healthcare a huge reward, particularly for the honor and privilege of leading employees of whom he thinks so highly.
Mr. Colucci is one of those rare leaders who provides an outstanding industry example, but more importantly he wants to make a difference in the world. Through his work with organizations such as the American Heart Association and the Pasteur Foundation, he demonstrates to his staff how to influence real change at the patient care level.
In his role as a board member of the AHA, Mr. Colucci has helped spearhead efforts to raise awareness of heart disease, improving patient care and outcomes in the process. During the AHA’s Go Red week, which is an awareness campaign around women and heart disease, he encourages staff to participate in the AHA’s flagship fundraiser and personally matches contributions to maximize the network’s impact.
As chair of the executive committee of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, he is energizing a board of respected executive leaders and refocusing the coalition’s mission and activities.
He is also active in Operation Smile, which is dedicated to healing children around the world with facial deformities, and the Pheo­Para Alliance, which is dedicated to helping patients with neuroendocrine diseases. F
Connecting to Make a Difference
Family: Wife, Ellie; three sons: Nicholas, Alex, and John Thomas
Reading List: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery; The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Hobbies: Collecting vintage wristwatches, tennis, riding road bikes
Giving Back: Operation Smile, American Heart ­Association, Pasteur Foundation
Bucket List: Attend his grandchildren’s graduation from college with his wife on one arm and his son or sons on the other; teach in middle school, high school, and ­college; travel to the cradle of civilization and do some exploring; do an Ironman triathlon at age 60
Inspiration: Wife, Steve Jobs
Top iPod downloads: Jazz
Most Unusual Place Visited: A very old cemetery in Paris
Life Lessons: Always keep yourself physically fit, always keep learning, and always love your family
with all your heart
Getting Personal with
Nick Colucci
Few leaders in the industry can boast so varied and successful a career as Cameron Durrant, M.D.
While practicing as a physician in the United Kingdom and Australia, Dr. Durrant started several businesses in the areas of property, private medical facilities (he co-founded what became a chain of seven clinics), and a clothing business. Later, he drew on his medical background to focus on pharmaceutical sales and marketing, and he has worked for some of the largest pharma companies where he led local and global new product launches for drugs related to cardiology, critical care, oncology, HIV, and infectious diseases, many of them multibillion-dollar brands. As a qualified physician, he spent time in internal medicine, general and ENT surgery, ob/gyn, ER, psychiatry, family medicine, and pediatrics.
One of his major industry achievements was the global launch of Zyvox while at Pharmacia (now part of Pfizer). Those who worked with him on that launch say what stood out most is the repeated feedback from thought leaders and other healthcare professionals around the globe about the groundbreaking nature of the honest and collaborative approach to the launch of this product, which has now grown to be the most successful hospital antibiotic ever. Dr. Durrant imbued his own integrity into the drug’s global strategy and inspired all those who worked with him with his repeated examples of leadership.
In 2003, he seized an opportunity to become the CEO of an early-stage pharmaceutical company focusing on children, PediaMed.
His influence within the company was remarkable, infusing the company with vision, high energy, enthusiasm, confidence, and results. He led the company from one with sales of $50,000 in 2001 to $25 million in 2004. And, through a dozen different deal that he sourced and executed, Dr. Durrant broadened the portfolio to three brands and into drug delivery technologies and products in the areas of dermatology, respiratory, anti-infectives, gastroenterology, and central nervous system conditions for children.
With a set of strategic objectives that were clearly communicated to the organization, he accomplished results while attracting a top management team and salesforce; implementing a positive and energetic organizational culture; and working with VC partners and other investors, analysts, and bankers.
Through his commitment to strong core values and behaviors, Dr. Durrant’s efforts helped PediaMed to be assessed by the Society of Human Resource Management as the No. 1 place to work in Kentucky for mid-sized companies in 2005 and one of the fastest-growing companies in the tri-state region three straight years. Both accolades became a magnet to attract talent.
Dr. Durrant achieved all this with an all-inclusive and communicative leadership style, while laying out clear objectives and establishing accountability in an environment that respects every individual.
Later at Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Durrant helped to realize value within J&J’s portfolio across its three key businesses: pharmaceutical, medical device, and consumer. He then led an initiative to envision new service-based business models in the area of hospital-acquired infection that would not only help decrease infection rates but also create a platform for convergence-based business models that the industry desperately needs and customers value.
Throughout his career, Dr. Durrant has pushed the forefront of innovation by researching questions and looking for untapped potential with current products and capabilities and taking them to the next level by finding the intersection of market need and technology.
Dr. Durrant is also committed to making a difference in the lives of those less fortunate. He provides financial support to three children in poor countries through Everychild, an international children’s development charity, and writes and receives letters from them regularly; supports Amnesty International; donates to Heifer International, which provides livestock to underprivileged overseas communities, and regularly contributes to St. Baldrick’s, a charity committed to children with cancer. F
Reading List: The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle; The 8th Habit by Stephen Covey
Hobbies: Keeping fit, wine, rugby
Giving Back: Everychild, Amnesty International, Heifer ­International
Bucket List: Go on an African safari
Inspiration: His family; people who struggle day to day; people who live with and suffer discrimination and hardship due to ­personal difference, be it physical, cultural, language, economic, or as a result of personal beliefs
Life Lessons: Ask good questions and be a good listener
Getting Personal with
Dr. Cameron Durrant
Dr. Cameron Durrant • Into the Fray
With his eyes set firmly on the road ahead, David Dunn has instilled a can-do attitude into his colleagues at ApotheCom.
Mr. Dunn has a passion for the work he does. He regards every day as a new and exciting challenge; he says this is what makes life fun and keeps him and his colleagues going.
He lives by the motto, yesterday is history, tomorrow’s a mystery.
Canadian-born Mr. Dunn has been on a meteoric rise in healthcare communications. Mr. Dunn came to the United States when he was appointed president of HealthVizion Communications, a division of McCann Healthcare Worldwide. He went on to become president of Complete Medical Group and then joined ApotheCom as president in June 2006. Today, he is global CEO of ApotheCom, which has employees in the United States and Europe.
Mr. Dunn has more than 20 years of leadership experience in medical publishing, advertising, and communications.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Dunn held a number of roles with one of Canada’s most successful medical publishing and communications companies, including positions as president, publisher, chief operations officer, and national sales manager. F
David Dunn • Future Focus
Bucket list: Eat his way through Italy; swim a ­continuous 2,500 meters on his 100th birthday
Inspiration: Everyone he works with and from whom he learns every day
Greatest challenge: Every day is a new and ­exciting challenge, it’s what makes it fun and keeps him going
Life Lessons: Love what you do
Getting Personal with
David Dunn
While doing his fellowship in outcomes at the University of Pennsylvania, Richard Gliklich, M.D., learned an extremely valuable lesson that influenced his career path. Samuel Martin, M.D., taught Dr. Gliklich that the healthcare practice knows far less about what happens to patients in the realworld than it thinks.
Dr. Gliklich has been integral in seeking ways to enhance product safety through outcomes research.
Since 1998, Dr. Gliklich has served as president of Outcome, which is a leading provider of patient registries, studies, and integrated technologies for evaluating real-world research. Dr. Gliklich is a frequently invited speaker on postapproval research and patient registries and has served on numerous advisory boards. He has published extensively in the areas of outcomes assessment and patient registries as well as in the clinical area of diseases of the head and neck.
Dr. Gliklich focuses on postapproval research programs, in particular observational research on effectiveness, safety, and quality of care. Some of the programs developed by Dr. Gliklich include the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines registries in cardiovascular disease and stroke. He has also worked extensively in the area of information technology for postapproval research, an area in which he is also a patented inventor.
He is a principal investigator (PI) for the Outcome DEcIDE Center, one of 13 DEcIDE centers under the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Effective Healthcare Program and the PI for the project Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes. Dr. Gliklich is also a full professor at the Harvard Medical School.
He also chairs the Post-Approval Summit, held annually at that institution since its inception in 2005.
He has authored more than 100 academic publications and is the editor of a textbook on the practical value of real-world clinical data in medical practice, Profiting from Quality: Outcomes Strategies for Medical Practice. F
Family: Married, three children, 5, 9, 11
Reading List: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Hobbies: Skiing
Giving Back: The R.O.S.E. Fund
Inspiration: Leonardo DaVinci
Top iPod downloads: Books on tape
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Visit the White House
Getting Personal with
Dr. Richard Gliklich
Dr. Richard Gliklich • Safety Pursuits
A versatile, goal-driven leader, Timothy Walbert has rescued a product from potential failure, seen the successful launch of an important blockbuster, and even run two companies simultaneously.
Mr. Walbert’s pharmaceutical roots run deep, having led the global launch of the blockbuster drug Humira and marketed key pain products such as Celebrex, Arthrotec, and Daypro.
When he became president and CEO of IDM Pharma in 2007, the company’s osteosarcoma drug had just been rejected by the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee shortly after received a not approvable letter from the FDA. While this was an obstacle, Mr. Walbert knew the importance of getting this important treatment to market and worked tirelessly with his team toward getting the treatment approved in Europe.
In early 2009, less than two years after receiving the not approvable letter from the FDA, the company’s hard work paid off and the European Medicines Agency approved Mepact for the treatment of osteosarcoma.
During this time at IDM, Mr. Walbert also became president and CEO of Horizon Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel pain therapies, and he ran both companies concurrently for more than a year.
Following the sale of IDM to Takeda in May 2009, Mr. Walbert focused his attention on increasing Horizon’s footprint outside of the United States, and he added complementary treatments to its portfolio.
On April 1, 2010, Mr. Walbert led the merger of Horizon with Swiss-based Nitec Pharma. The combined company, Horizon Pharma, now has one approved drug in Europe for rheumatoid arthritis (Lodotra), a combination pain therapy submitted for review to the FDA HZT-501, and two drugs in the pipeline.
His financial astuteness is as strong as his ability to work with multiple groups to deliver strong outcomes. Since taking the helm at Horizon, he has raised more than $50 million, built an executive team, and helped to move the company toward commercialization.
As someone who has helped to bring many important products to market, he worries about intellectual property protection throughout global markets, especially China and India, as well as appropriate reimbursement for innovation.
He credits many of his achievements to advice he received from Jeff Leiden, M.D., Ph.D., managing director, Clarus Ventures, and former board member and chief operating officer at Abbott, who told him that his experience, scientific knowledge, and leadership skills would allow him to be successful in pharma and biotech. How right he was. F
Timothy Walbert • Eye on the Road Ahead
Family: Wife, Keli; Daughter, Amanda, 10; Sons, Pierce, 10, and Timmy, 3
Reading List: Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin; and anything on presidential history
Hobbies: Working out, Pilates, reading, coaching his children’s sports
Giving Back: Arthritis Foundation
Bucket List: Take the family on a trip around the world
Inspiration: His family, patients
Screensaver: His son Timmy
Most Unusual Place Visited: Istanbul, Turkey
Life Lessons: Followed Jeff Leiden’s advice that his experience, scientific knowledge, and leadership skills would allow him to be successful at biotech
Under the cloak of invisibility: Visit the White House
Getting Personal with
Timothy Walbert
Few people have better credentials to realize the goal of improving the tools available to physicians to diagnose, and thus treat, cancer, than Mara Aspinall.
Before founding her diagnostics company On-Q-ity, Ms. Aspinall was president of Genzyme Genetics, a leading provider of diagnostic services in the oncology and reproductive markets.
Ms. Aspinall created and implemented a new vision and strategy; as a result, she grew the business to one of the top five laboratories in the country. A key strategic focus was a renewed and disciplined emphasis on diagnostics research and development. She achieved this by acquiring Impath, the nation’s largest cancer testing company, and creating one of the largest and most productive labs in the country.
Then for a second time she proved her capability at combining the science, business, and cultures of two organizations into one cohesive unit by merging CellectiveDx with the DNA Repair Company to create the transformational power of On-Q-ity.
These two accomplishments, creating On-Q-ity as well as growing Genzyme Genetics into one of the top labs in the country, are quite rightly rated as her professional highlights.
She has also served as president of Genzyme Pharmaceuticals, leading its transformation from a generics manufacturer to a leader in specialized pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Next on her list of goals is to launch On-Q-ity’s first products to help cancer patients and their doctors have actionable information to make the right treatment decisions the first time.
Ms. Aspinall is also active in public policy and recognizes its importance in advancing healthcare. Thus a second goal is to help establish the new FDA Center for Advanced Diagnostics Evaluation and Research (CADER). Like all other areas of healthcare, Ms. Aspinall says diagnostics need their own dedicated center at the FDA to create and enforce appropriate diagnostic-specific regulations to ensure public confidence in the tests used today and in the future.
At every step, her focus is patients. She draws her inspiration from patients who fight their disease with all they have — physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
She is actively involved with helping to fight cancer through the American Cancer Society and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). As she says, cancer treatment today is not good enough, and despite the many great strides that have been made, cancer still kills almost half of those affected. She is determined that this mortality rate is improved and says all facets of the cancer community need to work together for increased direct research funding and better education for physicians and patients in using the current personalized medicine tools.
In addition, Ms. Aspinall served as Massachusetts Chairman of the American Cancer Society and as DFCI trustee for 15 years.
Ms. Aspinall is also deeply focused on better education for young children, and she is actively involved in Early Education for All, which is working to ensure that all children have access to high-quality early education and care. Ms. Aspinall says the most important time intellectually and developmentally in a child’s life is before he or she turns 6 years old.
She says there are not enough resources focused on capturing this time to create a strong educational foundation for our youngest children. Early Education for All has been a pioneer in securing full access to high-quality early education throughout Massachusetts, and Ms. Aspinall co-chairs this campaign. F
Mara Aspinall • A Force in Oncology
Family: Husband Keith, three children
Hobbies: Architectural photography and political ­button collecting
On her reading list: The Last Best League: One ­Summer, One Season, One Dream by Jim Collins; The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon; Bathsheba’s Breast: Women, Cancer, and History by James Olson
Giving back: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Early Education for All
Bucket list: Throwing out the first ball at a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park; major exhibition of her ­photography with accompanying catalog
Inspiration: Patients who fight their disease
Most unusual place visited: Svalbard, Norway – 78 degrees north
Getting Personal with
Mara Aspinall
Since joining HRA Pharma in 2000 as an international project manager, Erin Gainer, Ph.D., has been instrumental in the company’s development.
Dr. Gainer was responsible for building the young company’s cross-disciplinary R&D capacities to enable it to develop a pipeline of projects, including its next-generation emergency contraception (EC), ellaOne (ulipristal acetate).
Under her leadership, the company launched ellaOne, which was approved in Europe in 2009 and is now undergoing the approval process on four other continents.
Not only is this the first marketing authorization granted to HRA Pharma based on a full drug development project of a new chemical entity, this is also the first product designed, developed, and approved specifically for EC.
The achievement with ellaOne was the fruit of intense and streamlined interaction between Dr. Gainer and HRA Pharma’s entire multinational team of experienced and relatively young (average age 35 years old) professionals.
It solidified an already tight-knit team and trickled down to every area of the company, boosting employee morale.
Dr. Gainer has been instrumental in expanding HRA Pharma’s presence, including establishing operational subsidiaries in Europe’s biggest markets — Italy, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany — within a 15-month period, and creating more than 50 highly skilled jobs in Europe within two years.
Her goal is to make HRA Pharma a European leader in women’s health and endocrinology within the next five years. F
Dr. Erin Gainer • Eye on Women’s Health
Getting Personal with
DR. ERIN GAINER
Family: Married
Hobbies: Jogging, hiking, yoga, writing
Giving back: Former U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer
The industry has a big challenge ahead of it with healthcare reform, but it’s one Jim Hoyes, chief commercial officer at EMD Serono, believes is not only important but offers great opportunities.
Mr. Hoyes believes the industry’s best years are still to come if it embraces healthcare reform and steps up to its responsibilities to deliver on unmet needs and provide real healthcare solutions from prevention to cure. It may take some time, and Mr. Hoyes suggests PharmaVOICE check back with him in 10 to 15 years for his answer, but in the meantime, he will be working diligently to make an impact.
As someone who has lost loved ones to devastating illnesses, Mr. Hoyes is also strongly committed to several patient groups, including South Shore Hospital Hospice Program and the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. Mr. Hoyes lost his father to MS when he was 9 years old, and he lost his wife, Cheryll, to cancer in 2008. He says anything that can be done with regard to prevention, cure, treatment, and offering a better quality of life for people living with these diseases is a key driver for him.
Colleagues laud Mr. Hoyes’ philanthropic commitment saying in the past year he has served meals to benefit those in need, built toy boxes for underprivileged children, and he leads by example to inspire employees to become involved in their local communities.
There needs to be better balance in the world, he says, and he is helping to build strong societies across the globe that will create more wealth, higher levels of social well-being, healthier populations, and, ultimately, drive even more innovation and economic growth.
Mr. Hoyes also believes better-aligned values will enhance the prospects for peace in the world.
In life and in work, Mr. Hoyes holds to valuable lessons he has learned over the years: never let your dreams die; don’t postpone what you can do today; and you can never be over-prepared. F
Family: Three children, lost his wife of 23 years to ­cancer
Reading List: The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose; Get Out of Your Own Way by Robert Cooper; Big Shoes: How ­Successful Leaders Grow into New Roles by Sander Flaum; The ­Corporate Athlete Advantage by Jim Loehr and Jack ­Groppel; The Business Leader’s Health Manual by Juliette McGannon and Michael ­McGannon
Hobbies: Golfing, hiking, gardening, American history, ­traveling, baseball and softball coaching
Giving Back: National Multiple Sclerosis Society; Wyoming Seminary Alumni Association; Penn State Alumni ­Association; South Shore Hospital Hospice ­Program; The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life
Bucket List: Hike the Appalachian Trail, travel the
world for six months with no set itinerary, attend a state dinner at the White House
Inspiration: His children
Top iPod downloads: Newspapers, travel, music
Screensaver: Pictures of his children
Most Unusual Place Visited: Gibraltar’s caves and a ­Chinese Herbal Medicine Clinic in Hong Kong
Life Lessons: Never let your dreams die; don’t
postpone what you can do today; and you can never
be ­­overprepared
Getting Personal with Jim Hoyes
Jim Hoyes • Embracing Change
People are paramount to Joe Jimenez. The recently appointed CEO of Novartis has gone from strength to strength in his career thanks to an ability to steer, guide, and motivate people; and to understand how people from different cultures might respond to a situation.
Having been named to the top job at Novartis at the beginning of the year, taking over from long-serving leader Daniel Vasella, Mr. Jimenez has been finding ways to further grow the business. But he never loses sight of the talent within the organization.
When Mr. Jimenez spoke to PharmaVOICE in 2008, while CEO of Novartis Pharma, he told of the inspiration he draws from the talented people he leads.
Mr. Jimenez told PharmaVOICE that being able to lead and help such talented and accomplished people change the way they operate to position Novartis Pharma for the future has been very rewarding for him.
Mr Jimenez’s open, inclusive style helps him to tap into the expertise of those he works with.
Another string to Mr. Jimenez’s leadership bow is his extensive global experience. During his time in the consumer package goods industry he landed an international position, during which time he learned in detail how different cultures and the psychographic makeup of consumers lead to very different behaviors.
For example, while running a division for Heinz, he learned that there really is no such thing as a singular “Europe," but rather each European country has its own customs and its own way of doing things, and there are distinct differences in the purchasing decisions of a consumer in Germany, say, compared with one in the United Kingdom.
These insights are hugely valuable in a global organization such as Novartis because ensuring operations are effective and businesses are growing across the globe requires open and creative thinking, and that is particularly so in developing markets.
Importantly, Mr. Jimenez also is able to imbue a sense of urgency upon those he leads.
Only a few months into the role of CEO, Mr. Jimenez is already driving the team to achieve record performance with double-digit growth in both the first and second quarter, and analysts predict his leadership could drive dynamic growth in the coming years.
Mr. Jimenez’s drive has made Novartis the fastest-growing pharmaceutical company in the industry.
He says he got his first taste of leadership when he became captain of the swim team. While it wasn’t a “real" job, it taught him a lot about setting goals and beating them, teamwork, and leadership that he still draws from today. Swimming also taught him to be mentally tough, to never give up, and that individual strength can empower a team. F
Family: Wife, three children
Reading list: The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria; Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell; online news; The Wall Street Journal’s health blog; McKinsey & Company’s What Matters blog
Hobbies: Swimming
Inspiration: Novartis colleagues
Getting Personal with
Joe Jimenez
Joe Jimenez • A People’s Leader
Leadership defines Rick Keefer on so many levels. He is a strategic thinker, always drilling down into a challenge or issue to get at the root and then drilling back up again to determine strategic responses to customers’ needs. He thinks outside the box, and he challenges his team to do the same, never settling for the easy, standard, or safe answer, but rather pushing toward blue-sky thinking. Results are paramount to Mr. Keefer. He considers awards irrelevant, and focuses on getting the job done on behalf of clients with a relentless commitment to seamless customer service. And he is always looking for an opportunity for both the customer and the company. To that end, he watches the marketplace closely, with a keen eye toward unmet client needs.
Though he has spent his career on the sales and commercial sides, he is very in touch with his creative side. At home, he builds wood furniture and clocks, and he takes that creativity into the workplace, where he challenges his team to be creative in solving clients’ needs.
He is also relentless in his pursuit of perfection. Close enough or about right doesn’t cut it for Mr. Keefer, either in the workplace or in his hobby of woodworking.
As president and CEO of Publicis Touchpoint Solutions, he has helped the company prepare for a changing outsourcing climate and secure contracts with a variety of the biggest pharmaceutical companies as well as medium and small specialty companies.
He recognizes important trends in the marketplace and the need to change with those trends in order to provide pharma companies with the multichannel tools and solutions they need to influence physician prescribing habits, thereby improving patients’ lives. Mr. Keefer says what is most difficult about the changing business model is that it challenges everything that the industry has done over the last 20 or more years that made it successful and goes against every human instinct.
Narrow thinking is anathema to Mr. Keefer. Instead, he has led the transformation of the industry from looking at just one channel of delivery, that being sales reps, to looking at other complementary channels, such as virtual reps, customer service associates, MSLs, and nurse educators.
Clients regard him as a true partner and seek out his counsel and advice on best practices.
After years in the industry, he still gets a kick out of coming to work each day and seems happiest when he is whiteboarding ideas to solve a client’s problem. A visionary thinker, Mr. Keefer accurately forecasts where the industry is headed and seizes opportunities where most wouldn’t.
Mr. Keefer’s commitment to the industry was reinforced by his late father’s illness. Three years ago, his father passed away from end-stage dementia. While he has always believed that the industry makes a difference in patients’ lives, this experience truly reinforced that belief. During that time, he was in the hospital interacting with both physicians and hospice workers. He was able to see firsthand the positive impact the industry can have on patient care. It was a sad time for Mr. Keefer, but it also made him very proud of the industry in which he works. F
Family: Wife, Luz Cesario; Sons, Brian, 30, and Brad, 25
Reading List: Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Dan Brown, and W.E.B. Griffin
Hobbies: Golf, woodworking, hunting, fishing, and ­riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle
Bucket List: Build a grandfather clock; spend a year of retirement with his wife on a Caribbean island with no transportation other than his Harley; build a log cabin on land he plans to buy in the mountains of West Virginia
Inspiration: His wife
Screensaver: Lucky, his Brittany Spaniel, and his best outdoor companion
Most Unusual Place Visited: Aruba, with tropical fish on one side of the island and barren desert on the other
Life Lessons: A person is only as good as his or her word — his father
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Visit the Oval Office
Rick Keefer • The Quiet Achiever
Getting Personal with Rick Keefer
It was early in his career that Bill McEllen developed his love of leading and mentoring, and thanks to an opportunity that many others would have balked at, he learned to excel at managing people and expectations.
In his first experience directly leading others, Mr. McEllen was asked to take over and turn around an underperforming district. The national sales manager described the position to him as “the worst job you will ever love." In retrospect, he couldn’t agree with her more. He got to build and lead a team of stellar professionals, and he was able to take the district from worst to first.
Mr. McEllen’s leadership skills have been a boon for Torre Lazur McCann, which saw its revenue grow under his guidance, win kudos within the industry, and undergo a successful rebranding.
Mr. McEllen began his career in pharmaceutical sales and marketing on the client side. He spent eight years at Knoll Pharmaceutical  in a wide range of capacities before joining Reliant Pharmaceuticals in 2001 as product director of Lescol XL.
Motivation to do better for Mr. McEllen comes from his children because he believes inspiration comes from the purest of places, and he cannot think of anything more genuine than the unconditional love of a child.
The life sciences is also an ongoing inspiration for Mr. McEllen, who says if he ever decides to switch professions it would be a dramatic change and it would be a change that combines his love of adventure and the outdoors into a career as a park ranger. F
BilL McEllen • Lessons Learned
Family: Wife, Kerri; Daughters, Madelyn and Julia; Son, Ryan
Reading List: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Hobbies: Reading, hiking, canyoneering, rock climbing, and golfing
Bucket List: To visit each of the 58 U.S. National Parks with his family
Inspiration: His children
Top iPod downloads: Dave Matthews Band
Screensaver: An image of him in the Grand Canyon rappelling down a 300-foot waterfall into the Colorado River
Most Unusual Place Visited: A 13,500-foot precipice on the Grand Teton in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Life Lessons: If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others
Getting Personal with
Bill McEllen
Combining a scientist’s knowledge of the problems and intricacies involved in vaccine development, with an entrepreneurial flair for leading companies, Robert McNally, Ph.D., is leading GeoVax closer to its goal of developing a vaccine against HIV/AIDS.
Dr. McNally graduated with a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and he has more than 28 years of experience in academic and corporate clinical investigations, management, research, business, quality, and regulatory affairs.
Before taking the helm at GeoVax, he served as president as well as VP of quality assurance of Cell Dynamics, a company he co-founded. Cell Dynamics worked with organ and tissue procurement organizations for the recovery of human tissue, processing tissues into cellular components necessary for research and development, pharmaceuticals, and cell therapy.
In 1984, Dr. McNally co-founded Cryo­Life, a human heart valve transplant company. During his 14-year association with CryoLife, it grew to $50 million in revenue, became a public company, and received world recognition as a leader in transplant technology.
For Dr. McNally, CryoLife is his most enduring achievement.
Dr. McNally is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, serves on the board of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience at Georgia Tech, and is past chairman of the Georgia Biomedical Partnership and recipient of its 2005 Biomedical Industry Growth Award.
Beyond his commitment to research and development and efforts to bring an HIV vaccine to market, Dr. McNally says he is most concerned about dependence on foreign oil and recent healthcare reform legislation. F
Dr. Robert McNally • Heart of the Matter
Family: Wife, Mary; Daughter, Maureen; Sons, Matthew and Joseph
Reading List: Smithsonian Magazine; Science News; Toyota Prius shop manual
Hobbies: Auto mechanics, boating, fishing
Giving Back: Knights of Columbus
Bucket List: Complete the renovation of his island home for retirement
Screensaver: Photograph of his extended family
Most Unusual Place Visited: People’s Republic of China in 1979
Life Lessons: Do not try to do everything
Getting Personal with
Robert McNally
Omnicare is undergoing a whirlwind of change under new President and CEO James Pusey, M.D.
He’s a CEO offering the best of both worlds — a medical doctor who understands the world of drug development and a savvy business leader with exceptional financial acumen.
He makes the tough decisions. He doesn’t take no for an answer. And don’t even think about showing up for a meeting with him unprepared or without the data to validate your position. Sitting across the table from Dr. Pusey, with him firing a myriad of questions at you, has the potential to be an uncomfortable experience. He pushes people hard because he wants them to execute to the very best of their ability. He demands the best of his team.
While change is sometimes a difficult adjustment, employees are catching on to his passionate energy and enthusiasm. One can’t help but feel inspired and motivated when there is such a brand champion at the top. After just nine months, the CRO’s momentum is building. And employees believe the sky is the limit for the CRO’s future.
Getting it right is important to Dr. Pusey, who lives by the creed that neither life nor work is a dress rehearsal.
Next on his list of ambitious goals is to change the way that early clinical research and late-stage clinical research are undertaken.
Dr. Pusey has more than 25 years of experience in medicine, international clinical trial management, CRO services, and global pharmaceutical sales, marketing, and operations roles. Most recently, he served as senior VP and general manager of Global Clinical Development at MDS Pharma Services, a business unit of MDS. Other previous roles included president and CEO of the biotech company Orthologic; executive VP of neurology at Serono; and a variety of executive roles at both AstraZeneca and SmithKlineBeecham.
Dr. Pusey began his career in medical practice in London, where he worked on the staff of four London hospitals. He also served as the international medical advisor in Southeast Asia, where he managed antiviral drug development trials for The Wellcome Foundation.
Throughout his career, Dr. Pusey has demonstrated the value of taking risks. It’s something he’d like to see happen more within the pharmaceutical industry — a commitment to higher-risk therapeutics — saying me-too projects aren’t enough and right now there is a lack of R&D productivity.
In the world at large, the state of the global economy is of grave concern to him because of the potential for global and regional economic tensions to escalate into large-scale social unrest and violence. F

Family: Three Sons, Ben, JoJo, and Harry
Reading List: Various crime fiction titles by Ian Rankin; The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
Hobbies: Skiing, bike riding, boating, and fitness
Giving Back: School fundraisers
Bucket List: Sail across an ocean
Inspiration: John Lennon, his late father, and some modern rock bands
Top iPod downloads: Read My Mind, The Killers; The High Road, Broken Bells
Screensaver: An image of his sons
Most Unusual Place Visited: The Khyber Pass, linking ­Pakistan and Afghanistan
Life Lessons: Do not get frustrated; it doesn’t help
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Talk with his father in ­heaven
Getting Personal with
Dr. James Pusey
Dr. James Pusey • Building Momentum
Whether in good times or bad, Dave Ormesher, CEO of closerlook, shows inspirational leadership. During the tech-stock boom, he managed his company’s rapid growth with creativity and thoughtfulness, never exaggerating its capabilities.
When the bust came, he was equally thoughtful, refusing to shy away from honestly representing the company’s challenges. He remained transparent with employees and the media through the recession, and he handled the unfortunate downsizing with compassion and grace.
In the past few years, Mr. Ormesher has narrowed the focus of closerlook, building its future on its deep experience in the healthcare industry.
The proof of his exceptional leadership is his company’s high standing today in the local business community as well as nationally in industry circles.
He has carefully steered his company through the economic challenges of the past 24 months by focusing on the strategic needs of the firm’s clients, enabling the company to enjoy continued success. In addition to winning new business, he has done an exceptional job of retaining clients.
Mr. Ormesher’s creativity and insight stem back to his days of starting closerlook. With $1,284 in start-up capital — enough to pay for two months of rent on a third-floor walk-up office space — he and his partner began dialing for dollars.
Frustrated with the three weeks it took for the phone company to hook up their business line, they used the two pay phones at the Irish pub across the street to make their prospecting calls, tipping the barmaid to take return calls.
Today, closerlook is well-positioned as an innovative strategic marketing firm that serves the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries. His company makes contributions every day to both the thought leadership and the practical implementation of marketing programs that further the understanding, comprehension, and communication of healthcare problems and solutions.
One such example is the work the agency did in developing a new behavioral-change program for people with Type 2 diabetes. Mr. Ormesher and his team recruited the leading clinical and behavioral-change experts in the country into a “tiger team" to define both the gaps in the marketplace and the best thinking to date on how people make lifestyle changes. The result is an innovative consumer platform that challenges the conventional thinking behind most patient compliance and adherence programs.
Mr. Ormesher encourages a creative and entrepreneurial environment at the agency and regularly looks for ways to reach out, motivate, and inspire others, as well as make an impact on the industry and share his knowledge to help others succeed.
As a risk-taker himself, what disappoints Mr. Ormesher is industry inertia. He says the inability or unwillingness for some companies to take risks, invest in innovation, and embrace the change that is coming is based largely on fear and insecurity. This has prevented many innovations from being embraced and disseminated and has had a chilling effect on entrepreneurs and investors looking to develop the next major breakthrough.
With a glass-half-full approach to life and a natural curiosity for how things work, Mr. Ormesher doesn’t shy away from challenges. In fact, he regards the recent signing of the Affordable Care Act as a great opportunity for those willing to lead.  F
Family: Wife of 30 years; three children
Reading List: Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath; ­Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin; The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson; The Bottom Billion by Paul ­Collier; The Power of Pull by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison; Titan by Ron Chernow; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Hobbies: Traveling, reading, running, photography, and opera
Giving Back: Founder, Global Relief and Development Partners; Board Member, i.c.stars; President of the Guild Board, Lyric Opera of Chicago
Bucket List: Flight training; take a year’s sabbatical with a round-the-world ticket; learn French; write and publish a book; sail around the Caribbean; complete a triathlon
Inspiration: Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Dr. Margaret Burroughs, DuSable Museum of African-American History
Top iPod downloads: Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis; M’Bemba, Salif Keita; You’ve Never Seen Everything, Bruce Cockburn; Alejandro: Dave Aude Remix, Lady Gaga; ReCreation, Zap Mama; Symphony #2, Ralph Vaughan Williams; Manon, Jules Massenet
Screensaver: Evening view of lightning across the Mojave Desert
Most Unusual Place Visited: Afghanistan’s Wardak region
Life Lessons: Take your wife out on a weekly date for the rest of your life
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Visit the Oval Office
Getting Personal with
Dave Ormesher
Dave Ormesher • Honest Achievements
For almost 40 years, Yusuf Hamied, Ph.D., has run Cipla, an Indian pharmaceutical company founded by his father in 1935.
The country’s second-biggest pharma company based on market value, Cipla is one of the biggest producers of low-cost antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS, with a significant influence on health outcomes in Africa.
According to Dr. Hamied, the company produces antiretrovirals for about 20,000 patients, with between 5,000 and 10,000 of those living in India.
Today, Cipla’s revenue is around $350 million, with about 65% coming from sales in India and 35% from exports.
The company’s first 3-in-1 antiretroviral pill, Triomune, won World Health Organization (WHO) approval in 2002, and it is being used by almost 400,000 patients whose drugs are bought by Unicef, Doctors Without Borders, and other donors.
Recently, Dr. Hamied announced Cipla’s investment in two biotech ventures with China’s Desano Group. The ventures will be set up in India, with a manufacturing plant in Goa, and China, with a plant in Shanghai, respectively, at an investment of $65 million over three years. The ventures would make about 10 products — in areas such as oncology — that are outside the scope of IP, and the company will market them globally. F
Dr. Yusuf Hamied • A Family Tradition
Getting Personal with
Dr. Yusuf Hamied
Date and Place of birth: July 25, 1936, Vilnius, Lithuania
Larry Star’s success at running an innovative agency is testament to his hard work and creativity.
Becoming CEO was never a role he had expected or sought, and taking the reins was his most challenging assignment to date.
It was, nonetheless, a very successful career move, and he has won plaudits from colleagues and clients alike.
In leading the healthcare communications agency, Mr. Star sets a clear vision, provides thoughtful guidance, and coaches his team to consider their challenges — and sometimes even themselves — in a different light.
Then he steps back and lets staff members chart their own course of excellence.
This approach sets a foundation of respect and distinction that satisfies clients and staff alike.
His open and engaging style also inspires a loyalty seldom seen in today’s fickle marketplace.
Mr. Star is deeply attuned to the challenges the pharmaceutical industry faces; he believes that creating a business model that does not rely on sales representatives to accomplish commercial objectives is one of the most difficult.
Mr. Star is the former president of the board of trustees of the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, the largest and oldest AIDS Service Organization in New Jersey, and firmly believes in charitable and community service and in giving back. F
Family: Wife, two daughters
Reading List: China: Fragile Superpower by Susan Shirk
Hobbies: Cycling, cooking, learning Mandarin
Giving Back: Former President of the Board of Trustees, The Hyacinth Foundation, N.J.
Bucket List: Sail across the Pacific
Inspiration: His family
Top iPod downloads: Classical music
Screensaver: ????????? — a quote from Mao (study hard and improve every day)
Most Unusual Place Visited: The Forbidden City in ­Beijing
Life Lessons: If you think you may have a problem, you do; understand it and fix it as fast as you can
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Visit Thomas Keller’s kitchen at The French Laundry
Getting Personal with
Larry Star
The interests, aptitudes, and talents of Ahnal Purohit, Ph.D., put her in a category that few can match. While excelling at problem solving, she astounds her colleagues with her sensibilities for creative concepts and executions. While leading her creative team to generate concepts and ideas, she is always willing and able to act as a resource and consultant to ensure the creative team is equipped with sound, actionable strategies.
Dr. Purohit’s background in psychometrics and her years teaching research methodology and statistics to aspiring medical professionals equipped her to move seamlessly into healthcare marketing. As VP of market research for a major company, she developed a deeper understanding of healthcare marketing and honed her intuitive strategic and creative insights.
What is remarkable about Dr. Purohit is that not only does she understand how healthcare professionals think, but she can translate that into how to market a product or service to them or educate them about something new.
All the while, she is sensitive to the resource limitations of clients, noting that a truly successful brand effort requires the blend of strategy and metrics to stretch a client’s marketing dollars efficiently and effectively.
While a brilliant businesswoman, there is so much more to Dr. Purohit. Aside from a degree in sociology/psychology, she has studied classical Indian dance, Bharata Natyam. She is fascinated with human history and travels to trace the origin of humanity. She is a proud mom, music and art lover, and aspiring chef. She serves on numerous boards, and she is deeply committed to social responsibility.
One of her major focuses is helping women from West Africa rebuild their health and self-esteem with the African Women’s Alliance in Support of Health (AWASH). The organization helps women who develop vesicovaginal fistula caused by childbirth or prenatal complications. Since AWASH was established, more than 2,500 surgeries have been performed to help change women’s lives. She is also committed to assisting people affected by cancer by partnering with the American Cancer Society, and supporting quality education and bringing constructive changes in the lives of differently abled children in Gujarat, India.
Dr. Purohit is also deeply committed to education and says one of her greatest concerns is the state of the education system. Statistics showing that the United States is falling behind in its international ranking trouble her because of the implications it has for the country being able to compete in the global economy. A grounded, comprehensive, and quality education must be available to every young adult.
As important is mentorship and learning from the adults in children’s lives. Thus, education requires involvement from parents and the community as well.
Whether Dr. Purohit is pursuing a personal, professional, or community initiative, the dynamic actions of this businesswoman, entrepreneur, mentor, and visionary make her someone who friends, industry colleagues, peers, and clients alike all look to for inspiration. F

Dr. Ahnal Purohit • Clear Leadership Metrics
Family: Husband, Ankur; Daughter, Anshal; Son-in-law, Rajesh
Reading List: The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Hobbies: Traveling, reading, cooking, and sudoku
Giving Back: AWASH (the African Women’s Alliance in ­Support of Health), The American Cancer Society, and The Mook Dhwani Trust
Bucket List: Continue tracing the origin of humanity, ­establish a scholarship fund in India, establish a chair at
the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy, and keep entrepreneurship alive and kicking in the industry
Inspiration: Fred Hassan and Indra Nooyi
Top iPod downloads: Poetry set to music, Gazals by Gulam Ali
Screensaver: Her grandson, Rain Sahar
Most Unusual Place Visited: An archaeological site in Hadar, Ethiopia, home to the 3.2-million-year-old artifact, Lucy.
Life Lessons: Think big, baby doll
Under the cloak of invisibility: Visit the Oval Office or a board of directors’ meeting at BP
Getting Personal with
Dr. Ahnal Purohit
Change is something many in the industry find uncomfortable, but it’s where Mike Soenen thrives.
Mr. Soenen co-founded ClearTrial on the premise of streamlining the clinical trials process. What the company’s software does is to make the planning, forecasting, and tracking of clinical projects and financial performance faster and more accurate.
Recognizing the paradigm shifts that face the industry, Mr. Soenen, CEO of ClearTrial, says the challenge for companies in the industry will be to transform in the face of the margin and productivity pressures that are hitting them square on. It’s the classic industry maturity curve, he says, and it will be interesting to see which companies have the ability to make the tough decisions that will enable them to turn this tight corner without ending up on the guardrail.
Sharing insights is certainly one key element to moving the needle. In his own case, Mr. Soenen observes a lot of companies and talks with many leaders in the life-sciences, entrepreneurial, and financing segments whose different perspectives help him distill his own thoughts and strategies.
He draws inspiration from all aspects of industry and life. He admires Steve Jobs for a rare blend of design elegance, functional pragmatism, and healthy disruption that is unmatched. He is inspired by his wife, who keeps him balanced, and his parents, who with very little, created a lot for their children, modeling and instilling the values of hard work, education, persistence, and broad perspective across the arts, the sciences, and the social dimension.
Generally, Mr. Soenen draws inspiration from people who combine their creative vision with a relentless pursuit of excellence to accomplish great things.
His drive is unmistakable, and he says while his parents taught him to work to his greatest potential, they didn’t explain how to tell when you’ve reached it — needless to say, he’s still striving for the best.
Having learned so much from others and in his own business pursuits, Mr. Soenen is now eager to share his experiences and learnings with other entrepreneurs.
Mr. Soenen is by no means wrapped up entirely in his professional pursuits. His interests are diverse, spanning music, sports, the arts, technical, financial, and creative. And he describes his three sons as the most important accomplishments of his life. F
Mike Soenen • Healthy Disruption
Family: Married, three sons
Hobbies: Water skiing, snow skiing, coaching football, fitness, travel
Giving Back: Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, American Cancer Society, National Multiple Sclerosis Society
Bucket List: Dramatically improve the life of a complete stranger; visit outer space; see the Great Barrier Reef; learn to play classical Spanish guitar; go to the Winter Olympics
Inspiration: His wife Karen; his mom and dad; Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, creative visionaries who pursue excellence to ­accomplish great things
Top iPod downloads: Salute Your Solution by the Raconteurs; Hard Sun by Eddie Vedder; Stepped on My J’z by Nelly; Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant
Most Unusual Place Visited: Las Vegas
Life Lessons: You don’t learn anything with your mouth open
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: The BP board room
Getting Personal with
Mike Soenen
The desire to make a difference in healthcare technology, information services, and consulting has prompted Michael Weintraub to launch/join several companies.
Mr. Weintraub has been a founder, CEO, or executive in each of these companies, playing a role in the conception, fundraising, and commercial success of companies, including Humedica, PHARMetrics, The Medstat Group, MediQual, and Amherst Associates.
Mr. Weintraub has always been forward-thinking and committed to moving healthcare data analytics ahead.
Earlier in his career, his focus was on providing life-sciences companies with insurance claims information. As personal health information became increasingly more digitized, he recognized that there was significant opportunity in leveraging data that reside in electronic medical records to improve patient care as well as to gain a better understanding of a particular market, therapeutic area, or brand.
The result was Humedica, a next-generation clinical informatics company.
Before launching Humedica, Mr. Weintraub served as senior managing director at Leerink Swann & Co., an investment banking firm that provides healthcare equity research, corporate finance, and asset management services. Before that, he was president and CEO of PHARMetrics, a healthcare claims informatics company, which was successfully sold to IMS Health in 2005. He has held senior leadership positions in several start-up and rapid-growth organizations, focused on the application of innovative decision support technology, information assets, and analytic services in healthcare.
Additionally, Mr. Weintraub serves as founding chairman of the board of Phreesia, a software solutions company that automates patient check-in and delivers fully interactive content direct to patients. He also serves on the board of Anceta, the American Medical Group Association’s medical informatics subsidiary. And he is one of the founding CEOs of the 12X12 initiative based in Massachusetts. The idea behind the initiative is to bring 12 of the state’s leading CEOs and 12 of its most high-profile venture capitalists together to identify, enable, and mentor the next generation of technology entrepreneurs.
The issues that most concern Mr. Weintraub beyond the industry are what he refers to as the three Es — education, the environment, and the economy. But with all his energies focused on healthcare, he’s relying on others to tackle these. F
Family: Married 22 years to Leslie; son Greg, 17; triplets
Connor, Lauren, and Ryan, 11
Hobbies: Keeping up with triplets, basketball, squash
Reading list: An endless daily assortment of healthcare blogs and media outlets
Screensaver: Rotating pictures of his children
Most Unusual place visited: Budapest, Hungary, while it was still a Soviet Communist satellite
Life lessons: Life is a journey so enjoy the ride because the destination is quite predictable
Bucket List: Living long enough to see a cure for diabetes
Getting Personal with
Michael Weintraub
Michael Weintraub • A Mine of Ideas
Change is one constant in the career of Una Ryan, Ph.D. She thrives on taking on new challenges and has proven herself time and again.
After a long career in academia as a professor of medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine, Dr. Ryan attracted the attention of Monsanto for the work she was doing on pulmonary endothelial cells in the area of vascular biology.
After a period with Monsanto, Dr. Ryan jumped at an opportunity to work in a different field, taking a job as chief scientific officer at TCell Sciences, which was conducting research on complement inhibitors, an early part of the immune and inflammatory cascade.
The field and research programs so absorbed Dr. Ryan that she was frequently selected to tell the company’s science story to Wall Street. It wasn’t surprising that ultimately she became the company’s CEO.
Again, Dr. Ryan embraced an approach few company leaders at the time considered, and she began a series of merger and acquisition activities.
It was rare in the mid-1990s for companies to consider mergers and acquisitions as a way to grow, though the strategy is common today.
The merger between TCell and Virus Research Institute (VRI) essentially created a new entity, and Dr. Ryan realized neither name was appropriate, so the company was given a new name, Avant Immunotherapeutics.
During her 15 years at the helm of Avant, Dr. Ryan oversaw several other moves. Avant acquired a small company in St. Louis called Megan Health, which brought with it vaccine technologies.
Then Dr. Ryan and her team acquired the intellectual property assets of a small company in San Diego that gave them the ability to make their vaccines temperature-stable.
Avant later merged with Celldex Therapeutics and has since been integrated into that organization.
Always on the lookout for new opportunities, Dr. Ryan decided on another big change, this time into the area of water treatment. But while taking over at Waltham Technologies appeared to be a dramatic change, there was a strong overlap between what she had been doing at Avant and Waltham.
The idea was to bioengineer algae to recycle waste materials, such as industrial enzymes and oils for biodiesel. So while Waltham was using blue-green algae (bacteria), Avant had been using bacteria as a manufacturing platform to make vaccines.
Today, Dr. Ryan is leading the nonprofit company Diagnostics for All to help produce low-cost, easy-to-use diagnostics for the developing world. F
Dr. Una Ryan • Thriving on Change
Family: Husband, Dr. Allan D. Callow; two ­daughters, Tamsin and Amy; two grandchildren, Scully and Tabitha, and one more on the way
Reading List: Nonsense Rhymes by Edward Lear
Hobbies: Chinese antiques
Bucket List: Save lives through diagnostics
Inspiration: Strong women leaders
Screensaver: A dragon picture she drew
Most Unusual Place Visited: MalaMala, a game reserve in South Africa
Life Lessons: Have confidence in your data
Under the cloak of invisibility: Watch herself critically
Getting Personal with
dr. una Ryan
Highly acclaimed cardiologist Joel Morganroth, M.D., has been influencing cardiovascular safety and efficacy issues for many years. And as chairman and chief scientist of
eResearch Technology, he is keeping the company ahead of the trends that are changing centralized core-diagnostic electrocardiographic (ECG) technology and services to evaluate cardiac safety in clinical development. ERT also provides technology and services to streamline the clinical trials process by enabling its customers to automate the collection, analysis, and distribution of ePRO clinical data in all phases of clinical development.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Morganroth organized an Annual Meeting of the Symposium on New Drugs and Devices in Philadelphia. These meetings were instrumental in bringing together authorities from academia, the FDA, and the industry to discuss primarily cardiovascular safety and efficacy issues pertinent for regulatory initiatives.
In August 1993, the proceedings from the 1992 symposium were published as the entire issue of The American Journal of Cardiology entitled, “QTc Interval Prolongation: Is It Beneficial or Harmful?" under Dr. Morganroth’s direction, 12 years before the finalization of the ICH-E14 Guidance on the same topic.
Moreover, Dr. Morganroth was a prime contributor to the concepts behind determining the cardiac safety of new drugs.
Through many forums, Dr. Morganroth provides comprehensive, strategic consultation on medical and regulatory cardiac safety issues, having served the FDA and regulatory authorities in Canada and Europe for many years.
Through his insights, his company ERT has developed new solutions for assessing cardiac safety of new drugs in compliance with worldwide legislation, with the ultimate aim of safeguarding human health.
Dr. Morganroth is one of several scientists who has been awarded a Special Citation from the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for providing invaluable assistance to the FDA for the development of a format for regulatory submission of digital annotated ECGs. F
Dr. Joel Morganroth • Safety Innovator
Family: Wife, Gail Morrison, M.D.; Son, Jason; Daughters, Jennifer and Jessica
A little known fact: Dr. Morganroth served in the U.S. Public Health Service as a surgeon, with the rank of Lt. Commander
Getting Personal with
Dr. Joel Morganroth
Qforma has realized unprecedented growth — an achievement many at the company attribute to the innovative leadership of Al Reicheg as chief commercial officer. Thanks to the commercial structure he has built, Qforma has enjoyed growth rates of between 50% and 100% each of the past three years, an achievement Mr. Reicheg rates as his career highlight.
Mr. Reicheg joined Qforma, a provider of advanced analytics and predictive modeling technologies for the health-sciences industry, in 2006, having already built a solid reputation as an innovative leader in establishing, repositioning, and growing brands for specialty pharmaceutical companies.
His early sales success in the industry led to leadership positions in marketing and managed care with such companies as MedPointe Pharmaceuticals and Savient Pharmaceuticals, where he led cross-functional teams in all areas of brand management. His marketing experience has spanned all phases of product development in a variety of therapeutic categories.
After 17 years on the client side, he took a risk and began a second career on the service side. It was a transformative decision, and Mr. Reicheg has never been more satisfied professionally as he has been the last four years. He describes himself as fortunate to work with an extremely gifted team of individuals who are passionate about their work, and he finds himself in the extremely gratifying position of providing industry leaders with solutions to critical business problems.
At Qforma, Mr. Reicheg mines his rich sales and marketing experience to oversee all aspects of sales, and he is responsible for business development activities that include forging strategic relationships with organizations that serve complementary markets in need of Qforma analytical solutions.
His leadership has fueled Qforma’s success and growth on every front. On his watch, Qforma has quadrupled its staff on the commercial side, added a commercial line of services to support pharma company customers’ strategic initiatives, expanded its channel partner relationships to include medical education and ad agencies, and added new solutions to meet customers needs, such as iQTrax, a solution developed by Mr. Reicheg to measure the ROI of sales, marketing, and speaker programs.
His ideas have revolutionized the way customers structure their sales organizations, target customers, and measure their success. With Mr. Reicheg’s guidance, tomorrow’s solutions are being implemented today with cutting-edge technology and foresight.
Having experienced both the client and services side, he recognizes the challenges around healthcare reform, where payers are playing a larger role in consumer decisions, and a large pool of previously uninsured people are entering the system. He says as a result, pharmaceutical companies are being forced to re-examine their existing business models and make critical decisions based on incomplete data. F
Family: Wife, three children
Reading List: Bounce by Matthew Syed
Bucket List: Be a mentor to an entrepreneur, have an apartment in a big city, create a charitable foundation
Inspiration: His father, who has never been swayed by peer pressure and always does what he believes is right
Top iPod downloads: More than 85,000 songs; a few favorites — Redemption Song, remake by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer; Picture, Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock; and tons of Bruce Springsteen, required as an N.J. native
Screensaver: Sunrise at Long Beach Island, N.J.
Life Lessons: Always do 20% more than your boss has asked of you
Getting Personal with
Al Reicheg
Al Reicheg • Strategy Leads the Way
For the third time in his career, Clifford Reid, Ph.D., is tapping into a fairly unknown field and helping to make history.
Complete Genomics is Dr. Reid’s latest venture and his most exciting to date. The company was founded in 2006 on a shared vision to provide high-throughput, affordable, and complete genome sequencing of human populations. Their goal was to enable commercial-scale research of the genetic mechanisms underlying drug responses and complex diseases, ensuring important advances in the diagnostic and therapeutic markets.
Complete Genomics’ mission is to provide the preferred solution for complete human genome sequencing and analysis. It is currently building a high-throughput commercial human genome sequencing center in California. Further expansion is planned by opening satellite sequencing centers in other countries to significantly accelerate human disease research worldwide. The center in Mountain View, Calif., will serve as the prototype for the other centers. A huge highlight for Dr. Reid was when the company published its three human genomes in Science in January this year.
Dr. Reid believes strongly in genomic sequencing’s potential to expand the understanding of the basis, treatment, and prevention of complex diseases, and he is eager to help ensure that the information generated is not  abused. It is important, he says, to make sure that people will not be discriminated against by employers, health insurance companies, and other interested parties, based on the likelihood of them developing a disease.
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) provides a good starting point, but there will need to be additional safeguards put into place over the next few years, he says.
He has had multiple successes, though he acknowledges there have been missed opportunities. At Verity, he was 10 years too early to be Google, and at Eloquent he was 10 years too early to be Facebook. In both cases, he focused on the business-to-business (B2B) markets and ignored the B2C (consumer) markets, and both times he was wrong about the major impact of the technology. Thus, he lives by his motto, never give up, saying the third time is the charm. F
Reading List: The Last Lion by William Manchester; Team of Rivals by Doris Goodwin; Who Got Einstein’s Office by Ed Regis; The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine by Francis S. Collins
Giving Back: Member, MIT Corporation Development Committee; fundraiser, Pacifica Education Foundation
Inspiration: Dr. Rade Drmanac, John Curson, Complete Genomics’ co-founders
Life Lessons: The thing we all fear most professionally is being redundant
Under the cloak of invisibility: Travel the world in first class and attend high-level briefings at the White House
Getting Personal with
Dr. Clifford Reid
Dr. Clifford Reid • Third Time around
When difficulties arise, the best leaders rise up to meet those challenges and bring about inspired success. Jay Bolling, president and CEO of Roska Healthcare, recognized that change was needed to help shift the company’s focus to explore more targeted and efficient marketing and advertising solutions.
He adapted the corporate structure to address the changing needs of its target audience — across brands, corporate departments, communication channels, and in the absence of personal selling efforts.
While the agency has been discussing direct/relationship marketing strategies and approaches with pharmaceutical companies for the past 20 years, the demand in 2010 has never been greater.
To meet clients’ needs, Mr. Bolling and his team have been exploring the potential of social media within the real and perceived regulatory restrictions — both corporate and industry. The challenge has been to shine a spotlight on the continuum of social media and regulatory guidelines and help Roska’s clients find their comfort zone in this powerful medium.
During his career, Mr. Bolling has had many mentors, including his former colleague Jon Roska and Vox Medica CEO Don Phillips, whose focus on making good things happen supersedes the petty industry rivalries that inhibit real progress in so many instances.
Mr. Bolling says even though Mr. Phillips and he run competitive healthcare agencies, Mr. Phillips has gone out of his way to introduce him to key contacts, has shared his insights on agency operations, and has helped him succeed in any way he can.
One of his greatest mentors, however, is someone with no connection to the industry: Capt. Bob Francis of the Possessor on Nantucket Island. Despite having only having a high school education, he was such a powerful leader and in such command of his chosen craft, the titans of industry from around the world would come to Nantucket Island to fish with him.
In fact, Mr. Bolling wears a fishing leader around his neck, a practice he started many years ago when charter fishing with Mr. Francis. It was useful to have one readily accessible to rerig a rod quickly when a customer snapped her or his line. Mr. Bolling was still working with Mr. Francis when he passed away suddenly and remembers removing the leader from his neck and placing it with him when he was buried. Ever since then, Mr. Bolling has worn one as a memory to his friend and mentor, and as a reminder of what is really important in life — people, integrity, and clarity of purpose. It serves as a compass that keeps him moving in the right direction. F
Family: Wife; three daughters, 16, 14, and 13
Reading List: Standing Still by Kelly Simmons; Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel; Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
Giving Back: Something To Do Foundation
Bucket List: Travel, travel, and more travel to see good friends around the world
Inspiration: His daughters, conquering everyday challenges of being teenagers; his wife, a published author of two novels; friends who have accomplished great things in work and life; the 60 people he works with every day
Screensaver: The view of Nantucket Harbor from the widow’s walk on the roof of the family house, which has been in the family for four generations
Most Unusual Places Visited: South Africa, Thailand, Japan, and India
Life Lessons: Listen
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Visit the Oval Office or the Situation Room
Jay Bolling • Rising to the Challenge
Getting Personal with
Jay Bolling
Each morning John Spitznagel starts his day in the office with a good morning to everyone, regularly stopping in to check how things are going with employees on both a professional and personal level. Though it means he sometimes has to be reminded about a meeting, taking this time is of the utmost importance to him, as he wants his staff to know he is available for them.
His respect for individuals within the organization is without question, and he embraces a philosophy of fairness that can be rare in leaders. While he expects the best from his staff, he realizes that people have lives outside the office and treats those commitments as equally as important as the work they do each day.
In fact, he encourages employees to drop into his office anytime to chat about all aspects of business and life. Fiercely loyal and extraordinarily generous, Mr. Spitznagel serves as an inspiration on how to be a leader.
His business achievements have been impressive time again, from turning BioCryst Pharmaceuticals into a viable company to the dramatic turnaround at Reed & Carnrick, to successfully negotiating a merger for Roberts Pharmaceutical with Shire.
Over the years, team members have followed Mr. Spitznagel on his journey through a series of specialty pharma ventures, including at ESP Pharma, which he made profitable in less than a year, Esprit Pharma, which was sold to Allergan in 2007, and now at Oceana Therapeutics, which continues that tradition of serving unmet patient needs with its broad product focus, including specialty devices, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals.
Mr. Spitznagel began his career in 1964 at Warner-Lambert in sales and marketing. He spent almost 10 years at Hoffmann-La Roche and 10 years at American Home Products, where he was senior VP of marketing and sales for Wyeth. F
John Spitznagel • Checking in with the Team
Family: Two children, three grandchildren, with two more on the way
Reading List: The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Hobbies: Sailing, fishing, swimming
Giving Back: Rider University trustee
Bucket List: Fish Patagonia; sail Greek Islands; visit Russia, Australia, and New Zealand
Inspiration: Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, David Tierney, his father, his late wife Yvonne, and his current wife, Mary Ann
Screensaver: Sailboat
Most Unusual Places Visited: Libya and
Antarctica
Life Lessons: Reward positive behavior, ignore negative
A Little Know Fact: Enjoys reading poetry
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Travel on Air Force One
Getting Personal with
John Spitznagel
Vicente Anido Jr., Ph.D., has served as president and CEO of ISTA Pharmaceuticals since December 2001. Since that time, he and his management team have grown the company into the fourth-largest branded ophthalmic pharmaceutical business in the United States. ISTA’s four marketed products, plus its product candidates, include therapies for inflammation, ocular pain, allergy, glaucoma, and dry eye.
Before joining ISTA, Dr. Anido served as president and CEO of CombiChem Inc., where he grew the drug discovery company from 15 employees to 105 employees with more than $20 million in revenue when it was acquired by DuPont Pharmaceuticals in 1999.
Previously, Dr. Anido was president of the Americas region of Allergan where he managed 1,000 employees and acquired four companies in 18 months.
Dr. Anido no doubt put that merger and acquisition experience to good use during his time as general partner of Windamere Venture Partners from June 2000 to September 2001.
In addition to heading ISTA, Dr. Anido serves on the board of directors of BIOCOM, the largest regional life-science association in the world, representing more than 570 member companies in Southern California.
He is equally as generous with his time outside the confines of the life-sciences industry. He and his wife of almost 35 years are involved in several personal causes, including the Susan B. Komen Foundation, the Adoption Guild of Orange County, and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. F
Family: Wife, Patty; Son, Vince; Daughters, Cassie and Angie; Granddaughter, Chloe
Reading List: Seven or eight newspapers online
hobbies: Golf, personal fitness, and flying
Giving Back: Susan B. Komen Foundation, Adoption Guild of Orange County, Children’s Hospital of Orange County
Bucket List: Fly a high-performance fighter jet
Top iPod downloads: Bon Jovi, Santana
Screensaver: View of Newport Beach Harbor from the back of his house
Most Unusual Place Visited: Singapore
Life Lessons: Don’t spend any time on things that will not help achieve your goals
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: The Space Station
Getting Personal with
Dr. Vicente Anido Jr.
Dr. VicentE Anido Jr. • Flying high
In a recent meeting with 24 other executives of i3’s parent company, the company leaders were asked to describe the traits of each of the participants whom they most valued. The words most frequently used to describe Glenn Bilawsky were impassioned and focused. These words reflect the fact that Mr. Bilawsky commits entirely to the things in life that are the most important to him: his wife of almost 30 years, his family, and the thousands of people around the world who work for i3 and their families who count on him to make the best decisions he can every day.
He says it’s not hard to maintain focus if he keeps all of these people top of mind.
As a leader who cares deeply for his professional family, Mr. Bilawsky says the biggest challenge for him has been the effect of the economic downturn on the industry. He says any decision he has had to make that involves jobs and the impact on a family’s livelihood, no matter how justified and necessary for the greater good, is very hard.
Above all he believes leaders need to take ownership. This was driven home to him years ago when he was employed at the McNeil division of Johnson & Johnson when the historical Tylenol tampering case occurred. It was one of those, “I can still remember where I was when I got the news," days, he says. He observed an executive team and company perform at its best and take social responsibility to a new level — a stark contrast to the recent events involving BP.
Among those who have most impressed Mr. Bilawsky are: James Burke, CEO, J&J during the Tylenol crisis; Dennis Gillings, CEO of Quintiles Transnational, whose visionary, big-thinking, and risk-taking approach took Quintiles to the top of the industry in the 1990s and kept it there ever since; Richard Anderson, CEO, Delta Airlines, and with whom Mr. Bilawsky worked for a while at UnitedHealth, for his ability to assimilate knowledge at lightning speed and then act decisively; and Stephen Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, who took over the top spot when the company was in crisis, managed through it, then immediately was faced with a very aggressive and polarizing political environment, including national healthcare reform.
The greatest inspiration for Mr. Bilawsky comes, however, from his father, who at 86 and after 64 years of marriage goes every day, twice a day, to feed and visit his wife, Mr. Bilawsky’s mother, an advanced Alzheimer’s patient. Caring and committed are not adequate words to describe him, Mr. Bilawsky says, adding that he is fortunate to have witnessed true, unconditional, and everlasting love. F
Focusing on What Matters Most
Family: Wife, Bonnie; three children — Daughter, 27; Sons 23 and 19
hobbies: Vintage high-performance cars, skiing, and music
Giving Back: Causes related to health challenges faced by family and friends
Bucket List: Ski someday with his grandson (now just 7 months); have dinner with Michael Schumacher, seven-time Formula 1 World Champion; sail the Polynesian Islands with his family; live deep in the Rocky Mountains again, even if only for a brief time
Inspiration: His father
Top iPod downloads: Remastered Beatles; blues guitarists, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Coco Montoya; classic 60s and 70s rock and roll; Latin jazz; and great female vocalists
Most Unusual Place Visited: A tour of East Berlin around midnight soon after the Berlin wall came down, where the culture of communist military oppression had not yet lifted although the wall and soldiers were gone
Life Lessons: Your luck will improve in proportion to how hard you work
A little-known fact: After college graduation, he moved to Vail, Colo., and worked and skied for three very memorable years
Under the cloak of invisibility: North Korea and Iran; on a lighter side, stand on stage next to Paul McCartney the next time he plays a concert
Getting Personal with
Glenn Bilawsky
Lynnette Cooke takes the advice she received from her father after a promotion to heart: hard work and dedication always count, build a good team, and lead fairly and well.
In fact, she keeps this missive on her BlackBerry to remind her of what’s important in business; to remind her of what’s important in the greater scheme of life, the screensaver of that same BlackBerry features a photo of her and her son and a bug garden they made together.
As a working mom who manages to find balance and make it look effortless, she is an inspiration to those throughout the Kantar Health organization.
Her staff has identified her as one of the most important people in the industry today because of who she is, and who she will be tomorrow — high praise indeed.
In her role as Global CEO, Ms. Cooke looks to mesh the various competencies of the five distinct companies that united to form Kantar Health.
As Ms. Cooke looks to some of the trends that are expected to shape the industry — social media, declining pipelines, more demands for risk assessment, etc. — she can’t help but recall a defining moment in the industry that shifted an even greater focus toward performance and accountability from pharmaceutical manufacturers: the recall of Vioxx from the market.
Drawing inspiration from her parents, she would someday like to take an extended visit to the Philippines, where they grew up. F
Family: Husband, Bill; Son, Joseph, 4
Reading List: Uniting the Virtual Workforce by Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly
Hobbies: Skiing, listening to music, and seeing the world through her son’s eyes
Giving Back: Angel’s Place and the Center for Women’s Reproductive Care (CWRC) at Columbia University
Bucket List: Help set up one of the homes for Angel’s Place; attend the Formula 1 race in ­Monaco; take a watercolor painting class in Provence, France; live or take a sabbatical in the Philippines to spend time where her parents grew up
Inspiration: Her parents
Screensaver: A photo of her son and a bug ­garden they made together
Life Lessons: Hard work and dedication always count, build a good team and lead fairly and well — her father
Getting Personal with Lynnette Cooke
A Leader for Today and Tomorrow
As head of a global business, David Brennan has traveled the world and met the most interesting and stimulating people.
He comes by his hefty frequent flyer miles the hard way. He is the past chairman of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a current member of the executive board of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), a member of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, a member of the National Institutes of Health Roundtable on Evidence Based Medicine, a commissioner of the U.K. Commission for Employment and Skills, and sits on the advisory board of the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management in China.
Closer to home, Mr. Brennan also served as chairman of the board of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Heart Association, and he is an honorary board member of the U.S. CEO Roundtable on Cancer.
As CEO of AstraZeneca, he is bringing all of these experiences to bear to improve the medicines that the company can bring to market to improve patients’ lives.
Mr. Brennan began his career in 1975 at Merck, where he rose from sales representative in the U.S. division to general manager of Chibret International, a French subsidiary of Merck specializing in ophthalmics.
He joined AstraMerck in 1992 with responsibility for helping to build the joint venture into a multi-billion dollar business in the United States. He says this assignment was one of the most exciting of his career.
Before the AstraZeneca merger he was responsible for business planning and development at Astra Pharmaceuticals. He was appointed senior VP of commercial operations of AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP in 1999.
Patients aren’t the only people Mr. Brennan has concern for. He is well aware that leadership starts at the top and that people in a large organization look to their CEO to reinforce messages around values. And the values he espouses are centered around diversity, transparency, honesty, and integrity.
To make sure he stays in touch with the almost 63,000 AstraZeneca employees located around the world — Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia — he’s started to use Yammer to communicate with employees.
He believes that any forum that enables everyone to engage with each other more to solve problems and share experiences, and to be more collaborative, is valuable. F
David Brennan • A World Perspective
Family: Married, four children, six grandchildren
Reading List: Whatever is on his Kindle
Hobbies: Scuba diving, cycling, ­photography
Screensaver: “Making the most meaningful ­difference to patient health through great medicines."
Most Unusual Place Visited: Too many to name
Getting Personal with
David Brennan
A great leader is one who not only has the vision, but is able to present that vision in a way that excites and mobilizes personnel. That’s the approach that Chris Viehbacher has adopted throughout his career, and it’s proving a winner at French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis.
In addition, he says when seeking to drive change, it must be handled from the top, communicated personally by the CEO to the entire workforce. And ultimately, a leader must be guided by a fundamental series of values. Having a strong, core set of values gives the workforce a sound basis in turbulent times.
One such example of being values driven arose in the midst of the H1N1 crisis. Rather than focus on making a profit from the situation by selling to wealthy nations, Sanofi-Aventis committed to providing 100 million doses of the vaccine to the World Health Organization to help developing countries fight the pandemic.
Mr. Viehbacher has been CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, holding company of BiPar Sciences Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis U.S. since September 2008, and he also serves as its managing director. Mr. Viehbacher serves as the CEO of Sanofi-Aventis SA, and is a director of the company.
Before joining the diversified healthcare company, he was president of North American Pharmaceuticals for GlaxoSmithKline, and before that he was president of the U.S. pharmaceuticals division for GSK, and served as member of its corporate executive team.
Mr. Viehbacher joined what was then Glaxo Wellcome in 1988 as chief financial accountant, and he had served in a variety of capacities with the company.
Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a certified public accountant.
He also commits his time to industry groups, serving as director of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) as well as a board member. In addition he is a member of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry, CEO Advisory Council, North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, and Triangle United Way.
In 2002, he served as one of two industry representatives on the G10 High Level Working Group sponsored by the European Commission to restore the competitiveness of the EU pharmaceutical industry.
In 2003, the French Republic recognized him with its prestigious Légion d’Honneur award for his contributions to business and healthcare.
Mr. Viehbacher holds German and Canadian citizenships, and he speaks English, French, and German. F
Chris Viehbacher • Defining the Vision
Getting Personal with
Chris Viehbacher
Family: Married, three children
Deborah Dunsire, M.D., says any success she has achieved during her career has been as a direct result of her being open to and aware of other options that may present themselves when least expected.
An industry analogy is that in the business of developing medicines to treat and cure unmet medical needs, breakthroughs often occur in R&D by something unforeseen, and only through an ability to react to this change can one maximize the moment and turn it into something extraordinary, she says.
With a career that has taken her from her first job in a private and hospital practice in Johannesburg, South Africa, to an international product management role in Basel, Switzerland, to a senior VP and head of North American oncology position in East Hanover, N.J. (and other significant stops along the way), to president and CEO of Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company, in Weston, Mass., it’s been a natural, albeit whirlwind, path to the top for Dr. Dunsire.
Her natural curiosity paired with an optimistic outlook have positioned her for corporate greatness, her colleagues say.
She admits that she loves to learn new things every day — from the people who work with her and from all of her personal interactions. A great day for Dr. Dunsire is when she has the chance to go from learning about autophagy and protein dysregulation in cancer to learning about ancient Greece from her 11-year-old son.
She is admired for her ability to see the best side of most situations and for seeing a path to make the next opportunity better.
Aside from the rigors of the day-to-day responsibilities of running a biotech company, she believes the biggest challenges she and her peers face today are: trust, innovation and personalizing medicine.
The industry’s ability to bring forward new innovations will depend on increasing benefit risk ratio through picking the right patients to benefit. This is the path to manage cost and also to build trust with the public and regulators. Intellectual property, health outcomes, and reimbursement are three issues that are also top of mind, she says.
Dr. Dunsire’s capacity for giving back to those in need is part of what inspires her colleagues.
She and her husband support a mission in India, which teaches widows a trade and enables them to work and helps care for orphan and abandoned children by feeding, housing, and educating them. This work is important to her because it enables women who have lost their bread-winner spouse to support themselves and their families in spite of having no primary education or path to support themselves outside of a marriage. Her desire is to help them find their path to self-determination and self-respect. She also passionately believes that children will not have a future if they are undernourished and uneducated but if they can gain hope, faith, and an education they have a chance for a future that will perhaps will change their world.
Dr. Dunsire still finds time to support another church mission in Haiti, which provides micro-loans to start new businesses. Additionally, she funds an orphanage and school.
Closer to home, she spends time helping the Museum of Science in Boston to support Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education in U.S. schools.
She supports this work because she is very concerned at how far the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in school performance in these disciplines. F
Maximizing the Moment
Family: Husband, Michael L. Hall, M.D.; two sons
Reading List: Built to Last by Jim Collins; SuperCorp by Rosabeth Moss Kanter; Basic Black by Cathie Black; Winning by Jack Welch; Leading from the Inside Out by Kevin Cashman; Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan; Leading through ­Innovation by Charles O’Reilly and Michael Tushman; The Triple Bottom Line by Andrew Savitz; The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown; Executive Orders by Tom Clancy; The Language of God by Francis Collins; The Bible
Hobbies: Community and church volunteer work, ­gardening (roses), bicycling, downhill skiing
Giving Back: Mission work — India, Haiti; Museum of Science Boston; Multiple Myeloma Research ­Foundation; CancerCare Inc.
Bucket List: Visit the Galapagos Islands; Fiji; Nepal; Alaska; Antarctica; climb Kilimanjaro
Inspiration: People suffering with cancer who need better medicines
Top iPod downloads: The Katie Melua collection; Santana
Most Unusual Place Visited: A spa in Marrakech, Morocco
Life Lessons: You can’t be too sure of the path you’re on because you might shut down some side roads that are incredibly important
Under The Cloak of Invisibility: Visit the Oval Office
Getting Personal with
Dr. Deborah Dunsire
Alex Gorsky has spent the majority of his 20-plus year career within the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. Currently, he is the worldwide chairman of J&J’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics Group and a member of the company’s executive committee; these are roles he assumed in September 2009.
Within his various J&J posts, he has been responsible for the successful commercialization of multiple blockbuster drugs. For example, as president of Janssen Pharmaceutica in the United States, his accomplishments included the commercial development of Risperdal, Duragesic, Aciphex, and Reminyl.
Even during a brief hiatus from J&J, when he assumed the role as chief operating officer for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. and then later as head of pharma North America and CEO for Novartis, his launch success continued.
Under his leadership, Novartis received approval for and launched a number of key new products. Mr. Gorsky oversaw the continued growth of Novartis’ cardiovascular franchise, which includes blockbuster products Diovan and Lotrel. He oversaw the launch of Enablex, a product for overactive bladder, and completed a deal with Procter & Gamble to co-promote and further develop the product. He was also involved in the launch of Focalin XR for ADHD.
An advocate of diversity and inclusion, Mr. Gorsky was named the 2009 Mentor of the Year by the HBA. He is the executive sponsor of J&J’s Women’s Leadership Initiative. F
Alex Gorsky • Launch Master
Family: Wife, Pat; Son, Nicholas
hobbies: Marathon runner, triathlete, English ­literature, fitness
Getting Personal with
Alex Gorsky
A great leader is one who not only has the vision, but is able to present that vision in a way that excites and mobilizes personnel. That’s the approach that Chris Viehbacher has adopted throughout his career, and it’s proving a winner at French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis.
In addition, he says when seeking to drive change, it must be handled from the top, communicated personally by the CEO to the entire workforce. And ultimately, a leader must be guided by a fundamental series of values. Having a strong, core set of values gives the workforce a sound basis in turbulent times.
One such example of being values driven arose in the midst of the H1N1 crisis. Rather than focus on making a profit from the situation by selling to wealthy nations, Sanofi-Aventis committed to providing 100 million doses of the vaccine to the World Health Organization to help developing countries fight the pandemic.
Mr. Viehbacher has been CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, holding company of BiPar Sciences Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis U.S. since September 2008, and he also serves as its managing director. Mr. Viehbacher serves as the CEO of Sanofi-Aventis SA, and is a director of the company.
Before joining the diversified healthcare company, he was president of North American Pharmaceuticals for GlaxoSmithKline, and before that he was president of the U.S. pharmaceuticals division for GSK, and served as member of its corporate executive team.
Mr. Viehbacher joined what was then Glaxo Wellcome in 1988 as chief financial accountant, and he had served in a variety of capacities with the company.
Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a certified public accountant.
He also commits his time to industry groups, serving as director of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) as well as a board member. In addition he is a member of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry, CEO Advisory Council, North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, and Triangle United Way.
In 2002, he served as one of two industry representatives on the G10 High Level Working Group sponsored by the European Commission to restore the competitiveness of the EU pharmaceutical industry.
In 2003, the French Republic recognized him with its prestigious Légion d’Honneur award for his contributions to business and healthcare.
Mr. Viehbacher holds German and Canadian citizenships, and he speaks English, French, and German. F
Chris Viehbacher • Defining the Vision
Getting Personal with
Chris Viehbacher
Family: Married, three children

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unch of Enablex, a product for overactive bladder, and completed a deal with Procter & Gamble to co-promote and further develop the product. He was also involved in the launch of Focalin XR for ADHD.
An advocate of diversity and inclusion, Mr. Gorsky was named the 2009 Mentor of the Year by the HBA. He is the executive sponsor of J&J’s Women’s Leadership Initiative. F
Alex Gorsky • Launch Master
Family: Wife, Pat; Son, Nicholas
hobbies: Marathon runner, triathlete, English ­literature, fitness
Getting Personal with
Alex Gorsky
A great leader is one who not only has the vision, but is able to present that vision in a way that excites and mobilizes personnel. That’s the approach that Chris Viehbacher has adopted throughout his career, and it’s proving a winner at French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis.
In addition, he says when seeking to drive change, it must be handled from the top, communicated personally by the CEO to the entire workforce. And ultimately, a leader must be guided by a fundamental series of values. Having a strong, core set of values gives the workforce a sound basis in turbulent times.
One such example of being values driven arose in the midst of the H1N1 crisis. Rather than focus on making a profit from the situation by selling to wealthy nations, Sanofi-Aventis committed to providing 100 million doses of the vaccine to the World Health Organization to help developing countries fight the pandemic.
Mr. Viehbacher has been CEO of Sanofi-Aventis, holding company of BiPar Sciences Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis U.S. since September 2008, and he also serves as its managing director. Mr. Viehbacher serves as the CEO of Sanofi-Aventis SA, and is a director of the company.
Before joining the diversified healthcare company, he was president of North American Pharmaceuticals for GlaxoSmithKline, and before that he was president of the U.S. pharmaceuticals division for GSK, and served as member of its corporate executive team.
Mr. Viehbacher joined what was then Glaxo Wellcome in 1988 as chief financial accountant, and he had served in a variety of capacities with the company.
Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a certified public accountant.
He also commits his time to industry groups, serving as director of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) as well as a board member. In addition he is a member of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry, CEO Advisory Council, North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, and Triangle United Way.
In 2002, he served as one of two industry representatives on the G10 High Level Working Group sponsored by the European Commission to restore the competitiveness of the EU pharmaceutical industry.
In 2003, the French Republic recognized him with its prestigious Légion d’Honneur award for his contributions to business and healthcare.
Mr. Viehbacher holds German and Canadian citizenships, and he speaks English, French, and German. F
Chris Viehbacher • Defining the Vision
Getting Personal with
Chris Viehbacher
Family: Married, three children