Laura A. Halloran, President, Halloran Consulting Group, Inc.

Ms. Halloran is the President of Halloran Consulting Group (HCG), founded in 1998 with the vision of improving the clinical stage trial development planning and execution process at biopharmaceutical companies. Through strategic regulatory planning, the development of the clinical operations infrastructure, process optimization and training, quality systems development and organizational improvement, Halloran improves the development organization’s contributions to the company’s strategic priorities. With 23 years in clinical affairs management including both senior clinical management positions in a CRO (PAREXEL) as well as in biotechnology (Oxigene and Antigenics), Ms Halloran has become recognized as an industry expert - speaking, publishing and training throughout the world on best practices. Ms. Halloran is a frequent speaker at global industry meetings and has been invited to speak frequently internationally on strategic planning and clinical research management. She is an adjunct professor of Boston University Medical School and George Washington University.

Nancy Levy, Ph.D., Founder and Managing Partner, BioHealth Management, LLC

Nancy Levy is the founder and managing partner of BioHealth Management, LLC, a commercial strategy and business development consulting firm based just outside Boston, Massachusetts. She is an expert in aligning corporate, business and scientific goals. She succeeds by driving and implementing customer centric commercialization strategies that dominate the competition. She has extensive start-up and later stage experience, including corporate strategy, development strategy and partnering strategy both in the USA and in Europe. She has built a solid reputation on her broad biopharmaceutical experience base and deep industry knowledge, combined with a strong technical background. Nancy has worked with a wide range of clients, from pre-IPO to mid-market companies, and from venture capitalists to investment bankers. At Millennium Pharmaceuticals she established a successful collaboration with alliance partner, Genentech, to bring a Phase II product with potential first drug in indication to market. Nancy served for four years as President and CEO of Immunetics, a medical devices company located in Cambridge, MA where she raised three rounds of financing and managed the processes for the first FDA products. At Genzyme she built a clinical devices business, including the purchase, integration, and management of a German infectious disease company. She is on the board of Acceleration Pharmaceuticals and The LaVoie Group, as well as a member of Newton-Wellesley Hospital Board of overseers. Other Honors include: featured entrepreneur in the Wall Street Journal, Closing the Gender Gap, and first place in Business Plan contest, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She has been invited to speak at numerous international conferences including a recent conference in Barcelona entitled IP, Licensing and Value Creation.  She is an adjunct professor at the Boston University School of Management where she created and is teaching an over-view course on the biotechnology and medical device industry. Nancy has been on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where she also did her fellowship. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Kevin Carroll, Partner, Heritage Partners International

Kevin has more than fifteen years of executive recruiting and sales experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. Prior to joining HPI, he was Life Science Practice Leader at Phillips DiPisa where he focused on searches for senior executives in such roles as CEO, CFO, VP of Sales, Chief Medical Officer, as well as VP's of Regulatory, Bio Medical Informatics, Medical Affairs and Clinical Development. Prior to Phillips DiPisa, Kevin was Director of National Accounts at The Bowdoin Group, where his work included recruiting senior-level management talent for commercial, medical and clinical affairs roles, as well as developing and managing large scale hiring projects for sales and field-based medical affairs teams. Kevin started his career in the life sciences industry selling pharmaceuticals for Bristol-Myers Squibb in Boston hospitals and clinics. Earlier in his career, Kevin conducted due diligence reports for Bishops Services, Inc, the country’s oldest financial investigative firm He served in the military as an Army officer and aviator. Kevin was also a teacher and coach at an inner city Catholic school in San Francisco during a one year commitment with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Kevin earned a B.A. from Providence College, Providence, RI. and also completed the Medical Device Management Certificate Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He has lectured at Boston University and Worcester Polytechnic’s graduate business programs on the topic of “Attracting Talent to Life Sciences and Medical Device Companies” and has spoken on the topic of “Realities of the CFO role in Life Sciences companies” for the Treasurer’s Club of Boston. Kevin resides in Milton, Massachusetts with his wife and four sons. He is active in youth basketball and lacrosse.

Business Area Advisors

Kevin Sprott, Ph.D., Emerging Leaders

Kevin is presently at Verastem.  Priot to this, he was a Principal Scientist at Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (formerly Microbia) and had been there since 2006. At Ironwood, Kevin worked across various functional groups (chemistry, biology, pharmacology, business development, program management, etc.) in an effort to discover new small molecule drugs to treat diseases in various therapeutic areas. Prior to Microbia, Kevin worked in the medicinal chemistry group at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Kevin completed his post doc at Harvard University under Elias J. Corey, Nobel Laureate, Professor of Chemistry. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy, University Honors Thesis, in Chemistry, from University of Kansas and a Bachelor of Science, cum laude, in Biology, from Wake Forest University.

Matt Casey, Mentorship 

With over ten years of experience as both a manager and consultant, Matt has identified strategic opportunities to enhance revenue, margin and market share for industry-leaders such as Genzyme, Partners Healthcare, Braingem, LLC, and Pioneer Investments. He most recently worked at Genzyme where he managed the Strategic marketing team responsible for research, competitive intelligence, brand and performance management, growth modeling and forecasting and business opportunity assessment. Matt earned his MBA in Marketing and Strategy from the Sawyer School of Management at Suffolk University and his BS in Business Management from Boston University.  Matt is currently a career coach and can be reached at http://www.mattcasey.net.

Carolyn Cho, Ph.D., Scientific Leadership 

Carolyn is currently at Merck Research Laboratories in the Systems Biology Group. Prior to Merck, she was at Pfizer Research Technology Center in Kendall Square as the Director of Systems Biology.  Following her training at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Physics BSc, MSc), University of Toronto (Biological Physics PhD), and Princeton University (Molecular Biology post doc), she went on to computer-based modeling at SmithKline Beecham (now GSK), Physiome Sciences (became Predix and now Epix Pharmaceuticals), Biosystemix, and Novartis. She has also helped organize national and local-area scientific meetings. Carolyn served as the MA AWIS Treasurer from 2007 – 2008 and has been member of AWIS and the Association for Women in Mathematics on-and-off since graduate school, and began participating several years ago in these and other mentorship programs. She is the current president of Mass AWIS for 2010. She is also involved with the volunteer organization Boston Cares.

Conor McGauran, International

Conor McGauran is VP European Operations for Pharma-Bio Serv, a Regulatory Compliance and Technical services provider to the Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology and Medical Technology sectors. He leads Irish Operations and Business Development for EMEA. Previously Conor spent three years in Boston as VP Life Sciences for IDA Ireland, the Irish government agency responsible for foreign direct investment (FDI). Conor has spent 18 years in Business Development across a range of commercial roles in the Life Sciences and Engineering. He has experience in Sales, Marketing, Operations Management, and International Trade & Investment. He received a BE (Industrial Engineering) from National University of Ireland Galway, along with a PgDipSc in Health & Ergonomics.

Emily Anderson, Communications 

Emily is a Communications Consultant for Propel Careers and is the founder of E. Anderson Life Science Communications, LLC.  She has nearly 15 years ofexperience developing strategic communications programs within the healthcare industry. She has developed and implemented numerous campaigns that have addressed a diversity of key audiences and stakeholders, including consumers, patient advocates, clinicians, government, professional societies, media and investors. She has successfully launched disruptive technologies in the marketand has provided strategic communications counsel to senior management during times of significant revenue growth and in times of crisis. Her work has covered a range of therapeutic areas, including anesthesia, critical care, pediatric, psychiatric, neuroscience and infectious diseases. Most recently, Emily served as director of corporate and marketing communications for Aspect Medical Systems. Her previous work experience includes account management roles at leading PR firms where she supported clients in the healthcare and high technology sectors. Emily graduated cum laude from the University of Massachusetts with a B.B.A. in Management and has completed coursework toward her M.B. A. at Boston College.  Emily can be reached at emily.anderson8@me.com.

Robin Ng, Biotechnology and Mentorship

Robin started his career as a Process Development Scientist at Goodwin Biotechnology, Inc. in Plantation, Florida where he developed cell culture processes for his clients. He is currently a Senior Bioengineer in Cell Culture Process Development at Shire Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt with expertise in the area of cell culture and fermentation technologies and holds several hours of Project Management training. During his study at Ohio State, Robin co-founded Techriculture, a non-profit organization dedicated to help investors and scientists in early stage technology commercialization, product ideation and prototype development. He holds several hours of Product Development credit hours from PDMA. During his career, Robin has served on the Advisory Board for Institute of Technology Innovation, Eugenio Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University. Robin is currently serving on the Advisory Board for Society for Biological Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and Biotechnology Program at Miami Dade College in Miami. He is also serving on the Scientific Advisory Board for Cambridge Health Institute’s Bioprocessing Summit and vice chairing the AIChE Young Professional Committee.

Tanya Shnaydman, Recruitment

Tanya Shnaydman is presently the Director of Business Development for Ora Clinical. Prior to this, Tanya held positions at Ross & Company and Korn/Ferry International (KFI), where she was a member of the Global Life Sciences Practice. While at Korn/Ferry, Tanya worked on senior level searches for venture-backed, emerging growth companies, with a special focus on biopharmaceutical businesses working on cutting edge discovery and drug development targets. In addition to her biotech work, Tanya’s expertise was leveraged across pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical device and device-enabled services projects. Tanya holds a B.A. in History from Boston University and is the Biotechnology Industry Chair of the MIT Sloan Alumni Club’s Boston Chapter.

Rob Lowrance, Medical and Clinical Affairs 

Rob has ten years of experience in biotechnology and can tap experience in staffing and recruiting, medical affairs, marketing, and clinical operations. Rob presently works for Collaborative Consulting and prior to this, worked for Propel Careers.  He has also worked for Veritude where he played a critical role in developing their life-science business. His work there including full life cycle recruiting for roles across all areas of R&D and developing life science training materials for Veritude senior management and colleagues in business development and site management. Rob also spent seven years working at EMD Serono and Genzyme working in post-marketing scientific communications, pre-approval marketing, and clinical operations. He has a B.A. in Psychology from Colgate University and an MSW with a focus on clinical social work from Simmons College.