Stephanie Hall – Chair

Stephanie Hall is the CEO and founder of Uptake, an award-winning global healthcare consultancy specialising in planning, capability and launch. Stephanie has been recognised as one of the UK’s top 10 women entrepreneurs in EY’s Winning Women Entrepreneurs’ programme in 2019, and won the International category at the 2020/21 National Businesswomen’s awards.

Stephanie has over 25+ years’ experience in marketing, finance, sales roles and consultancy projects in multi-national pharma/biotech companies (GSK, Eli Lilly & Co, Sanofi) and alliance partnerships.

Stephanie speaks regularly at industry conferences and is the author of the Pharma Brand Planners’ blog, Launch Leaders’ blog and Pharma Marketers’ blog in Pharma Marketing Europe and pmlive.com.

Stephanie describes herself as strategic, driven, passionate about healthcare marketing and fascinated by new challenges, international cultures and entrepreneurship.

Charlie Buckwell leads the Medical Communications discipline across IPG Health, comprising 8 specialist agencies and >900 Medical Communications experts.

In his more than 30 years in healthcare communications, Charlie has held many successful leadership roles across the pharma industry and communications agencies. As Chief Executive of McCann Health Medical Communications since 2005, Charlie led the development of this business into one of the largest, most capable and best-reputed of its kind. Now leading IPG Health Medical Communications, this team provides unique depth and breadth of expertise, which along with organisational agility and scale is enabling a whole new philosophy of customized, enterprise-level partnership for Medical Communications clients.

During his career Charlie has also been President of McCann Health EMEA and President of the McCann Health Global Scientific Council.

Charlie is an advocate of public-private partnership in healthcare provision, alongside active industry engagement and transparency in scientific exchange. He has a specific interest in optimising accessibility for all to medical science and programs that close the gap between science and real-life clinical practice.

Caroline Gosling is a partner at Rubica: Change & Analytics, an organisational change consultancy focussed on improving people’s experience of work and customers’ experience of organisations. Specialising in culture and capability transformation, with specific expertise in life sciences, Rubica blends organisational excellence, performance measurement and engagement to deliver commercial and human benefit.

Caroline’s 20+ years in the industry, working both in consulting and in a range of roles at GSK, has included corporate and public affairs, marketing, medical education and employee engagement.

She currently partners with organisational leaders (and the teams they are accountable to and for) to diagnose and address the mindset, behavioural, structural and system blockers to delivering on the potential and promise of customer- and patient-centricity. She’s particularly interested in how we re-assess what good looks like in our efforts to be a net-contributor within challenged health and human systems.

Caroline is a Trustee of the Blue Cross, the national pet welfare charity, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Kate Gribbon has more than 20 years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industry in Sales, Training and Sales Management although most of her career focused on Marketing, both in the UK and in Europe.

Her most recent role as Head of Rare Diseases afforded her the opportunity to really develop strategies to ensure the patient was at the heart of all marketing activities. She also developed campaigns to utilize RWE to support diagnostic initiatives challenging HCPs in their diagnosis of patients with Rare metabolic conditions.

Kate recognizes the value of teams –both cross functional internal teams and extended external agency support to develop compelling, meaningful and successful campaigns that support Clinicians in delivering the best patient outcomes.

Rachel Harris is a partner and Brand & Strategy Director at Page & Page and Partners, an award-winning, independent healthcare communications agency. She has 16 years’ experience in design communications and consultancy across healthcare, retail, transport, and property. At Page & Page and Partners, Rachel works closely with marketing, medical affairs, and C-suite teams to define and lead the strategy, and set the positioning across medical education, disease awareness, brand launch and brand revitalisation projects.

She leads branding and strategic campaigns for clients across pharma, biotech, generics, medtech, healthcare distribution, healthcare solutions and consumer health.

Rachel is a staunch believer in the power of communication that blends imagination and data to develop insight-driven, multi-channel solutions that change behaviours and improve outcomes in healthcare.

Lisa McCurdy is a Partner with Osprey Health Consulting, a global strategic marketing consultancy. A Chartered Marketer (and past PMEA winner) with more than 25 years’ experience in Biopharma, Lisa has extensive experience in commercial leadership across multiple therapy areas, from cardio-metabolic to oncology brands, and more recently CAR T therapy. Lisa has led local, regional, and global sales, marketing and operational teams, and champions the power of strategic alignment through all functions and channels. Lisa has a depth of experience leading brand portfolios across brand life cycles and is a firm believer in breaking down functional silos, empowering teams to deliver creative solutions to drive commercial success.

Lisa has a particular interest in the value of diversity, in particular supporting women in pharma leadership through mentorship, coaching and education.

Craig Mills is Founder, of Frontera Group. He is the Group’s Head of Strategy with over 20 years’ experience in the healthcare sector. Craig is a judge and business leader on the entrepreneurship programme, Bright Ideas at Kingston University, London. He is also an active supporter of the Pathway – the Faculty for Homeless and Inclusion Health, which seeks to transform health outcomes for one of societies most deprived groups.

Over the past 20+ years, Craig has led healthcare organisations driving their commercial performance, by helping them to develop strategies that centre on the patient’s experience of health. Today he runs a group of 3 agencies focused on the acquisition of real world evidence and, in partnership with academic teams, including Imperial College and University of Cambridge, supporting organisations in the adoption of behavioural theory to bring about the change they seek.

Simon Middleton is a partner at L.E.K. Consulting in London and Head of L.E.K.’s European Life Sciences Practice.

A scientist by training, Simon has been advising the Life Sciences industry for over 15 years, focusing on value-creating growth by addressing a range of key strategic and operational issues. Simon’s clients span emerging biotech to large pharma, as well as investors, and his experience covers a broad range of therapeutic areas and treatment modalities

Paul Simpson is VP of Patient and Market Access at IQVIA UK.

He has extensive pan-European and US experience of pharma/biotech commercialisation and has held senior roles in marketing, sales and general management.

Paul is a staunch advocate of account management, using environmental understanding to derive practical solutions which help clients drive healthcare forward and ultimately lead to better outcomes for patients.