Dapo has enjoyed a long career with AstraZeneca, holding a variety of senior Operations and Commercial roles. In April 2014 Dapo assumed the role of AZ Chief Procurement Officer accountable for the company’s external spend and supplier base across the end to end value chain. Dapo has held a wide variety of leadership roles across the AZ business, most recently VP Global External Sourcing where she was responsible for Operation’s global supply chain related external spend; and VP Cornerstone in GMSO, where she led the development of a new set of company-wide strategic commercial capabilities, ‘the Cornerstone model and mind-set’, and led the team responsible for the Branded Generics business initiative. Previous roles included leadership of the iPR business and UK manufacturing sites and heading the International Project Management and Asset Capability Group. Dapo has a pharmacy degree and is a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

Will takes the lead in identifying new market opportunities, and assists in the establishment of new offices globally. In the last two years he has been Interim GM of the CIPS MENA office, and has assisted in the setting up of offices in Singapore and Beijing. He is currently overseeing CIPS operations in mainland Europe. Will is also responsible for working with global corporate clients to design and develop solutions to help organisations maximise their procurement and supply chain capability including people and process development. Will moved to CIPS in 2010 following a career with specialist event organisers IQPC, where he was responsible for business development opportunities in many specialist markets including the procurement and supply chain event arena where Will helped to successfully launch and develop some of the leading events in this field.

Steve has been part of the Supplier Relationship Management team for Shire’s Small Molecule focused Operating Unit since the role was first established in 2008. His experience includes a number of fast paced growth oriented companies and spans finance, operations, business development and consulting.  This multi-faceted business experience has formed the basis for his business strategist and coach approach to the Supplier Relationship Management role. 

Darren is a Vice President for Consulting at GEP in Europe and a member of GEP’s Consulting Services Leadership in the region. Darren has 21 years of experience in procurement, supply chain and operational excellence on a global basis. Darren’s focus is on operational effectiveness and efficiency, helping clients with their operating model, structure, value chain, supply chain, strategic cost management and process excellence. Darren is a qualified Black Belt in Six Sigma business process reengineering and is a qualified lender. His areas of expertise include procurement strategy and policy, op model and benchmarking, sourcing and category management, supplier relationship management, source-to-pay, sustainability, value stream mapping, supply chain strategy, inventory management, order-to-cash, fulfilment and distribution, zero-based budgeting, and automation and robotics. Darren has a broad range of indirect category expertise and has worked across multiple industries, including banking, aerospace, telecoms, healthcare, government, utilities, consumer goods, life sciences and retail. Prior to joining GEP, Darren held a number of leadership roles in consulting and industry, including European Sourcing & Procurement Leadership for Accenture, UK&I Operations Strategy Leadership at Accenture, Director of Procurement EMEA APAC for a global financial services organization and Program Manager responsible for post-merger integration in a global telecom company.

Mike is the CEO and Managing Partner of Achieve Breakthrough, an award-winning change consultancy revolutionising how Procurement functions work in the world’s largest organisations.

He didn’t coin the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, but he lives and breathes it! And for two decades he’s been working with distinguished CEOs and senior business leaders on honing their corporate culture to be one that promotes continual innovation. Mike founded Achieve Breakthrough to unlock his client’s ambitions: making the seemingly impossible, possible.

These include industry leading blue chip corporations across sectors such as Technology, FMCG, and Global Retail. They have notably worked with several top pharma organizations who in particular have sought the transformational business partnering expertise that Achieve Breakthrough are renowned for.

Mike is co-author of The Little Black Book of Change and is an international speaker and thought leader on transformational leadership.

With a long professional record in thepharmaceutical and chemical industries field, Cristina reconciles since 2015her position as Managing Director of Indukern’s subsidiary in Switzerland,leading distributor of active ingredients for the pharmaceutical andveterinarian markets in Europe, with her responsibility as the BusinessDevelopment Director of Indukern globally. Prior to joining Indukern in 2010she held various senior positions: she was Chemical Purchasing Manager inBayer, Spain and she stablished and managed the office of Shanghai for TriconEnergy, a US company dealing with petrochemicals. Cristina lived in China andHong Kong for 10 years, which got her to acquire a very deep knowledge of thesourcing market in Asia. Cristina holds a PhD in Chemistry and is a ChemicalEngineer of the IQS-Universidad Ramon Llull, Barcelona. 

Leading pre-clinical sourcing for AstraZeneca & Medimmune. Long track record of delivering innovation and opportunities through externalisation.

James Hochreutiner is Director in Global Solutions at Kelly Services Inc. In his current role, he is a strategic consultant focused on identifying and creating workforce solutions for one of our largest strategic customers - leading multinational pharmaceutical company in the world. At the same time, James is the voice of the customer inside Kelly Services Inc. and coordinates efforts to deliver best in class solutions. James has over 12 years of business development experience delivering professional services and workforce solutions.

Daniel has worked for more than 26 years in the Pharma sector. Various roles he has had include increasingly senior positions at Ciba-Geigy, Novartis and now Actelion. He is currently responsible for a team who provide planning and procurement in technical operations.

Paula Martinez is a visionary and strategically driven Senior Executive with extensive international experience in diverse industries delivering excellence in Procurement and Supply Chain Management. Leading high performing teams to build strong partnerships, promotes a results driven culture delivering €mm cost savings and innovative solutions. She has proven successful at elevating procurement organizations from transactional to highly strategic using a transformational mind set and strong future orientation. She is an inspiring leader that positively impacts bottom line profitability and clearly brings an expertise in procurement and supply management, operational excellence, outsourcing/offshoring, turnaround and crisis management situations.

For the last 5 years Paula has been the Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer for UCB Biopharma in Brussels – a global biopharma company with operations in c38 countries, 8000 staff and global revenues of €3.9bn in 2015 – where she has transformed a decentralized procurement organization into a high performing strategic one. Through outsourcing of operational and transactional procurement activities, she has re-focused her procurement organization into delivering value beyond cost savings through supplier enabled innovation. Paula leads a highly engaged and motivated procurement organization with 85% engagement score measured through Towers Watson annual engagement survey (2015) and has achieved stakeholder engagement levels above 60% measured through NPS. She has also released a significant amount of operating cash flow through supplier payment term extensions and tight management of accounts payable processes.

Previously Paula was the Procurement Associate Director Indirect, EMEA for The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Luxembourg – one of the world’s biggest Tire Manufacturers with 70,000+ staff in 23 countries and revenues of $18bn – leading indirect procurement categories across EMEA, including team management of 45 in a matrix organization. She achieved great things here, transforming the indirect procurement organization with a strategic, operational and transactional focus, reorganized regional strategic sourcing category management team to maximize synergies, and launched a supplier relationship management program to capture benefits with key suppliers.

Prior to this Paula was with Anheuser Busch InBev in Belgium -  the World’s 5th FMCG Company in Beverage Sector with 120,000+ staff in 30+ countries and $47bn revenue – where she performed well in a number of progressively more responsible roles culminating in Global Procurement Director Indirect. In this role Paula delivered savings and payment terms targets through global sourcing initiatives and category management, and identified pre/post-merger category synergies after the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch.

Paula started her career with DHL’s European Management Graduate Programme on graduation from her MSc in International Business. Paula has an MBA, Bachelor in Business Administration, and has recently graduated from the General Management Program at Harvard Business School in Boston. She is Advisory Board Member to Procurement Leaders and a Member of Procurement.

Chris joined Science Exchange in 2015 as the Chief Commercial Officer. He is responsible for leading the commercial functions and strategy of Science Exchange, as the company builds upon its industry leading position as the platform of choice for efficient ordering of outsourced scientific services. He brings significant senior executive level experience and has led commercial, business development, and sales teams to drive significant revenue growth at several contract research organizations (CROs). He joined Science Exchange from Worldwide Clinical Trials, having served as EVP of Global Business Development for their late phase clinical business. Prior to Worldwide Clinical Trials, he has held various senior level positions in commercial leadership within the CRO space including technology, consulting, strategic resourcing, clinical development and R&D.

Irina Ringler has over 17 years’ experience in Clinical Research & Development and 15 years’ Feasibility and Site ID Experience, managing global and regional studies across multiple therapeutic areas and indications. She is currently Senior Director, Site Intelligence at inVentiv Health Clinical. Most recently, Irina served as Director of Feasibility at RPS where she was responsible for the set up and operation of a dedicated global feasibility group. Irina began her industry career as a CRA with GE Healthcare, spent 5 years in a feasibility management role at ICON and worked at Imclone Systems, an Eli Lilly company. She is a graduate of LMU Munich with a Master of Science degree in Biology.

Arno Bock has more than 17 years experience in healthcare communications strategy and program implementation. In his current role, he helps pharma and biotech clients to develop and implement bespoke solutions for their challenges in a fast evolving market and complex stakeholder environment. Arno’s areas of expertise are joined-up branded, scientific and public communications solutions with a strong focus on digital and multichannel in therapeutic areas ranging from oncology through CNS to rare diseases. Prior to joining inVentiv Health, Arno graduated in Biology and has worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Susan C Stansfield PhD is Executive Vice-President, Site Centricity Unit within Clinical Division of inVentiv Health.  Sue has spent 30 years in the Pharma and CRO industries having worked for Welcome Research Foundation, Janssen, Parke-Davies, Quintiles, PPD, PRA and Premier Research before joining inVentiv Health in 2013.  At inVentiv Health, Sue provides global leadership for Site Centricity Unit across 4 regions.  Site Centricity Unit represents the umbrella organisation that consolidates all aspects impacting site relationships during, and beyond, the study start-up phase.  The objective of the organisation is to accelerate the process from site selection to activation and to develop and maintain exceptional relationships with sites.

Armin is a global thought-leader in "advanced sourcing - when doing just another tender is not enough". His concept of "Collaborative Commerce" leverages innovation, advanced analytics, collaboration and game theory methods to reduce cost and increase value beyond margin pressure. In more than 100 large sourcing events he sourced >10b EUR in spend and helped saving >1b EUR. Having worked for 6 of Europe's top 10 pharma companies he has a sound understanding of the particularities in the pharma industry.