Archives: Speakers

Victoria Toms is Executive Director at the International Accrediting Organization for Clinical Research (IAOCR), driving global standards for quality across clinical research sites and professionals. She brings 19 years’ experience across all trial phases, multiple therapeutic areas, in both commercial and non-commercial settings, with expertise spanning site operations, trial management, quality assurance, and business development.

Working at the intersection of quality, strategy, and industry collaboration, Victoria focuses on strengthening trust, consistency, and performance across the research ecosystem. As expectations from organisations such as the ICH and global regulators continue to evolve, she positions quality as a strategic and commercial differentiator, that should shape site selection, enhance sponsor confidence, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. Through global accreditation programmes and the Global Best Practice Boards, she partners with sites, sponsors, and CROs to embed quality into culture and facilitate more predictable, high-performing research delivery.

Simon Torrance is a member of the Executive Working Group on Digital Transformation at the World Economic Forum. He works with leadership teams – across all parts of the insurance value chain – to create and implement effective strategies to deploy advanced forms of AI, focusing in particular on Agentic AI. He is also founder of Agentic AI innovation firm, AI Risk

Peter Haessig leads commercial strategy and execution at Diligent Pharma, the quality and compliance company specializing in end-to-end vendor lifecycle management for clinical trials. His remit spans sales, marketing, and partnerships across a client base of pharma and biotech sponsors and clinical service providers. An advocate of two-sided platforms, he believes network effects can streamline decades of redundant work in clinical trials. Before Diligent, Peter held sales and consulting roles across enterprise technology and SaaS.

Günes is a highly experienced professional with 22+ years of operational experience in site management, clinical operations, and logistics operations in the clinical trials sector.

Prior to her current role as Regional Director for MENA, she was appointed to the role of Managing Director for Türkiye operations in Jan 2023, having acted as Türkiye’s Warehouse Manager, responsible for managing all GDP & GMP operations. She was at the forefront of the implementation of several processes, system changes, and cross-functional collaboration.

She holds a B.Sc. in Biology and an MBA, is based in Izmir- Türkiye, and is leading the Oximio MENA Teams.

Zayheda Khan was appointed Chief Commercial Officer in December 2022 and UK Managing Director in October 2024.

She has more than 25 years experience in a variety of roles within the clinical trial sectors including preclinical, clinical, proposal and budgeting, procurement and programme management.

Zayheda oversees the Sales/KAM, Commercial Operations, Procurement and Project Management functions with the aim of assessing customer needs and providing cost-effective tailor-made solutions.

She is also responsible for the commercial data analysis for accurate forecasts and opportunity pipeline management and her organisation is driven to develop customer partnerships and drive forward the success of the commercial projects in an ever-changing clinical trial landscape.

Zayheda has a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Central Lancashire and Master and PhD Degrees in Pharmacology from The University of Bradford.