Archives: Speakers

Rachel Nering

Rachel has spent more than 20 years in Oncology Clinical trials, working in regulatory, clinical operations and project leadership. Spending the majority of her career at smaller biotechs, she has been committed to building dynamic and agile teams across multiple organizations, leveraging the latest technology and process advancements to drive faster and more efficient decision making based on science emerging patient data. She has continued to prioritize a close partnership between research, development and commercial within her current role at Sanofi, transforming the measureable performance of the early oncology clinical operations team within the past 3 years.

Dr Ian Robertson

Since March 2008, Ian Robertson has been a member of the BMW AG Board responsible for Global Sales and Marketing. From January 2018 he has been responsible for UK Government relations with the specific focus on the Brexit discussions. He reached retirement age from BMW end of June 2018.

 

Ian was born in Oswestry, Shropshire (UK) and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Maritime Studies from the University of Wales, Cardiff. He started his career in the automotive industry as a Graduate Trainee with the Rover Group in Great Britain in 1979 and has been working in a variety of positions in the car industry ever since.

 

From 1988 he held various senior management roles at the Rover Group, including Purchasing Director, before being promoted to Managing Director of Land Rover Vehicles in 1994. He served as Managing Director at BMW South Africa from 1999 to 2005 before becoming the Chairman and Chief Executive for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd in 2005 and he remained chairman until 2012.”

Solomon Babani

Sol Babani, currently Founder & CEO of Symbiosis Advisors, is a healthcare and biopharma executive who has spent over 25 years at the intersection of science, strategy, and scale. From his early days of outsourcing clinical trials at Regeneron, Pfizer and Novartis to more recently serving as a CEO for three different businesses, he has built a career around a single through-line: finding smarter ways to bring critical therapies to patients faster. Known for his ability to forge high-impact CRO/Sponsor partnerships — whether managing $400M Biotech portfolio at PRA/ICON or serving as Digital & Innovation Lead for a major pharma alliance at PRA  — Sol has consistently operated at the point where bold ideas meet operational reality. Today he is focused on harnessing AI and emerging technology to fundamentally reimagine how healthcare and clinical research services businesses grow and deliver value. He holds an MBA in Finance and Management from NYU Stern and a BA in Biology from Yeshiva University.

Grant Parkinson

Grant Parkinson is the Head of Consumer, Private and Business Banking for Europe.

He joined Standard Chartered in 2020 as Head of Private Banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa, and shortly moved into his current role.

Based in London, Grant is responsible for the region’s Priority and Private Banking business operations in Jersey, the United Arab Emirates and UK that serve emerging markets clients across Africa, the Middle East, UK and Turkey.

Grant has over 25 years of financial services experience. He joined Standard Chartered from Brewin Dolphin where he was Chief Operating Officer and led development of technology solutions for client-facing colleagues and digital.

Prior to that he worked at Coutts, also as Chief Operating Officer, where he successfully ran multiple business development, change and remediation programmes.

Earlier in his career, Grant worked at Barclays Wealth and McKinsey & Company.

Lisa Kang

Lisa brings extensive experience in oncology and CNS drug development to the table. She is especially enthusiastic about the industry’s increasing emphasis on data-driven approaches to deliver impactful results