The Pharmadelic Experience

Rhys is a final year MPharm student at the University of Birmingham, who has spent 2 terms on the BPSA Executive and completed an Industrial Placement year with GSK. He has accepted a pre-registration year with North Bristol Trust.

Since a very young age, Héctor has been passionate about understanding the why of things. That is why he studied Biology and continued on a Masters degree, where he had his first opportunity to have an overview of how the Pharmaceutical Industry works. At that point, he decided to pursue a PhD in Developmental Biology in order to work in Medical Affairs. After completing his PhD, he had the opportunity to transition into a Marketing department, as a Product Manager, in a large Medical Device company and after this short experience, he moved to a Consulting Firm to continue developing his skills in Project Management. Despite of the wonderful path he was on, he realised how far away he was from his Why. Therefore, he refocused his career to Medical Affairs and since then has worked as a Medical Science Liaison in different pathologies and different regions in Spain.  Congresses, meetings, always pushing boundaries to learn everything from every experience,  and sometimes a bit of luck was what has allowed him to transition into the world of Medical Affairs.

Karandeep studied Pharmaceutical & Cosmetic Science at De Montfort University in the UK. It is from this he developed his interest within Quality & Regulatory Affairs and hence went on to study a masters in Pharmaceutical Quality by Design. However, despite his educational background, he went on almost immediately to pursue a Regulatory Affairs & Quality career in Medical Devices. He has worked his way up very quickly and became a contractor Consultant. He managed to achieve this without any formal network or mentors in the industry.

Rebecca Godfrey is the founder of Etheo Limited, a Team & Leadership Transformation consultancy, established in 2017 with the aim of ‘Changing the way highly regulated industries operate’. Rebecca is a scientist by background having completed a PhD in Immunology at the University of Cambridge.  Since leaving academic research, Rebecca's career has given her the opportunity to build and develop a successful drug safety consultancy business, work with and lead colleagues from more than 90 countries, live and work abroad and lead organisations and groups in roles ranging from Company Director of a small consultancy to Global Head and Global Director roles in two of the world's top 10 pharma companies. Having thoroughly enjoyed a fruitful and successful career so far, Rebecca took the leap to set up Etheo bringing her wealth of business experience, outstanding leadership skills, strategy and process development expertise and passion for meeting new challenges to support individuals and leaders build cohesive, high performing teams with a focus on operational excellence.

Martina Lauš works in the pharmaceutical industry, in Medical Affairs function. She graduated in 2017 as a Master of Pharmacy from the University of Zagreb in Croatia, where she is from. During her studies, Martina was a Croatian pharmaceutical representative in the international community and is still very passionate about the role of non-profit organisations in healthcare, for which she has won three international recognitions until today. Martina has a big interest is public health and differences among the international healthcare systems, which drew her to build a career in the industry. Martina started to work for Novartis while she was still at the university as an intern in Quality Assurance, after which she moved to Quality Intelligence and relocated to Basel, Switzerland. Today, she works on digital projects in Medical Affairs at the global position, still in Novartis. Although being a pharmacist by training, Martina has always had interest in social sciences and has recently got admitted to London School of Economics to study for her second Master’s Degree with a focus on Health Economics and management in cardiovascular diseases.

Fernanda holds a degree of Industrial Pharmacy from the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil, including a one year exchange in the University of Claude Bernard – Lyon 1 in France. Graduated with a work experience in Research Lab, Hospital Pharmacy and Regulatory Affairs in the pharma industry, she decided to jump back to Europe to follow her career as a Regulatory Affairs Specialist in Italy. After going deep in the Technology topic related to Regulatory Affairs in Germany, she went back to the pharma industry in Switzerland as Regulatory Affairs Manager, focusing on implementing strategy of orphan drugs registration in US and Swiss markets.

Donal McConnell is a Practice Manager of the Consultant Development Program at Veeva Systems in Barcelona. Donal graduated from Pharmacy at Trinity College Dublin in 2010 before qualifying as a pharmacist at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland. While working as a pharmacist he founded PharmaBuddy, used by over 4000 Irish pharmacists, with the purpose of helping community pharmacists share knowledge and educate each other. His interest in Health IT pulled him in the direction of Veeva where he has held the role of Solution Consultant and now Practice Manager.

Janko Ignjatović holds a Master of Pharmacy degree from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Belgrade in Serbia. Upon finishing master studies, he continued his academic and scientific development by enrolling in doctoral studies at the module of Drug Analysis at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Moreover, his curiosity and motivation to contribute to science and healthcare led him to further expand his expertise and professional development within pharmaceutical companies GSK and Novartis. Furthermore, during his postgraduate development he was declared as individual winner of Regional BioCamp, a forum connecting academics and industry in Ljubljana capital of Slovenia, thus he gained the right to participate in the Global BioCamp which was organised in headquarters of pharmaceutical company Novartis in Basel, Switzerland. There he was selected as an individual winner of the global Novartis BioCamp 2014. For this achievement he was awarded a professional training and a visit at Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Beijing and Shanghai in the People's Republic of China. Motivated to continue with his passion to foster application of academic knowledge in the industrial field and give his contribution to shaping the healthcare, he pursued a career of research scientist in Novartis global drug development department for biopharmaceutical drugs in Mengeš, Slovenia. In addition to working in pharmaceutical industry, he enrolled and completed an additional doctorate studies in the field of Biotechnology of the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, where the primary focus of his research is protein aggregation and its potential immunogenicity. Janko continued with further personal and professional development in the field of management, leadership, psychology, economics and project management within courses in prestigious International Executive Development Centre (IEDC) in Bled, Slovenia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and American association of Neurolinguistics programming in USA. Currently, he is finishing Masters in Business Administration (MBA) studies at the School of Economics and Business in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Andrei graduated as a pharmacist from the “Iuliu Hatieganu” University for Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca and holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the same university. During his doctoral studies he worked in Paris at the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, a research hub affiliated with the Sorbonne University, focusing on liver disease pathogenesis (NAFLD, NASH, liver fibrosis). Andrei currently works for one of the Big Four, specialising on the life sciences sector and working on projects with big pharmaceutical companies. His experience is primarily focused on projects in the R&D and Regulatory areas.

Orsi is MSc in Biochemical Engineering, with a lot international experience. Growing up in the US, UK and Belgium,  as well as being Vice President of IAESTE Hungary (International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience) helped her both personally and professionally.  Having obtained organisational skills by her contribution to IAESTE Hungary, and scientific background from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Orsi started her career as a Regulatory Affairs Manager for Procter&Gamble in Hungary with focus on registration procedures for cosmetics and household care products on a country level.  Her experience at P&G was quite exciting, however Orsi wanted to do something more dynamic. Seeing Veeva as a perfect fit for her, she started a new exciting journey in the R&D Consultant Development Programme, focusing on the implementation of Regulatory projects.