Speakers

Willis Chandler is President of Global Pharma Services at Cencora. Prior to this current role, Mr. Chandler served as President of Biopharma Services, Global Sourcing & Commercial Solutions, leading the newly put together departments and integrating patient services, innovative field solutions, and consulting into one team – Biopharma Services.

Before that, Mr. Chandler served as Senior Vice President and President, Health Systems and Specialty Services, leading Cencora’s full line and specialty distribution businesses for health system customers, driving sales strategy within health systems and integrated delivery networks.

Willis joined Cencora from CVS Health, where he most recently served as the Vice President, Health System Alliances – a role in which he led and developed a national commercial team focused on developing C-suite relationships with hospitals and health systems. His team represented all of CVS capabilities in retail, specialty, infusion, post-acute care, PBMs, 340B and Medicare Part D for health systems and ACOs.

Before his role at CVS, Willis led the creation and growth of Shields Specialty Pharmacy as its Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Shields was one of the first specialty pharmacy efforts focused on supporting hospital and health systems. Before that, Willis began his career in hospitals and health systems, including UMass Memorial Health Care and Cambridge Health Alliance.

Willis earned a Bachelor of Science in history and American studies from Brandeis University and an MBA in healthcare from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kevin Chinn serves as Vice President of Cell & Gene Therapy for Biopharma Services at Cencora. In his role, Kevin is responsible for strategic partnerships with Cell & Gene therapy companies. Under Kevin’s leadership, his team positions themselves as a full end-to-end commercialization partner for Cell & Gene therapy companies, assessing the necessary resources at the appropriate time along their commercialization journeys.

Prior to his role at Cencora, Kevin held various leadership roles at CVS Health. Most recently, Kevin was responsible for commercialization, go-to-market strategy, and sales for their Home Health division. Before his time with Home Health, Kevin led Health System Alliances, where he created mutually beneficial business relationships with provider groups and IDNs across the country, utilizing all of CVS Health’s assets. Kevin has also held sales leadership roles at Medtronic and Abbott.

Kevin received his Bachelor of Science in Business Economics from the University of Arizona.

George Eastwood currently serves as Board Chair and Interim Executive Director for The Emily Whitehead Foundation. Emily is widely known as the first pediatric CAR-T patient and the Whitehead family created the foundation to ensure that more families could have the same outcome as theirs. Since its inception in 2015 the focus has been on funding groundbreaking research to create less-toxic treatments for pediatric cancer patients, while simultaneously advocating for increased access to these therapies and supporting patients on their treatment journey.

George’s professional background has largely been focused on the creation of products, tools, and services that support the development of cell-based therapeutics. As an early employee at HemaCare he led global sales and business development, working to partner with developers to create cellular solutions to advance the development of autologous and allogeneic CAR-T cell therapies. He also has experience in the start-up space both at Kytopen where he served as VP of Business Development and Partnerships and at Excellos, where he was a co-founder and helped to spin out the company from the San Diego Blood Bank. In addition to his current role at The Emily Whitehead Foundation, George also sits on the advisory board of Truetrials.org and is a board member at CGT digitization company Autolomous.

Lisa Freeman has over 25 years of experience in global regulatory affairs in the biopharmaceutical industry in drug, biologics and gene therapy development across multiple therapeutic areas. Lisa joined CRISPR Therapeutics in 2019 and is currently the Vice President and Head of Regulatory Affairs.

Prior to serving as the Head of Regulatory Affairs, Lisa was responsible for global regulatory strategies for the CRISPR Therapeutics immuno-oncology portfolio. Prior to joining CRISPR, Lisa held regulatory lead roles at REGENXBIO, Ultragenyx and MedImmune.

Lisa received her Master of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.

Rita Johnson-Greene is an accomplished international healthcare executive leader with over 20 years of progressive experience. Rita is currently the Chief Operating Officer at the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), which is the leading international advocacy organization representing the engineered cell therapy and genetic medicines sector.

Rita oversees multiple functions, including membership, finance, programming, and people and culture. She is also responsible for ARM’s geographic expansion initiative. Rita has launched three of the eight rare disease gene therapies currently marketed in the US, including Luxturna, the first FDA-approved gene therapy.

With over 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Morgan brings various Therapeutic Area expertise to the table/panel.  She has spent the majority of her career in the Reproductive Medicine and Maternal Health space but over the past three years has led the entry of Ferring Pharmaceuticals into two specialized product ecosystems, microbiome and gene therapy, from a distribution perspective. 

Ferring's gene therapy entrance in the uro-oncology space is the most recent launch, however, both launches required unique distribution strategies as well as establishing distribution networks for ultra-cold chain products, whilst striving to provide a seamless customer experience.

Chris McMahon leads R&D teams at FCDI that develop induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cell types for the research market. In addition, he has led cell therapy programs to develop iPSC-derived immune and neuronal cell types for use in Phase I clinical trials, and is involved with FCDI's growing CDMO business in the stem cell regenerative medicine space.

Alexander Natz is the Secretary General of the European Confederation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs (EUCOPE) in Brussels and advises innovative pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including start-ups, in regulatory and pricing & reimbursement matters from the EU law and German law perspective.

From 2008 to 2013, he was Head of the Brussels Office of Bundesverband der Pharmazeutischen Industrie e.V. (BPI). Before, he worked as a lawyer at Sträter Law Firm in Germany with a special focus on managed entry agreements and licensing of pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Natz has also worked in the field of competition law with the European Commission and in the pharmaceutical industry.

Casper Paardekooper is Partner at strategy consultancy Vintura, part of Cencora, which focuses on transforming healthcare, making it more accessible and beneficial for all. In Vintura he is head of the Life Sciences practice, and he also leads Vintura's Value, Access & Policy Center of Excellence. In that capacity, he focuses on access policy, market access strategy, value demonstration and value-based healthcare.

He is also part of Cencora’s EU HTA Center of Excellence, where he particularly focuses on organizational readiness of his clients. Casper is a trusted advisor to many large biopharma companies and brings more than 15 years of strategy consultancy in life sciences and healthcare.

Dr. Verdun received her undergraduate degree from Duke University and her medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She then completed a Pediatrics Residency at Children’s Memorial Hospital-Northwestern University and a Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

After practicing as a hematologist with a focus on hemostasis and thrombosis, Dr. Verdun joined FDA in 2012, first in the Office of Hematology Oncology Products as a medical officer and a liaison for sickle cell therapeutics and anticoagulants, and then Therapeutic Biosimilars. She was appointed as the Deputy Director of the Office of Blood Research and Review in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) in October 2016 and was promoted to Office Director in 2018.

In 2023, Dr. Verdun was selected as the Super Office Director of the Office of Therapeutic Products, overseeing 6 Offices dedicated to the regulation and approval of Cell and Gene therapies in the United States. She oversees both a research and regulatory portfolio in CBER. She is also on staff at Children’s National Medical Center. 

Andrea leads the cell and gene therapy (CGT) and direct-to-patient (DtP) service lines, at World Courier, with a focus on defining strategy, driving growth, and solving operational and process challenges which arise from the complexity of these shipments. With a wealth of expertise and experience gained across academia, pharmaceutical services, and clinical trials logistics, Andrea has served in a number of senior leadership roles in research and development, clinical trial supply chain, as well as product and project management before joining the World Courier team in 2021.

In parallel, Andrea is an active member of the ISPE (International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering), the female manager network of the VBU (Verband der Biotechnologieunternehmen), and author for the PDA (Parenteral Drug Association) and RAPS (Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society).