SPEAKER BIOS FOR THE 2021 SUMMIT
(In order of apperance)
Barbro C. Ehnbom, Founder & Chairman, Swedish-American Life Science Summit »
Dr. Jenni Nordborg, Life Science Coordinator, Government Offices of Sweden »
Dr. Lars Ekman, Executive Partner, Sofinnova Investments »
Dr. William A. Haseltine, President, ACCESS Health International »
Dr. Eugen Steiner, Venture Partner, HealthCap»
Mr. Richard Bergström, Vaccine Coordinator, Government Offices of Sweden»
Dr. Yuval Binur, Managing Partner, Arsuf Global Ventures»
Drr. Florence Haseltine, Professor, University of Texas at Arlington»
Dr. Anders Tegnell, State Epidemiologist of Sweden »
Dr. Mathias Uhlén, Professor, Human Microbiology, KTH | Multiple Biotech Entrepreneur»
Mr. Thomas Eldered, President, Flerie Invest»
Dr. Daniel Kraft, Chair, Singularity University »
Ms. Susanne Najafi, Co-founder, BackingMinds VC»
Mr. Mark Goldstone, Partner, Eckuity Fund»
Mr. Roger Gunnarsson, Managing Partner, Segulah Medical Acceleration (SMA)»
Dr. Anna Sandström, Science Policy & Relations Director, AztraZeneca»
Dr. Robert Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor, MIT »
Mr. Peter Dahlen, Managing Director, American Chamber of Commerce in Sweden »
Mr. Fredrik Ekström, President, Nasdaq Stockholm »
Ms. Sana Alajmovic, Co-Founder and CEO, Sigrid Therapeutics»
Dr. Sara Mangsbo, Co-founder, Immuneed & Strike Pharma»
Dr. Lao Saal, Co-founder and COO of SAGA Diagnostics AB»
Dr. Evelina Vågesjö, Co-founder & CEO, Ilya Pharma»
Dr. Karin Hehenberger, VP, CEO & Founder, LyfeBulb »
Mr. Staffan Folin, Partner, EY»
Dr. Gunilla Osswald, CEO, BioArctic»
Ms. Sofia Breitholtz, President, Reach for change»
Mr. Anders Månsson, CEO, RhoVac»
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Barbro C. Ehnbom
Founder & Chairman
SALSS
Ms. Ehnbom has been a pioneer in the Life Science industry throughout her whole career. She was one of the first female executives in the US pharmaceutical industry, and also a top analyst on Wall Street. She followed this with many years of investment banking, including heading the M&A activities in Scandinavia for Wasserstein Perella as they held a market leading position. As a long time board member of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce and Chairman Emeritus of the Swedish Economist Group in New York, Ms. Ehnbom has 30 years of experience in c reating successful financial partnerships involving Sweden and the U.S. Ms. Ehnbom is active not only in the commercial field but also in areas as diverse as academics, music, the arts, and social entrepreneurship. As founder of the prestigious scholarship Female Economist of the Year, awarded to female students at the Stockholm School of Economics, Ms. Ehnbom tirelessly supports and promotes female economists as they enter into professional life.
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Dr. Jenni Nordborg
Life Science Coordinator,
Government Offices of Sweden
Dr. Nordborg is National Coordinator and Director of the Office for Life Sciences at the Government Offices of Sweden, responsible for the Swedish National Life Sciences Strategy. Prior to this position Dr. Nordborg was Director and Head of the Health Division at Vinnova, the Swedish Governmental Innovation Agency. Dr. Nordborg is active in strategic innovation policy development and implementation within health and life science on national and international level. Her network includes international innovation policy, entrepreneurship and the health and life science ecosystem. Her research background is from Chalmers University of Technology. She has experience from senior management positions in both the private and public sector, an entrepreneurial background from commercialization of research, and worked with international collaborations and marketing and sales management. She also has experience in board level positions both in private companies and governmental organizations.
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Dr. Lars Ekman
Executive Partner,
Sofinnova Investments
Since 2008 Dr. Ekman serves as an Executive Partner at Sofinnova Investments, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical venture capital firm with assets exceeding $2.5B under management. He is currently Chairman of Amarin (AMRN), Afyx, and Prothena Bioscience (PRTA), in addition to serving on the Board of Ultragenyx (RARE). He previously also served on the Boards of InterMune (acquired by Roche), Elan Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Perrigo), Spark Therapeutics (acquired by Roche) and Poseida (PSTX). During 2001-2007 Lars was EVP & President of Research & Development at Elan Pharmaceuticals. During this period Elan was granted approval of four NDA's. These efforts included bringing to market three innovative neuroscience-based products, including Tysabri for MS. Prior to joining Elan, Lars was EVP Research & Development at Schwarz Pharma AG for four years where he developed a pipeline delivering 3 NDA's. From 1984 to 1997 Lars was employed in a variety of senior scientific and clinical functions at Pharmacia, acquired by Pfizer in 1998. Dr. Ekman is a board-certified surgeon with a PhD in experimental biology. He obtained his PhD and MD from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Dr. William A. Haseltine
President,
ACCESS Health International
Dr. Haseltine is a scientist, businessman, author and philanthropist. He was a professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health from 1976-1993 where he was Founder and Chair of two academic research departments, the Division of Biochemical Pharmacology and the Division of Human Retrovirology. He is well known for his pioneering work on cancer, HIV/AIDS and genomics and, today, for his work on COVID-19. He has authored more than 200 manuscripts in peer reviewed journals and more than a dozen books, including six books on SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Haseltine is a pioneer in biotechnology having founded more than a dozen biotechnology companies in fields ranging from development of cutting edge pharmaceuticals to new materials and fuels. He is the Founder of Human Genome Sciences, Inc. and served as the Chairman and CEO of the company for twelve years. Eight pharmaceutical products from companies he founded are currently approved by U.S. and international regulatory agencies. Dr. Haseltine is currently Chair and President of ACCESS Health International, a foundation active in the United States, India, China, Singapore, and the Philippines (www.accessh.org). He is also Chairman of the Haseltine Foundation for Science and the Arts.
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Dr. Eugen Steiner
Venture Partner,
HealthCap
Dr. Steiner has over 30 years executive management experience as CEO or executive chairman in development stage life-science companies. As a venture partner of HealthCap, a leading European healthcare venture capital fund, he has since 1997 successfully organized and managed several start-up teams in companies which have been financed in part by HealthCap and has led financing efforts in these, which have succeeded in raising in total of over 500 million SEK from Swedish, European and US investors, enabling those companies to execute their strategies and to grow. Dr. Steiner is on the board of several public and private life-science companies as well as of the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. Until 1987, Dr. Steiner practiced medicine and was active in pharmacological research at the Karolinska Hospital, Sweden. Dr. Steiner received his medical degree from Karolinska Institute, and earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Pharmacology.
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Mr. Richard Bergström
Vaccine Coordinator,
Government Offices of Sweden
Mr. Bergström is a pharmacist by training. He received his MScPharm degree from the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 1988. Until 1992 he worked at the Medical Products Agency as Assistant Head of Registration. He moved to Switzerland where he worked for nine years in regulatory affairs at Roche and Novartis. He has also served as Director of EU Regulatory Strategy at Roche Basel and as Director-General of LIF, the Swedish Pharmaceutical Industry Association. Since 2006, he has been an advisor to the World Health Organisation on Good Governance in Medicine, and since April 2011 he has been the Director General of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). On 16th June 2021 Mr. Bergström has been appointed as Sweden's vaccine coordinator.
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Dr. Yuval Binur
Managing Partner,
Arsuf Global Ventures
Dr. Binur has over 30 years of worldwide venture capital experience. In 2012 and to date he founded and manage Arsuf Global Partners with activities and bases in Israel, US, EU and China. In 2000 he co-founded Accelerated Technologies - a differentiated investment firm focused on medical technologies. Prior to that, Dr. Binur has been a founding partner of Medica Venture Partners, an Israeli life sciences venture fund and prior to that a member of Adler & Co., a NY based venture capital firm. Dr. Binur has been a board member of over 40 venture-backed companies in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and technology. Among them: PVT (now Edwards Lifesciences Sapien), superDimension (now owned by Covidien), Impella (now owned by Abiomed), Memory Pharmaceuticals (now owned by Roche), Pathway Medical (now owned by Bayer) and Oxigene Pharmaceuticals (now owned by Roche). In addition, DR. Binur created and executed several JVs between China and the US and Israel with focus on cardiovascular therapies. Dr. Binur holds a Ph.D. degree in Physics from Tel Aviv University, M.Sc. from Brooklyn Polytech, in New York and a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion Institute, Israel.
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Dr. Florence Haseltine
Professor
University of Texas at Arlington
As Director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institute of Health, Dr. Haseltine has been at the forefront of health technology since the early 80s. She is also an innovator and inventor, holding numerous patents. She has tirelessly promoted the advancement of women and was the founding editor of the Journal for Women's Health. In 1990 she founded the Society for the Advancement of Women's H ealth Research (SWHR). She was named Emerita Scientist upon her retirement from NIH in 2012. Dr. Haseltine consults in the area of medical and biomedical research for developers of databases, scientific software, webpage designers, and manufacturers of medical devices. Her company, Haseltine Systems, manufactures containers to protect wheelchairs, for which she holds both design and business patents. Her current activities include developing mobile apps, among them Embryo and Human Genome. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and received in 2012 the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Health and Dignity of Women and Girls from the Friends of the United National Population Fund. Dr. Haseltine served as Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale University School of Medicine. She received her B.A in Biophysics from the University of California-Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in Biophysics from MIT. She obtained her M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
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Dr. Anders Tegnell
State Epidemiologist of Sweden
Dr. Tegnell is the state epidemiologist in Sweden, the Deputy Director and Head of the Department of Public Health Reporting at the Public Health Agency. Before this position, he was responsible for a department of the National Board of Health and Welfare dealing with knowledge management, developing guidelines and recommendations. Dr. Tegnell is a MD, a specialist in infectious diseases. He has a PhD in infectious disease and a master in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Epidemiology. He has worked with preparedness for health emergencies in different settings since the early 2000. He has been working closely together with many others in developing the pandemic plans in Sweden, and has been involved and managed health threats starting with the Ebola outbreak in DRC in 1995.
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Dr. Mathias Uhlén
Professor, Human Microbiology, KTH
Multiple Biotech Entrepreneur
Dr. Uhlén is a professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, received his PhD in chemistry at KTH. Dr. Uhlén was the first to describe the use of affinity tags for purification of proteins, a principle now widely used in bioscience. His group described a new strategy for DNA analysis called Pyrosequencing, a method that was further developed by a US company (454/Roche) into the first of a new generation of next generation sequencing methods. His group also developed a new affinity reagent called Affibodies, based on combinatorial principles and developed alkali-stable variations of protein A, now commercially available for purification of antibodies (MabSelectSure). In the early 2000, his group started an international effort, with groups in Sweden, India, China and South Korea, for the creation of a Human Protein Atlas with the aim to systematically map the human proteome with antibodies (www.proteinatlas.org). He is member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in USA, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA), the Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He is the President of the European Federation of Biotechnology and he is chairing both the Scientific Advisory Board of the UniProt consortium and the International Working Group for Antibody Validation (IWGAV). From 2010-2015, he was the founding Director of the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifelab) which is a national center for molecular bioscience. He has received numerous awards, including the Göran Gustavsson prize, the Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Akzo Noble Award, the HUPO Distinguished Award, the KTH Great Prize, the ABRF award, the Scheele prize and H.M. the King's Medal with the ribbon of the Order of Seraphim.
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Mr. Thomas Eldered
President
Flerie Invest
Mr. Eldered is a Chairman and owner of Flerie Invest AB, a private investment company investing primarily in European biotech/life science companies. Thomas has served as chairman and non-executive board member in several life science companies and is currently board member of more than ten public or private companies, in Sweden and elsewhere. He was co-founder of the pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing company Recipharm which during his leadership grew to one of the five largest CDMOs globally and was until recently Chief Executive Officer of Recipharm. Thomas holds a M. Sc. degree in Industrial and Management Engineering from Linköping University.
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Dr. Daniel Kraft
Chair
Singularity University
Dr. Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard-trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator and is serving as the Chair of the XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance Task Force. With over 25 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation, Kraft has served as faculty chair for Medicine at Singularity University since its inception in 2008, and is founder and chair of Exponential Medicine, a program that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare. He is often called upon to speak to the future of health, medicine and technology and has given several TED and TEDMED Talks. He has multiple scientific publications and medical device, immunology, and stem cell-related patents. Daniel is heavily involved in digital health, founded Digital.Health, and is on the board of Healthy.io and advises Fortune-50 and digital health-related startups. He recently founded IntelliMedicine, focused on personalized, data-driven, precision medicine.
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Ms. Susanne Najafi
Co-founder
BackingMinds VC
Ms. Najafi is a Swedish investor and serial entrepreneur. She has founded more than ten companies and carried out multiple exits. In addition to be ranked # 1 at 40 under 40's list of Sweden's Top Tech Founders and # 1 of Sweden's 100 most Inspiring Leaders, Ms. Najafi has been awarded Pioneer of the Year by His Royal Highness for her work to democratize venture capital. In 2016, Ms. Najafi founded the venture capital firm BackingMinds to increase diversity in the European startup scene by investing in the blind spots of Venture Capital. By looking where other investors don't, BackingMinds identifies undervalued companies while also creating new role models, employers and in the long run a diversified society.
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Mr. Mark Goldstone
Partner
Eckuity Fund
Mr. Goldstone has over 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry, encompassing operations, commercialization, consulting, M&A and Venture Capital. He has led some of the largest specialist consulting and communications groups in the world and was a founding partner at Forepont Capital (VC). He was COO of EuroRSCG Life (now Havas), Global CEO of healthcare at top brand and business consultancy, Interbrand and Worldwide President of Doyle, Dane and Bernbach global healthcare businesses. Mr. Goldstone has executed numerous venture investments, M&A, financing and strategic partnership transactions for a broad array of early stage, middle market and emerging growth companies in technology, life sciences and healthcare services. He has developed successful commercialization strategies and programs from early-stage and market development, to product launch and late-stage lifecycle management for blue-chip pharmaceutical and packaged goods companies including Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, Bayer, GSK, Sanofi, Colgate Palmolive, L'Oreal, Danone, Johnson & Johnson, Roche. In fact, Mr. Goldstone has worked on seven of the world's top-selling medicines. Mr. Goldstone began his career as a clinical Pharmacist and is a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. He is Board member of the prestigious Galien Foundation and the Industry Advisory Board for the UK Government's BRCD initiative.
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Mr. Roger Gunnarsson
Managing Partner
Segulah Medical Acceleration (SMA)
Mr. Gunnarsson is the managing partner and co-founder of Segulah Medical Acceleration (SMA). SMA is a European growth equity investment company focused on financing and guiding companies from product proof of concept to commercial proof of concept. SMA invests in the areas of medtech, diagnostics, life science tools and IP based health technologies. SMA has SEK1.3bn (€130m) in investable capital and six platform investments to date. Prior to founding and leading SMA, Mr. Gunnarsson was an investment banker for about 25 years, almost entirely based in London. His last two positions were as European head of medtech and Dx/LST for Jefferies and prior to that as European head of healthcare for Barclays. Mr. Gunnarsson holds an MSc in Business Administration and Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics.
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Dr. Anna Sandström
Science Policy & Relations Director
AztraZeneca
Dr. Sandström is a physicist by training, with a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Karolinska Institutet and a career at Government Agencies such as Vinnova and the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. Today, Dr. Sandström is Science Policy and Relations Director for Europe at AstraZeneca. She is elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and board member of the Royal Institute of Technology and the synchrotron light source MaxIV as well as EIT Health Scandinavia. In addition, she heads the R&D committee of the trade body SwedenBIO and is on the steering group of the SciLifeLab Drug Discovery and Development platform. Her role at AstraZeneca includes to catalyze new R&D collaborations with academia and third party groups and to develop and deliver a strategy to promote life science policies spurring a vibrant life science innovation system in Sweden and EU.
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Dr. Robert Langer
David H. Koch Institute Professor
MIT
Dr. Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written over 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 351,000 times; his h-index of 293 is the highest of any engineer in history and tied for the 4th highest of any individual in any field. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies; he is a cofounder of a number of companies including Moderna. Dr. Langer served as Chairman of the FDA's Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 3 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, and the Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences. He holds 36 honorary doctorates and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.
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Mr. Peter Dahlen
Managing Director
American Chamber of Commerce in Sweden
Mr. Dahlen is the Managing Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Sweden. In addition, he is a regular lecturer at the Stockholm University Law Faculty on U.S. law and public policy. On moving to Sweden, Mr. Dahlen was General Counsel at VSMarket, and subsequently the Director of Business Development and Public Affairs at TransLegal. In the U.S., Mr. Dahlen served as a Senate Judiciary Committee Counsel to then Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and provided legal and legislative advice to Senator Biden on a wide range of subjects. His portfolio included intellectual property, criminal law, privacy, election and campaign finance law, Internet crime and security, and critical infrastructure protection. Originally from Delaware, he received his legal education in the United States at The Catholic University of America and a Master's in European Intellectual Property Law from Stockholm University. He is admitted to the District of Columbia and Maryland Bars.
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Mr. Fredrik Ekström
President
Nasdaq Stockholm
Mr. Ekström is the President of Nasdaq Stockholm and Head of European Fixed Income and ESG. Mr. Ekstroöm joined the OM Group in 1999 and has held various leading roles in clearing and fixed income throughout his career, including the role as Business Analyst at EDX in London and Head of Risk Management at NeoNet Securities. In 2010 he joined Nasdaq as Chief Risk Officer for Nasdaq Clearing. Over the past decade, he has held a variety of senior leadership roles, including President Nasdaq Clearing and Head of Nasdaq Nordic Fixed Income Exchange. Mr. Ekstroöm holds a degree in Economics from Uppsala University. Mr. Ekström sits on the board of the Helsinki and Icelandic Exchange, and act as Chairman of the Board for Puro.earth. He is also a member of the SNS Board of Trustee. SNS is an independent, non-profit organization and is Sweden's premier venue for fact-based public debate.
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Ms. Sana Alajmovic
Co-Founder and CEO
Sigrid Therapeutics
Ms. Sana Alajmovic is Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of Sigrid Therapeutics (Sigrid). Sigrid isan innovative, clinical-stage biotech company pioneering a proprietary material-based platform technology SiPore™ targeting a range of metabolicdiseases and disorders. Ms. Alajmovic has experience in commercializing research anddiscovery by establishing partnership with global top tier biopharmaceutical actors. Her previous positions include Head of Business Development for Drug Delivery at Nanologica AB, Business Development Manager within the Serendipity Innovations Group and Business Development Manager for the Swedish-American Life Science Summit. Before joining the Life Science industry, she was Managing Director for the venture capital firm Curitas in the Procuritas Group, Operations Manager for the charity foundation Chelha and Assistant Events & Marketing Manager at the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in New York. She was named one of Sweden's 101 Super Talents by the leading Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer in 2012. Ms. Alajmovic received her Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Business and Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics.
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Dr. Sara Mangsbo
Co-founder
Immuneed & Strike Pharma
Dr. Mangsbo is a Senior lecturer in protein-based drugs at Uppsala University as well as the Chief Innovation Officer of Ultimovacs. Her passion for the development of safe and improved cancer immunotherapies has taken her into the rich life of entrepreneurship. She is also the co-founder of Immuneed, Vivologica and Strike pharma. She was awarded the Entrepreneur of the year by Veckans Affärer in 2019 and received the Brain Apple Award by Uppsala University in 2020. She also received the global SITC team award with the Synthetic Long Peptide therapeutic field last year.
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Dr. Lao Saal
Co-founder and COO
SAGA Diagnostics AB
Dr. Saal is co-founder and COO of SAGA Diagnostics AB, a spinout cancer genomics company from Lund University, Sweden, specializing in the ultrasensitive monitoring of a powerful cancer biomarker called circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). SAGA technologies and simple blood samples are used to stratify patients, monitor response to treatment, and help direct therapeutic choices. Since 2016, SAGA provides testing products and services to leading pharma, academia, and healthcare laboratories worldwide. Dr. Saal has MD and PhD degrees from Columbia University (New York) and has trained at the National Institutes of Health and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He has published more than 60 articles in leading journals such as Nature Genetics, Science, and PNAS, which have been cited more than 10,000 times.
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Dr. Evelina Vågesjö
Co-founder & CEO
Ilya Pharma
Dr. Vågesjö is a Co-founder and CEO of Ilya Pharma. She has successfully developed the scientific and clinical PoC, API concept. Dr. Vågesjö has built a strong team and raised 20 MEUR to Ilya Pharma to date. Dr. Vågesjö received her PhD in Physiology from Uppsala University and her MBA from Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University.
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Dr. Karin Hehenberger
CEO & Founder
LyfeBulb
Dr. Hehenberger has more than 20 years of experience in the life sciences sector, dedicating her career to applying medical science to impacting people living with chronic disease. Prior to founding Lyfebulb in 2014, she served as an executive at Eyetech Pharmaceuticals (EYET) & Coronado BioSciences (CNDO) and had strategic management roles at Johnson & Johnson (Vice President Metabolic Strategy), JDRF (Senior Vice President Strategic Alliances), and McKinsey, as well as senior partnership roles at public (Brummer & Partners) and private (Scandinavian Life Science Ventures) multi-billion dollar investment funds. She received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Karolinska institute, and did her postdoctoral fellowship as a JDRF fellow at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School.
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Mr. Staffan Folin
Partner
EY
Mr. Folin has more than 20 years of transaction experience, having advised corporate, private equity and public sector clients as well as entrepreneurs in their M&A and financing transactions. For the past 15 years Mr. Folin has mainly worked with the healthcare and life science sectors including pharma, biotech, medtech and diagnostics. He holds a Master of Science from Stockholm School of Economics and Richard Ivey School of business in Canada.
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Dr. Gunilla Osswald
CEO
BioArctic
Dr. Osswald is the CEO of BioArctic, a Swedish research-based biopharma company focusing on disease-modifying treatments and reliable biomarkers and diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Dr. Osswald joined BioArctic in 2013 and has during her tenure helped transform the company form a private research firm to a listed R&D company with several large collaborations with large global pharma. Dr. Osswald has over 35 years of experience in the pharma industry, most of it from AstraZeneca where she held roles in all parts of the business, including VP and responsible for the neurodegeneration portfolio globally. Dr. Osswald has a passion for leadership and corporate culture as a driver of success which has been recognized across geographies. In 2020 her continued work in this area was a cornerstone in rendering BioArctic the Allbright Award.
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Ms. Sofia Breitholtz
President
Reach for change
Ms. Breitholtz has a passion for connecting people and resources through building partnerships to solve global challenges in an innovative way. Ms. Breitholtz is the CEO of Reach for Change, an organisation that supports social entrepreneurs working to scale innovative solutions for children and young people. Reach for Change has supported over 1000 social enterprises in eighteen different countries. She has previously worked with business development at EY and with development issues in Africa for the EU. She was the former deputy CEO of the Swedish social enterprise Solvatten, and has worked as an advisor for Ben & Jerry's community engagement as well as for several companies on their sustainability agendas.
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Mr. Anders Månsson
CEO
RhoVac
Mr. Månsson, holds a BSc degree in business and economics from Lund University of Sweden as well as an MBA from Business School Lausanne, Switzerland. He has more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and life science industry, featuring senior leadership positions in both biotech and multinational pharmaceutical companies, in Sweden and abroad. In the large pharma arena, Mr Månsson's key focus has been on licensing, divestment & acquisitions, with deals in the billion-dollar range on his record. In recent years, Mr. Månsson has become a passionate private investor in Swedish biotech and pharma. He holds several board positions, albeit his key focus currently is to ensure a partnership deal for RhoVac's immuno-oncology project, RV001, a phase 2b project in prostate cancer, fast tracked by the FDA, and with readout mid next year.
