TEAM

Kevin Bilyard Ph.D. - Principal

Kevin has broad industry experience gained over more than 25 years in new product development, product strategy and corporate development roles with two major pharmaceutical companies (SmithKline Beecham and AstraZeneca), a drug delivery company (Quadrant Healthcare) and several earlier stage biotechnology companies. He has managed various aspects of new product development with particular emphasis on early stage proof-of-concept work. He led projects to improve efficiency of the development process and portfolio management while at Zeneca Pharmaceuticals; authored several articles and speaks at conferences and training events on various topics linked to pharmaceutical product development and risk management.

He gained direct senior level IPO experience as Product Development Director at the time of the London Stock Exchange listing of Quadrant Healthcare where, in a subsequent role as Corporate Development Director, he was also intimately involved in activities related to trade sale, M&A, formation of joint ventures and fund raising.

Kevin has been a director of or advisor to several emerging biotech and pharmaceutical services companies in Europe and USA and is a co-founder of Nine-TZ Healthcare Ventures.

Christopher O'Toole - Principal

Chris has spent over 25 years in marketing, business and general management positions in both pharmaceutical industry and service businesses.

Before co-founding Nine-TZ Healthcare Ventures he was previously with a New York-based healthcare investment group, where he licensed and invested in new products and technologies. During this time he established two companies, acting as President for one.

He has held senior management positions with medical-marketing consultancies, including President of Medical Action Communications for North America and Europe, having previously established their US business.  He was responsible for revenue and profit, and day-to-day operations of the >100 person agency, a part of Quintiles Transnational.

Prior to this he was VP, Marketing for a healthcare division of Pearson plc, responsible for North America, Europe and Japan.

Chris’s early career was spent in Europe with SmithKline and Fisons Pharmaceuticals before he relocated to the US in 1989 to join Schering-Plough.

Niva Almaula Ph.D

Niva has more than twelve years experience in various aspects of the life sciences industry having trained as a scientist and spent the past nine years in business development/licensing. Most recently Niva was a member of Nycomed’s US pipeline sourcing team based in Florham Park, NJ responsible for sourcing and assessing clinical stage drug candidates to augment Nycomed’s pipeline. She has experience in equity research and covered several US biotechnology companies in the various therapeutic areas; as well as investment banking experience where she focused on licensing and business development. She has also worked in academic technology transfer having worked as the licensing manager at Rockefeller University. Niva obtained her PhD at Rutgers University and completed her post-doctoral training at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

Jay Campbell

Jay Campbell has over ten years of experience working in the financial services industry; the last seven of which have been as an investment banker focusing on mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance in the healthcare industry.

During this time he has worked on advisory assignments in the medical technology, biotechnology, specialty pharmaceutical, and generic pharmaceutical industries. In addition, Jay has worked as an equity capital markets banker focusing on the origination and execution of equity and equity-linked securities, independent business consultant, and high yield research associate.

Jay has worked at The Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN AMRO, BIO-IB LLC, ABN AMRO Rothschild joint-venture, and Schroder & Co. Jay has worked on 16 M&A and financing transactions representing over $12.5 billion. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Minds Matter of New York; a non-for profit organization that he has been actively involved with since 1997. Jay received a BSBA from Bucknell University with a major in Management and a minor in Spanish.

Richard Cave Ph.D.

Richard Cave is a Sales and Marketing professional with over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and related industries and has held senior sales and marketing roles in the UK subsidiaries of Glaxo, BMS and Fujisawa Ltd. He also spent 2 years based in Sweden during his time with Astra.

Commercially focused, Richard is fully conversant with the drug development process having served and led a number of development project teams. He represented international marketing needs while responsible for some of the major pharmaceutical brands including ‘Tagamet’, ‘Zantac’, ‘Losec’ and ‘Capoten’ both internationally and in the UK.

Richard has worked as a management consultant and trainer, specializing in marketing/sales support to provide clients with "hands on" consultancy, mentoring and training. Latterly he has been involved with licensing-in products from academia and biotech companies as well as spearheading the acquisition of a diagnostics company and two IPOs.

Gilles Devillers Pharm.D

Gilles has built a solid expertise in pharmaceutical development and business development for drugs and biologics (including vaccines) with their primary presentations for the parenteral, oral and respiratory administration routes.

He has been involved with and led activities in licensing, strategic marketing, technology valuation of drugs and delivery systems in early and late development stages. He also has practical experience in the development of pharmaceuticals and has worked in the nuclear medicine ward of the Grenoble hospital. Gilles has worked on projects in phases from pre-clinical through to life-cycle management in a range of therapeutic areas and drug delivery systems.

Prior to Nine-TZ Healthcare Ventures, he was responsible for European and world wide business development and strategic marketing at Becton Dickinson Pharmaceuticals and Valois Pharmaceuticals. Prior to this, he was a scientist, team leader and business development manager at SmithKline Beecham and Quadrant Healthcare.

Gilles is a doctor in Pharmacy and has a post graduate engineering diploma and an MBA with 2 majors in innovation marketing and corporate finance.

Martin Joseph

Martin Joseph is an Associate of Nine-TZ Healthcare Ventures and Managing Director of UK-based Rivershill Consultancy Ltd., specialising in business forecasting, planning and decision-making. Martin was formerly Head of Information Management and Forecasting at AstraZeneca where he was responsible for the global forecasting business processes and systems.

He was also responsible for the provision of the information required to support the AstraZeneca Global Supply Chain Teams. Martin worked for the former Zeneca and its forerunner, ICI, for over 34 years. Previously in his career, Martin was Head of Decision Support and various senior roles in change management, international marketing, project management and R&D. Martin has chaired and is a regular speaker at international cross-industry conferences on forecasting and supply chain planning. He is a member of the Advisory Boards for the Institute of Business Forecasting and Eyeforpharma.

Michael Kurman, M.D

Michael Kurman established a successful business as a consultant to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and health care industries specializing in oncology and oncology drug development, with 24 years of experience. He received his B.S. in Biology from Syracuse University graduating summa cum laude and received his M.D. degree from Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Kurman started his career in the practice of oncology, during which he was an investigator on several oncology clinical trials. Since joining industry, he has held positions of progressively more responsibility in Janssen, Cytogen and US Bioscience, and was involved in the successful development or launch of four oncology products. Before starting his consultancy, Dr. Kurman was Vice President of Clinical Operations for Quintiles’ Oncology Division. His primary interests are in early/late phase oncology clinical trial design and drug development, and in strategic portfolio management. In addition, he serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several companies and is on the Board of Directors of Avalon Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Kurman is board certified in Internal Medicine and Oncology, and did his oncology training at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York.

Dena Lipman

Dena is a Global Brand Leader with 24 years experience in Big Pharma (ICI, Zeneca & AstraZeneca) leading high-performance global Commercial and cross-functional R & D teams. She has achieved positive results through identifying meaningful differentiation and development & implementation of innovative strategic planning. Dena has extensive experience in both the oncology and cardiovascular therapy areas.

Roles have entailed drug development and life cycle strategy, market segmentation, positioning, pricing strategy, forecast scenarios, uncertainties and assumptions and optimized data externalization. She has overseen commercial success for key brands including CRESTOR, Zoladex and Iressa. She also initiated a drug development process which became an integral business mechanism for understanding what is needed to be in place to successfully launch a medicine and direct key clinical trial design. She has worked closely with key markets & regions including US, EU, AsiaPac, LatinAm, India, Australia and Japan. She has recently provided commercial input to a start-up biotech Company.

Dena is a Pharmacist with a Masters in Clinical Pharmacy.

Janette Thomas Ph.D.

Janette is an experienced pharmaceutical R & D executive and has held a number of senior management positions in the research and commercialization of new technology. 

She has experience in reviewing innovative technology to identify commercial potential. She has been involved in licensing technology, developing strategies to optimize value and calculating the financial requirements for development to market. She has had practical experience in the development of pharmaceutical R & D programs, in the management of large international development teams for 'large pharma', and contracting people to 'virtual' development teams for small organizations. She has worked on projects in phases from pre-clinical through to life-cycle management in a range of therapeutic areas.

Janette has laboratory management experience as a Project Director and R & D Manager starting up an R&D team, managing the research program, incorporating a GLP regime in a new laboratory and furbishing and equipping new laboratories.

Originally a biochemist she has led research groups in a range of therapeutic areas including Oncology, Inflammation and infectious diseases.

Robert Whitemore

Educated in Business Studies and Marketing, Rob has over 25 years’ experience profitably building multinational and early stage businesses within pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer healthcare market sectors - both in the UK and Internationally.

Rob has been consulting to the healthcare industry on strategy and business development since 2001 and in 2004 founded Roboleo & Co – an independent practice specialising in Market Access. In addition, he has recently been MD of a diagnostic and nutritional advisory service and UK Head of Marketing for Oncology division of leading multinational - together with to a number on non-executive directorships.

Rob started his career at The Boots Company before assuming increasingly senior marketing, business development and general management positions with leading companies, including: Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Pharmacia & Upjohn and Unipath (Unilever). During this period Rob successfully built numerous of local, pan-European and global brands, launched a new business venture, transformed underperforming business units and led various M&A initiatives.

 

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