2020 Speakers

Andrew Fried is IBM European Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry Leader.

From April 2018 through March 2019 Andrew was IBM’s Global Life Sciences Industry Leader.  He became European Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry Leader from April 2019.

Andrew helps clients address industry imperatives and save lives through the power of cognitive insights.  He works with clients to advance the next generation of discovery and development, acting on insights to drive value, enhance relationships across the ecosystem and empowering people to make better decisions.

Andrew has been IBM’s Life Sciences Industry Leader for Europe between 2015-2108.  Prior to transferring to Europe in July 2015, Andrew was IBM Life Sciences Industry Leader for China for 5 years.  While in China Andrew worked with many leading multi-national companies and several Chinese Life Sciences companies who were leaders in their respective segment.

Before joining IBM in 2000, Andrew had a successful 14-year career with a leading strategy consulting company.  He graduated from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Arts, and Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) with a Bachelor of Business.  Andrew has a Master of Business Administration from the International University of Japan and is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.  He was a three-term board member on a government enterprise with assets of over $350M.  He was a founding director of a successful dot.com start-up in the early 2000s.

Andrew is an advocate of sport and fitness as a gateway to good health.  He is passionate about the role of genomics in identifying both the cause of disease and personalized solutions.

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Award-winning serial entrepreneur Angela Spang is a UK-based innovator in women’s healthcare. Swedish born, Angela’s vision is to enable healthcare professionals to improve patient outcome through innovation and training.

Over the past 25 years, Angela has worked in the life sciences sector and has gained a deep understanding of building successful businesses, managing international staff and operating in a highly regulated industry across the globe.

As a successful entrepreneur, Angela spends her time developing global strategies and often speaks and delivers workshops on leadership, sales and innovation.

She lives with her husband and two children in Buckinghamshire.

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

• Qualified as a German Lawyer with 20+ years of experience in the regulated health care industry
• 10 years with Johnson &Johnson Medical, before 10 years with Teleflex Medical
• Experienced in quality and regulatory affairs in pharmaceutical and mainly medical device industry
• Expert knowledge of regulatory requirements in the EU and ability to translate regulations into requirements to support CE-marking
• At J&J involved in the planning and implementation of MDR requirements since 2013
• Working experience abroad: 1 year in the US (Philadelphia) and 4 years in the UK (London)

I founded NLC with a mission to bring healthtech inventions to market. Due to market complexities and fragmentation, 95% of life-changing, science-based healthtech inventions never reach the patients.
At NLC we don’t accept this status quo; we scout medical inventions all over Europe and build these out into commercially viable ventures, so that these life-changing inventions can reach the patient.
Throughout the years, we have built a dedicated network, driven by data and learnings. We support our ventures in a variety of different ways, including fund-raising, team-building and legal support.
As founder & CEO, my primary role is to set-out the strategy and rally internal- & external stakeholders.
I am always on the look-out for potential partners in Europe, who share my passion for venture building and advancing health. Specialities: healthtech, healthcare, medtech, biotech, venture building, start-ups, fundraising, valorisation, seed investing, entrepreneurship.

Cécile Théard-Jallu has developped in-depth expertise as an attorney in private practice representing multinational corporations, including major US and European firms and public and private organizations in the life sciences and innovation sectors. Cecile focuses primarily on complex transactions including R&D and consortiums, technology transfers, licensing deals other technological change related projects. She assists clients with their responses to calls for projects in the R&D and innovation sector in the context of public funding. She also advises them on the design, negotiation and enforcement of their commercial or IT contracts.

She worked in a leading law firm in Washington DC as an attorney in private practice on secondment and was also seconded to a global player in the medical equipment sector. She regularly lectures on research and innovation law and is a member of the International Bar Association in the life sciences practice.

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Ivo Aarninkhof is founder of Holland Innovative in Enschede The Netherlands (www.holland-innovative.nl) and CEO of Sigmascreening B.V. (www.sigmascreening.com) and co-founder of several Medtech companies. Aarninkhof has 20+ years executive management experience as board executive and board member, started and managed several high-tech / med-tech companies and held senior management positions for Philips in Europe as well as in China. Aarninkhof is board member of the Dutch employers’ organisation in the technology industry FME (https://www.fme.nl/) and member of the Supervisory Board of ‘’Academy Het Dorp’’ (https://www.academyhetdorp.nl/) for long term care patients. Aarninkhof holds a MSc. degree from the University of Twente in Acoustics in The Netherlands and an executive MBA in Finance from Vlerick Belgium/St Gallen Switzerland/Nyenrode The Netherlands. Aarninkhof has published a book in 2021 (NL) and 2022 (EN) with the title ’Entrepreneurial Innovation’.

Biography available soon

Jana Grieb specializes in health care and life sciences, with a particular focus on the pharmaceutical and medtech industry. Jana has advised numerous pharmaceutical and medical devices companies in a variety of regulatory issues, transactions and contractual matters across the European Union, and has represented them in litigation with regard to public procurement law, unfair competition and reimbursement by public and private payers.

Biography available soon!

Dr Jim Pierrepont, PhD, is the Chief Innovation Officer at Corin Group. He has 15+ years’ experience in the orthopaedic device industry, holding leadership roles in product development, sales and marketing. He has undergraduate and masters degrees in biomedical engineering, and holds a PhD in personalised hip replacement. Jim is well-published in the field of hip replacement and led the development of Corin’s award-winning Optimized Positioning System (OPS™). More recently, he has overseen the development and deployment of CorinConnect™, Corin’s revolutionary connected digital ecosystem, providing actionable insights at every stage of the joint replacement experience.

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Biography available soon!

Pierre Meulien is executive director of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a €5 billion public-private partnership between the European Union and the European pharmaceutical industry. At IMI, he is responsible for the overall management of the program, which works to improve and accelerate the drug development process by facilitating collaboration between the key players involved in health research. Previously, Dr Meulien was president and CEO of Genome Canada, where he raised money and oversaw the launch of novel projects and networks in the field of genomics-based technologies. Prior to that, he was chief scientific officer for Genome British Columbia and was the founding CEO of the Dublin Molecular Medicine Center. Dr Meulien also worked with the French biotechnology company Transgene and with Aventis Pasteur (now Sanofi Pasteur). He has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Edinburgh and carried out a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

Biography available soon!

Dr. Reyk Horland was appointed  CEO of TissUse in October 2020 following  8 years as Head of Business Development. Since 2010 he has implemented a profitable product business with a remarkable annual sales growth rate and has led the market launch of the HUMIMIC® technology in 2014. His business network includes leading pharmaceutical and consumer product companies as well as regulatory authorities and outstanding research institutions worldwide. Prior to TissUse, Dr. Horland studied Biotechnology at the Technische Universität Berlin and specialized in Medical Biotechnology. During his academic career he was involved in various tissue engineering programs, all with a focus on the commercialization of the respective products. He gained experience in marketing and sales in various German companies.

He has a successful track record in the medical device industry, with a broad set of skills and an entrepreneurial attitude driven to create business impact by bringing relevant and meaningful solutions to market. He lived and worked on assignments for 10 years in the US, currently working at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven.

His specialties include: Medical Imaging, Image Guided Intervention, Acute Care, Patient Monitoring, Therapeutic Care, Clinical Research, New Business Creation, Alliances & Partnerships, M&A, New Venture Integration, R&D management, Program & Portfolio Management, People & Talent Management.

He is also a guest lecturer at the ESSEC Business School in Paris where he teaches a course on Strategy in HealthTech industry.

Biography available soon!

Rodrigo is currently a Partner at SOSV, where he leads the New York based early-stage life sciences investment program, IndieBio. He currently provides support to over 60 companies in his portfolio and sits on the boards of Algiknit, Visusnano, and Chronomics. He serves as a mentor for The Founder Institute, Techstars, and is an Ambassador for the MIT Technology Review in Europe. Rodrigo is a regular speaker at Slush, Vivatech, Dublin Tech Summit, and South Summit, among others conferences.

Before his venture career, he founded four LatAm companies in the food, gaming, and digital advertising industries. He became an angel investor after selling TheFanLeague, an Argentina-based gaming company.

Rodrigo is a Kauffman Fellow and holds executive education qualifications in venture capital from UC Berkeley.

Dr. Sascha Berger is a Partner at TVM Capital, based in Munich, Germany. TVM Capital is one the pioneer transatlantic Life Science Venture Capital funds with teams based in Europe and North America. Sascha joined TVM Capital in 2016, helped to raise the current $480M fund and works closely with entrepreneurs and founders to advance promising pharmaceutical assets, medtech, diagnostic and digital health technologies to the next value inflection points. Sascha is a passionate VC, a Boston Consulting Group alumnus, and has an academic background in chemistry and finance.

Ségolène Martin is the CEO of Kantify. Kantify is a Belgian startup specializing in the development of artificial intelligence (machine learning) solutions for other organizations.
Kantify has received numerous awards for the excellence of its work and results, particularly in the area of prediction and analysis of unstructured documents. The company recently announced a world first in AI applied to Health, in partnership with the Free University of Brussels. Kantify works with companies in the healthtech sector, helping them to understand how to leverage their data into meaningful and solid AI based solutions.
Ségolène holds a Masters in Public Policy and an MBA. Before founding Kantify, Ségolène worked in the innovation, regulatory and public affairs sector. She has held various management positions in the public and private sectors. Ségolène has just received the Business Trophy from the prestigious Cercle Montaigne. She is the Ambassador of Women in AI for Belgium, and a Board Member of Becode.

Biography available soon!

Suzanne Elvidge is a freelance medical writer based in the UK. She writes about medtech, pharmaceuticals and healthcare for print and online publications and clients worldwide.

Thom Rasche joined Earlybird as a Venture Partner in 2003 and was promoted to Partner in 2006. Since 2014 he has been Partner at Earlybird Health Management GmbH & Co. KG.
Thom has more than 16 years experience as investor. Further, he is a seasoned executive in the medical device and diagnostic sectors with over 29 years of operational experience. Since he joined Earlybird,
Thom has been responsible for the medical device portfolio and new investments in this area. He is currently on the board of EBS Technologies GmbH (Berlin), Miracor Medical SA (Awans), Atlantic Therapeutics Ltd. (Galway), Alesi Surgical Ltd. (Cardiff) and Polares Medical SA (Ecublens).
Before joining Earlybird, Thom was with Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices and Diagnostics group in various international senior management roles, lastly as Managing Director for Ethicon-EndoSurgery Germany.
Thom Rasche holds a Degree as Diplom Kaufmann (MBA equivalent) from the University of Applied Sciences in Lüneburg, Germany.

Tina Tan is the Executive Editor of FirstWord MedTech, a provider of news, insights and analysis to global medical device, diagnostics and healthcare companies. She has covered the medtech industry for nearly 20 years; prior to FirstWord MedTech, Tina was co-editor in chief at Informa’s Medtech Insight, where she oversaw the commercial-focused editorial content, including news and analysis on disruptive technologies, investments and M&A trends.

Yves Bayon, PhD & MBA, is an employee of Medtronic – Sofradim Production as a Chief Scientist with +20 years of experience of Medical Devices development.

He has since carried out various assignments, including the establishment of the porcine collagen production line, and the development of collagen-based medical devices for the repair or regeneration of soft tissues (i.e. Parietex™ Composite mesh and its derivatives with cumulative sales of over €1 billion). Since 2015, his missions have expanded with cross-functional activities across Medtronic’s multiple divisions (eg cardiovascular, neurovascular, spine, ENT) and with activities going beyond biomaterials, in connection with the digitization of medical devices (eg. AI-based solutions, e-health application).

He is also part of the Research and Innovation committee and the Circular Economy working group of Medtech Europe, a mentor of EIT Health, member of the Gtech of the healthcare cluster Lyonbiopole and member of the investment committee of AxLR SATT.