Venture Capital for PhDs: small molecules and biologicals

‘Venture Capital for PhDs: small molecules and biologicals’ is a course organized by MECUSA, Spanish women scientists in USA. This 13-week intensive course explores the financial challenges that entrepreneurs face when establishing and growing their business ventures. We’ve empaneled international experts to provide a better understanding of each stage of start-up financing and development in both the USA and Europe. The famous glass ceiling has traditionally prevented women from reaching leadership positions in science, but even more so in areas of venture capital and entrepreneurship. For this reason, we have chosen mostly women scientists as our speakers to prove that women can access these professions and encourage other women to do so.

For more worshops from MECUSA visit: Venture Capital for PhDs: small molecules and biologicals

About the Speaker:

Ana Céspedes, PhD, MBA, is Chief Operating Officer of IAVI, a global organization dedicated to developing globally affordable and accessible vaccines and antibodies for infectious and neglected diseases. Within IAVI, Dr. Céspedes provides oversight and strategic direction in addressing the operational needs of the organization globally. She enables and maximizes coordination across the global senior leaders responsible of Access and Commercialization; Government Affairs; Communications; India & Africa operations; Legal, Strategy & Business Development; Finance; and, Human Resources.

Ana is a senior global leader with experience across Life Sciences organizations and business consulting. She has successfully built and executed growth and launch strategies focused on multi-customer models (physicians, payers, patients, policy makers), seamless cross-functional collaborations, 360-communication strategies, and implementation of digital technologies and platforms to maximize business outcomes and improve effectiveness.

She has hold numerous Country, Regional and Global leadership roles, with responsibilities over Government Affairs and Policy; Market Access and Pricing; Corporate, Brand and Digital Communications; Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Innovation, among other areas. Ana also has 7 years of General Management experience.

PhD in Pharmacy Magna Cum Laude and Top1 PhD Award; Master’s Degree in Management of Healthcare Institutions; Executive Degree in General Management; and certified in Business Innovation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

About the Workshop:

Healthcare is living a very profound transformation. A successful introduction of a new product in the market requires not only a positive marketing authorization and an integrated marketing and sales strategy. Successful product launch and most importantly, patient access, are now driven by a multi-stakeholder strategy that starts after proof of concept demonstration and ensures a good understanding of what value means across multiple stakeholders (patients, physicians, policy makers and payers). This enables the development of the required evidence to demonstrate “value for money” during launch time. Planning for product launch starts as early as in Phase 2 and requires a cross-functional strategy and the development of an integrated Clinical Development Plan than seamlessly transitions to a Product Launch plan. In this class, we will review the key elements of product launch, with special emphasis in ensuring an end-to-end understanding of what is necessary to successfully ensure patient access, the key driver of commercialization success.

Please, note that tickets will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis and are subject to availability (100 attendees).

Note: we welcome people of any gender or nationality to this workshop. A certificate of attendance will be provided to ECUSA full members who attend all workshop sessions.