Featured Speakers

Mr. Berns was appointed to the role of Anacor Pharmaceuticals President and Chief Executive Officer in 2014. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors since 2012 and as Chairman of the Board of Directors since 2013. Anacor was acquired by Pfizer in June 2016. From August 2012 to March 2014, Mr. Berns was a self-employed consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. From March 2006 to September 2012, Mr. Berns served as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the board of directors of Allos Therapeutics, Inc. which was acquired by Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in September 2012.

From July 2005 to March 2006, Mr. Berns was a self-employed consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. From June 2002 to July 2005, he was President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Bone Care International, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company that was acquired by Genzyme Corporation in July 2005. From 2001 to 2002, Mr. Berns served as Vice President and General Manager of the Immunology, Oncology, and Pain Therapeutics business unit of Abbott Laboratories. From 2000 to 2001, he served as Vice President, Marketing of BASF Pharmaceuticals/Knoll, which was acquired by Abbott in 2001. From 1990 to 2000, Mr. Berns held various positions, including senior management roles, at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. He has been a director of Jazz Pharmaceuticals, PLC since June 2010. Mr. Berns received a B.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin.

Julie Block, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Eczema Association since 2010, has dedicated her career to the non-profit sector, and for the past several years, to patient-health advocacy.

Julie’s extensive non-profit management, strategy and development experience stems from leadership positions in education, medical technology, and the arts. At Harvard Medical School, she directed a variety of programs and new initiatives, including the launch of a new AIDS research center. Throughout her career, Julie has continued her involvement with causes she is passionate about as a volunteer including the American Cancer Society Relay for Life, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and Very Special Arts for children with special needs.

The immediate past-president of the Coalition of Skin Diseases, Julie is an active member of multiple national groups focused on skin diseases in the U.S. – the American Academy of Dermatology Atopic Dermatitis Guidelines Committee, Expert Resource, and Pruritus Work groups; the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Coalition; and, the Friends of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences Coalition. She serves on the LEO Pharma Patient and Scientific Review Board, and a variety of other ad-hoc pharmaceutical industry initiatives. She recently served on the NIAID Food Allergy Guidelines Committee, and the Expert Panel on the Peanut Allergy Addendum to the Food Allergy Guidelines. She is a past member of the National Health Council Membership Committee. She has been invited to share her expertise in eczema patient advocacy at national and international conferences including the Cochran Annual Meeting on Comparative Effective Research, BIO International Convention, National Institutes of Health Roundtable events, and most recently, the International Symposium on Atopic Dermatitis, and the First Israeli Symposium on Atopic Dermatitis.

Julie holds a Bachelor in Arts in Liberal Arts, and received her education at University of California at Santa Barbara, San Diego State University and Harvard University extension.

Dan Browne is a co-founder of the company and has served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors since operations commenced in 2002. Prior to starting Revance, Mr. Browne served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Neomend, Inc., a biologics and biomaterials company; he served as President of Prograft Medical Inc., a developer of peripheral vascular stents and stent-grafts. Previously, Mr. Browne spent more than 16 years in various leadership positions in product development, sales and marketing and business development in the GORE-TEX Medical Products Division of W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc., a global technology company, serving as Business Leader in the Medical Products Division as his final role at the company.

Philip Burchard joined Merz as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in July 2012. He is responsible for formulating and implementing Merz’s overall company strategy, managing global business operations, driving financial growth and enhancing Merz‘s culture of innovation.

During his tenure, Merz refocused its strategy on aesthetic medicine and neurotoxins, leading to a realignment of its global R&D organization, the acquisitions of three companies in the aesthetics space (Ulthera, Anteis and Neocutis), and a geographic expansion in Latin America and Asia Pacific, through the creation of a number of affiliates. Mr. Burchard has more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, having worked in sales and marketing, as well as general management roles in six different countries across Asia, Europe and the United States.

Prior to joining Merz, Philip Burchard worked at AstraZeneca for ten years in roles of increasing responsibility, culminating in the role of Senior Vice President - Global Marketing & Sales Operations. Prior to that, Mr. Burchard spent 15 years at Hoechst/Aventis. He is a German national who grew up in Brazil and he holds a business administration degree from the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel, Germany.

Vic is the North American President for Pfizer Inc.'s Inflammation & Immunology business and a member of the Global Inflammation & Immunology leadership team.

Prior to this role, Vic was the US Vice President of Sales & Marketing for the Inflammation & Immunology business and his background included a range of sales and marketing leadership assignments across portfolios of cardiovascular, respiratory, urology, and neuroscience brands from launch to the loss of exclusivity. Vic also founded Pfizer's Innovation Incubator, a specialized shop tasked with accelerating the adoption of commercial innovation. Under Vic's leadership, the Incubator launched several pharmaceutical industry firsts including a fully functional ecommerce property, Viagra Home Delivery, and eVisit an initiative designed to support virtual diagnoses for patients within inadequate access to healthcare.

Vic joined Pfizer in 1999 as the Director of Worldwide Regulatory Strategy in Pfizer's pharmaceuticals business leading the development of US and international regulatory filing and promotional strategies across a range of therapeutic areas. He joined Pfizer from the medical device industry, where he led a regulatory and clinical affairs team responsible for new product development, clinical trial design and conduct, and regulatory submissions for devices across various surgical specialties.

Vic holds a B.S. in physics from Fairfield University and an MBA in marketing, finance, and international business from NYU's Stern School of Business.

Seamus Fernandez covers Major Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology for Leerink Partners, and his stock picking ranked first among Pharmaceuticals analysts for the Thomson Reuters Analyst Awards in 2015 and third in 2012. In the October 2007 and 2008 Institutional Investor poll, he was named “Best Up-and-Comer” covering the Pharmaceuticals/ Major sector.

Prior to joining Leerink in 2006, Mr. Fernandez had been a member of the major pharmaceuticals team at Cowen and Company, LLC. Before Cowen, Mr. Fernandez was a senior associate at the consulting firm, Putnam Associates, Inc. He began his career as a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Neurosurgery where he conducted independent research using gene therapy and transgenic technology. His work was published in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, Experimental Neurology and the Journal of NeuroTrauma.

Mr. Fernandez graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Chemistry.

Alex Martin joined PuriCore in June 2015 as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. He brings more than 25 years of experience as a senior executive in private and public biopharmaceutical companies. He previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Affectis Pharmaceuticals AG, Chief Operating Officer of Intercept Pharmaceuticals (NASD: ICPT), and Chief Financial Officer at BioXell S.p.A., which was acquired by Cosmo Pharmaceuticals S.A. Mr. Martin began his career at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals before joining Novartis as Vice President, Global Business Development & Licensing. Most recently, he served as President of moksha8, a leading Latin American specialty pharmaceutical company. In his various roles, he has built teams, raised multiple rounds of capital and closed transformative deals with world-class companies. Mr. Martin holds a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from The Harvard Business School.

Bill Meury was appointed Chief Commercial Officer effective May 9, 2016. Bill is responsible for Allergan’s Global Commercial Operations with annual revenues of approximately $15B. Previously, Mr. Meury served as President, Branded Pharma, since March 2015. He joined Actavis in July 2014 as Executive Vice President, Commercial, North American Brands.

Prior to joining Actavis, he served as Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Forest Laboratories, Inc. He joined Forest in 1993 and held positions in Marketing, New Products, Business Development, and Sales. Most recently, as Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Mr. Meury oversaw the activities of several departments, including Product Management, Market Research, and Commercial Assessments, as well as Forest’s Global Marketing and Early Commercialization groups. Mr. Meury directed 10 product launches during his tenure at Forest.

Before joining Forest, Mr. Meury worked in public accounting for Reznick Fedder & Silverman, and in financial reporting for MCI Communications. He has a B.S. in Economics from the University of Maryland.

Raymond A. Miller is a partner and co-chair of the Intellectual Property Department of Pepper Hamilton LLP, resident in the Pittsburgh office. Mr. Miller is co-chair of the firm’s Life Sciences practice group and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. A registered patent attorney, Mr. Miller focuses his practice on identifying, protecting, securing and maximizing the value of clients’ intellectual property.

Mr. Miller’s clients include universities, research institutes and businesses ranging from idea stage through Fortune 500 companies, as well as other organizations and individuals involved in basic research and technology transfer. He has represented Ivy League universities, research organizations, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, consumer products companies, manufacturing companies, computer software developers and R&D contractors. His practice includes both prosecution and transactional IP, including acquiring and licensing patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, as well as litigation.

Mr. Miller’s practice includes an array of chemical, medical, pharmaceutical, mechanical, environmental and business method fields. While he is particularly adept at handling technologies in the life sciences, he also is proficient in areas of material sciences, metallurgy, thin-film technology, specialty chemicals, polymer chemistry, nanotechnology and cosmetics.

Mr. Miller is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of University Technology Managers, Inc. and the American Intellectual Property Law Association. He has written and presented numerous scientific and legal publications.

Bob Moccia has spent his entire 33 year pharmaceutical career in dermatology. Bob started as a sales representative for Stiefel laboratories in the Boston area. In 1995, he became the Director of Sales for Dermik Laboratories and later Director of WW Business Development. In 1999, Bob started and was named President of the US subsidiary of Bioglan Pharmaceuticals, which was sold to Bradley Pharmaceuticals in 2004. That year he founded Chester Valley Pharmaceuticals, which later merged with Graceway Pharmaceuticals as part of the acquisition of the 3M Pharmaceutical business in the Americas. Bob served as President & COO. Graceway was later sold to Medicis in 2011, where Bob was Sr. Vice President of Corporate Development. From January 2013 to July 2014 Bob served as the CEO of Precision/Onset Pharmaceuticals. Precision was sold to Valeant in July 2014. Bob recently founded and serves as President & CEO of Encore Dermatology, Inc. Bob is married for 33 years, has 5 children and 2 granddaughters.

Susanne Mulligan joined Guggenheim Securities in November 2012 to build out the Firm's Equity Capital Markets platform. Susanne has spent the last 20 years in investment banking and has extensive experience originating, structuring and executing a variety of equity financings, including IPOs, follow-ons, block trades, minority stake, pre-IPO, PIPE, registered direct and private convertible financings.

Prior to joining Guggenheim Securities, Susanne was the Head of Healthcare Equity Capital Markets and the Co-Head of Private Equity Placements & PIPEs at Deutsche Bank. Susanne also held positions at Thomas Weisel Partners and Montgomery Securities where she executed a variety of financing and advisory transactions across multiple industry sectors.

Susanne received a BA in Economics and English from Amherst College, with distinction.

At Guggenheim, Susanne has been involved with equity financings for several dermatology clients including Aclaris, Dermira, Foamix, Neothetics, Revance, and Xenon.

Peter Nicholson has worked in healthcare for over 30 years and is responsible for the worldwide strategy and business development functions at Nestle Skin Health, whose mission is to deliver science-based solutions for the skin, hair and nails. He was co-creator of the Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD initiative, focused on the convergence of technology and cross-discipline collaboration to develop new insights that advance patient care. He is a member of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology - Health C.A.R.E. program, the American Academy of Dermatology and the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology.

Peter has a Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry with an emphasis on immunology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he pursued post-graduate research in the lab of Dr. Robert I. Mishell. He has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Anderson School of Business at UCLA. He was co-founder and CEO of Blue Heron Biotechnology which developed an automated and highly-accurate gene synthesis platform for the production of genes and gene variants for use in expression analysis. Peter has volunteered as a mentor and coach for the Cartier Women's Initiative awards and served as a judge for the MassChallenge Switzerland business accelerator program.

Jordi Sabé is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Almirall. Almirall is a leading dermatology player based in Barcelona (Spain) dedicated to providing valuable medicines and medical devices through its R&D, collaborations and strategic partnerships. Almirall has commercial operations in the US and Europe and global distribution reach.

Jordi has global responsibilities on scouting, evaluating and executing inorganic growth opportunities and strategic partnerships (External Innovation & M&A). Jordi is member of the Executive Committee, Pipeline Committee and Investment Committee at Almirall and reports to the CEO. As well, he served as board observer at AB Biotics.

Prior to joining Almirall, Jordi held several positions in different investment banks (KPMG Corporate Finance, Alta Partners) having had the opportunity to provide strategic and financial advice to companies like Henkel, Danone, BASF, Shell, Merck or Boehringer. Jordi has more than 20 years of experience in corporate development both from the advisory and the corporate side (GE Oil & Gas and, nowadays, ALMIRALL).

Under Jordi's leadership, Almirall's key achievements include the entrance of Almirall in the dermatology market through the acquisitions of Hermal (Reckitt Benckiser), Shire's dermatology portfolio (2007) and Aqua Pharmaceuticals (2013) from RoundTable Healthcare Partners. In 2014, Almirall decided to change the strategic direction of the company and decided to divest to AZ its respiratory franchise and since then has accelerated its growth in dermatology with the recent acquisitions of the Poli Group, ThermiGen and GSK's US dermatology products (Veltin and Altabax) – 2015 - and the strategic partnerships with Patagonia in ichthyosis and Sun Pharmaceuticals in psoriasis (tildrakizumab), both in 2016.

Jordi holds a BA from the University of Barcelona and the University of California at Berkeley and holds an MBA from IE Business School / SDA Bocconi. During the last years Jordi has participated in different executive programs in Harvard, INSEAD and the University of Chicago.

Michael Sierra, Ph.D. is currently Vice President of LEO Science & Tech Hub Cambridge (USA). Prior to this position, he held the positions of Director of Medicinal Chemistry, Director of Chemical Research, Director of External Discovery and Executive Director of Translational Research at LEO Pharma (Denmark). Before that, Michael worked 10 years at GlaxoSmithkline’s Centre de Recherche, Les Ulis (France) and the biotech, CareX, Strasbourg (France) as Head of Chemistry. He received his BS in chemistry from Ohio Northern University (USA), his Ph.D. in chemistry at Wayne State University (USA) and held a 2 year post doctoral position at Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau (France). He has 24 years of drug discovery experience in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases as well as inflammation and dermatology with the identification of 18 clinical candidates.

Mr. Sklawer is Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Brickell Biotech, Inc. Prior to Brickell, he served as the Head of Operations at Concordia Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an anti-cancer drug development company, acquired by Kadmon Corporation. Prior to joining Concordia, Mr. Sklawer held various corporate roles at Verid, Inc., a developer of security technology, acquired by EMC Corporation.

Mr. Sklawer holds a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing from the University of Florida and earned his Master of Business Administration from the University of Miami.

David Steinberg joined Jefferies as Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst covering the Specialty Pharmaceuticals sector in January 2014. Previously he was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank (formerly Alex. Brown) for 15 years. David was one of the first analysts on Wall Street to identify Specialty Pharma as a major growth opportunity for the investment community. He has regularly been voted to the Institutional Investor "All American Research Team", including each of the seven past years. He has also been selected to the Wall Street Journal's "Best on the Street" survey for stock picking.

David's research on various topics within the global drug industry has been frequently referenced in such national publications as Barron's, The New York Times, and Fortune. David has been involved with numerous dermatology/aesthetics focused companies during his career. Selected companies he has covered include Aclaris, Allergan, Anacor, Collagenex, Medicis, Penederm, Perrigo and Valeant.

David received a degree in Business Administration from Colby College and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.

Rick Waywood is Vice President, North America Dermatology and Respiratory Business Unit at Sanofi Genzyme. In this role, Rick leads the BU to build a new Dermatology and Respiratory franchise for the future launch of dupilumab, a novel human monoclonal antibody, in partnership with Regeneron.

Rick has 27 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry including a depth of experience in sales and marketing in global and U.S. businesses. During his tenure, he has worked in a wide range of therapeutic areas, on multiple product launches, and has managed numerous alliance partnerships. Rick has extensive experience in the rheumatology and dermatology therapeutic areas with focus on biologics and commercial leadership for launch preparations. Prior to his current role, Rick was the Global Commercial Psoriasis Team Lead for tofacitinib and the U.S. Enbrel Marketing Team Lead at Pfizer.

In addition to his experience in dermatology and rheumatology, Rick held various U.S. and Global roles including leading global market development efforts for Prevenar 13 Adult Vaccine, U.S. and global launch campaigns for an IV antibiotic, and other marketing and marketing support roles in cardiovascular and diabetes.

Rick graduated from Butler University with a B.S. in Business.

Tom co-founded Dermira in 2010 and is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors. He brings over 30 years of experience in specialty pharma and 18 years of experience in dermatology. Prior to founding Dermira, Tom served as Chairman of the board of directors and Chief Executive Officer of Peplin, Inc. until Peplin’s acquisition by LEO Pharma A/S in 2009. Previously, he served as Chairman of the board of directors and Chief Executive Officer of Connetics Corporation until Connetics was acquired by Stiefel Laboratories, Inc. in 2006. Prior to Connetics, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer of CytoTherapeutics Inc., and in various management positions at Ares-Serono S.A., including President of its U.S. pharmaceutical operations and Managing Director of its U.K. pharmaceutical operations. Tom began his career with Eli Lilly and Company.

Tom has served on the boards of various industry organizations, educational institutions and private and public companies, including service on the boards of directors of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., until its acquisition by Amgen in 2013, Sangamo Biosciences, Inc. and Somaxon Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

In addition, Tom is a member of the board of directors of Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a non-profit educational organization, and is a member of the board of trustees of the University of Kansas Endowment Association. He holds a B.S. in pharmacy from the University of Kansas and an M.B.A. from Southern Methodist University.