Réne Stephens is a strategic clinical outsourcing expert with nearly 30 years of experience leading procurement strategies and practices, contract negotiations, vendor relationship management, oversight and governance. He previously led global clinical outsourcing programs for Astellas, Pfizer and TransCelerate Biopharma, and served in a business development capacity for M2S, Neeman Medical International and Harvard Clinical Research Institute. Réne holds an MS in Health Sciences, Clinical Research Administration, from George Washington University.

Sarah Holiday has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 27 years in a variety of roles that have included sales, training, health and value, marketing (customer, brand and digital) and social media comms. In 2021, Sarah founded and developed Pfizer's behavioral science capability within the Customer Experience & Engagement team, providing Pfizer with a consistent and validated way of integrating behavioral science into problem solving to improve health outcomes. In this role Sarah has supported numerous teams in Pfizer to design, test and implement solutions to colleague, patient and HCP behavioral challenges.

Sue Farrington is Chief Executive of Scleroderma & Raynaud’s UK (SRUK) and President of the Federation of European Scleroderma Associations (FESCA). Sue is Co-Chair of the Rare Auto-Immune Rheumatic Disease Alliance (RAIRDA), a partnership established in 2016 to improve the quality of life of people living with rare autoimmune rheumatic diseases. Since 2013, Sue has been Chair of the Patient Information Forum, an organisation for people working in consumer health information – championing the role that quality information plays in the delivery of positive health outcomes. She is a member of the Rare Disease Forum and chair of an Independent Advisory Group reporting into the DHSC on the development of Quality Standard for rare diseases.

Leslie Ives is a patient recruitment leader with more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and clinical trials industries, developing innovative patient recruitment and retention strategies for many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Working with key site stakeholders, disease specific physician consultants and patient partners, Leslie’s work is centered on making clinical trials efficient for sites and easier to navigate for patients.

Sarah Cross, PhD, is Senior Health Value Translation Lead within Sanofi’s Patient-Informed Development and Health Value Translation team, where her work focuses on ensuring patient insights guide Research & Development strategies and decision making. She leads efforts within Immunology at Sanofi to ensure patient disease strategies bridge science and patient needs, aiming to improve access to medical treatments and deliver value to patients.

Before joining Sanofi, Sarah served as Vice President and Global Head of Medical Affairs at Premier Research, a mid-size CRO. Prior to this Sarah held roles with increasing responsibility within clinical development and medical affairs across CROs, pharma, and biotech organizations, including AbbVie, where Sarah most recently held the position of Scientific Director, Gastroenterology supporting the integration of critical launch assets and pipeline product development.

Sarah is passionate about integrating patient experience and patient insights into medical research to support outcomes, improve quality of life, and drive access to care. She is a champion for partnering with patient organizations and patient communities to help remove barriers and support access to clinical trials, improve inclusion in medical research, and elevate the importance of patient informed drug development.

Paul has deep experience in all phases of clinical research across a wide range of indications. He is an expert in the development of site and patient recruitment and retention programs that consider study design and objectives in creating engagement and outreach plans.

At Parexel, he is responsible for developing and executing recruitment and retention strategies across clinical programs. He provides leadership to the execution team as a representative of the patient voice, collaborating with patient advocacy groups and study feasibility teams to drive enrollment and craft innovative and insightful messaging

Angela Sermiento-Betancourt is the Medical Affairs Manager at myTomorrows. Her clinical background enables her to apply scientific rigor and clinical insight, to assist patients and healthcare practitioners in finding information and discovering preapproval treatments. Driven by kindness and empathy, she strives to make a change within the medical field by supporting patients and their families through their healthcare journey.

Allen S. Yang, MD, PhD, is Chief Medical Officer and leads the Research and Clinical Development teams for Summit Therapeutics.

Prior to joining Summit, Allen was the Chief Medical Officer at Xencor Inc where he led the development of Xencor‘s pipeline of novel engineered proteins in oncology and autoimmune diseases. Before Xencor, Allen was at Jazz Pharmaceuticals PLC where he started as the Therapeutic Head for Hematology / Oncology and rose to Head of Clinical Development and acting CMO. He has also served as VP of Clinical Research at Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Allen started his career in industry at Amgen, Inc. where he had several roles of increasing responsibility and worked on romiplostim, blinatumomab and arbepoetin alfa. During his career he has led or been a part of numerous drug approvals including, liposomal cytarabine-daunorubicin, asparaginase erwinia chrysanthemi (recombinant)-rywn, defibrotide, solriamfetol, captisol-enabled melphalan, and blinatumomab.

Allen holds an MD and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Southern California and a BA in Molecular Biology and Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and his Medical Oncology fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He was also the Chief Fellow in his final year at MD Anderson. He practiced for several years a­­s an academic oncologist at the University of Southern California seeing patients and running a translational cancer research laboratory. He has been awarded several awards and grants during his academic career including the ASCO Young Investigator Award and the ASCO Career Development Award. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications during his academic and industry careers.

Aurora holds a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the Complutense University of Madrid, and a PhD in Medicine and Surgery from the Autonomous University of Madrid. She also has an Executive MBA from IE Business School.

With more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, she has held various positions of responsibility In GSK such as Vice President Hospital Commercial Director, and , Vice President General Manager of Ireland. Between 2009 and 2017, she worked at Bristol-Myers-Squibb, where she was European Vice President and General Manager Spain, and later, Vice President, Head of Medical Intercontinental Region. In 2017, she joined SOBI as General Manager for Spain and Portugal, where she remained until 2019. In September 2019, she joined Ipsen as CEO and General Manager for Spain and Portugal. Additionally, between April 2019 and May 2020, she chaired the Spanish Association of Orphan and Ultra-Orphan Drug Laboratories (AELMHU) until May 2020. From February 2025 he has been appointed as Global Patient Officer at Ipsen where she is fully devoted to work with Patients Organizations. 

Andy Collinson is a UK-based atopic dermatitis/visible difference patient advocate with a blog, podcast, and social media presence under the handle "Life with a difference."

Mr Collinson has lived with atopic dermatitis his whole life, something which he previously tried to downplay or ignore as much as possible. However, he recently stepped into advocacy and found this work inspiring and also liberating. He aims to spread awareness and create more empathy for atopic dermatitis, which can be so physically and mentally catastrophic, while also offering support to those living with this condition or other visible differences.

Amanda Simonds joined UCB in January 2021 as Patient Engagement and Policy Lead for Immunology across UK & Ireland, leading on policy and patient engagement across a range of conditions including psoriasis, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondyloarthritis.

In October 2024, Ms Simonds took on her current role, collaborating with clinical development, medical and regulatory teams to bring the patient voice into the UCB pipeline. Her role at UCB has three principal dimensions - continuously exploring how to involve patients at all stages of the drug discovery lifecycle, generating insights to inform and shape trial design and recruitment and building long-term collaborations with patient organisations and the broader patient community..

For over fifteen years, her passion to champion patient advocacy has involved her working in a range of patient engagement, communications and public affairs roles at Amgen, Celgene and Novo Nordisk.