Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based VP’ operating in the Medical space. If you think a VP’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Arjun Purkayastha
Senior Vice President – eCommerce, Digital & Ventures of Reckitt
Arjun Purkayastha is a purpose driven leader with extensive global experience managing diverse businesses and multi-cultural teams at FTSE Top 10 and Fortune 100 companies – RB and P&G. He has a strong track record of building outperforming teams, iconic brands & innovative business models across 60+ countries having lived & worked in the UK, Singapore, South Korea and India. He currently leads eCommerce, CRM, digital, DNVB & start up ventures globally for RB with P&L, strategic and operational responsibility of all online channels & customers. He serves on the Board of Directors of 4 high growth, online focused companies – Pharmapacks.com (one of the largest and best 3P resellers on Amazon), Bombay Shaving Company (leading men’s wellness company in India), UpSpring (mom & baby products) and Healthily by Your.MD (AI powered self care). He is also an Investment Committee Member of Founders Factory & RB’s JV focused on Hygiene & Home start ups.
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About Reckitt: Reckitt Benckiser Group is a consumer goods company makes health, hygiene and home products.
Bruno Angelici
Executive VP of AstraZeneca
Bruno Angelici was appointed in 2007, current term until 2019. He was formerly Executive Vice President, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa of AstraZeneca Plc.
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About AstraZeneca: AstraZeneca is a global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets prescription medicines.
James Weatherall
VP, Data Science & AI, Research and Development of AstraZeneca
Jim Weatherall is Head of the Advanced Analytics Centre (AAC) at AstraZeneca, a department of approximately 30 clinical and health data scientists across three countries covering the disciplines of advanced statistics, scientific computing, and biomedical and health informatics. A particle physicist by training, Jim spent time as an academic researcher, before becoming a scientific software engineer consulting across a range of different industries, including the life sciences. He has had affiliate staff status at the University of Manchester since 2012, most recently being appointed as honorary reader at the University’s Health eResearch Centre. Jim and his team have introduced a number of innovations into the clinical research field, in areas such as data and text mining, data visualization, health technology evaluation, and clinical trial design.
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About AstraZeneca, University of Manchester: AstraZeneca is a global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets prescription medicines.
Jeanne Bolger
Vice President Venture Investing of Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation
Jeanne Bolger, MB BCh BAO, Vice President, Venture Investments, joined Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC) in 2013. She is based in London, UK. Dr. Bolger has over 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in management roles across R&D, Commercial and Business Development (BD). She spent 11 years in Licensing and Acquisition (L&A), most recently as Global Head of Scientific Licensing for Johnson & Johnson’s Pharmaceutical business, having joined Johnson & Johnson in 2005 from the Business Development group at GlaxoSmithKline. In 2009, Dr. Bolger became Vice President, Alliance Management at Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy, working with Pfizer and Elan. Dr. Bolger received her medical degree from University College Dublin. She also holds diplomas in Child Health (NUI) and in Finance and Accounting (ACCA). She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland (RAMI). Dr. Bolger has served as the sole pharma industry representative on two Irish government taskforces seeking to enhance the commercialization of IP from Irish academic centres. She is a visiting lecturer on the MSc Pharmaceutical Medicine curriculum at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
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About Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, Pulmocide: Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, a venture capital subsidiary, finances technology companies focused on patient health.
Victoria Kitcatt
Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of Pfizer
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About Pfizer: Pfizer provides access to safe and effective and affordable medicines and health care services.
Jenny Laird
VP, Search & Evaluation – Neuroscience of Eli Lilly
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About Eli Lilly: Eli Lilly engages in the discovery, development, manufacture, and sale of products in pharmaceutical products business segment.
Martin Lachs
Vice President Global Project Management of ICON plc
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About ICON plc: ICON is a global provider of outsourced drug development services to biopharma, medical device, biosimilar and generic organizations.
Claire Woodthorpe
VP Europe and COO of Lightpoint Medical
Claire Woodthorpe is the VP Europe and COO at Lightpoint Medical.
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About Lightpoint Medical: Lightpoint Medical, a medical device company, develops intra-operative imaging technology that can detect cancer during surgery.
Mosin Badkar
Co-Founder and VP of Cardiac Design Labs
Mosin Badkar is responsible for product R and D and Algorithms. His scope includes design of new products, prototyping of design and proof of concept. His scope also includes planning and tracking of new product designs, system level and various software development activities.
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About Cardiac Design Labs: Cardiac Design Labs is into designing, developing, deploying and selling intelligent devices for medical purpose.
Ian Wilson
Executive Vice President – Strategy & Development of Amcor
Ian Wilson is an Executive Vice President – Strategy and Development at Amcor.
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About Amcor, Control Risks, The Cheltenham Ladies’ College: Amcor is a provider of packaging solutions in Australia, Western Europe, North America.
Eric Reynolds
Senior Vice President – Chief Marketing Officer of The Clorox Company
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About The Clorox Company: The Clorox Company (NYSE: CLX) is a leading multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer and professional products.
Riaz Rahman
VP Healthcare Global of Brainomix
Riaz is Vice President Healthcare Global at Brainomix. He has a BSc Honours degree in Human Genetics from King’s College London and a Masters degree in Human Molecular Genetics from Imperial College London. He is responsible for the company’s revenue, direct sales operations and the management of distributor, agent and channel strategies globally. He leads the development of national and international sales strategies and manages relationships with clinicians and key opinion leaders in each country after market entry. He has held a number of senior management and commercial positions in Pharmaceuticals, Management Information, Health Consultancy and Technology with over 17 years’ experience of working with private and public healthcare.
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About Brainomix: Brainomix specializes in the creation of AI-powered imaging biomarkers that enable precision medicine for better treatment decisions
Nina Kataria
Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources of Circassia
Nina Kataria joined Circassia in June 2014 to lead the company’s HR function. She brings to Circassia over 25 years’ experience of Human Resources, and has significant experience of the life sciences industry. Most recently, she was Human Resources Director at Lonza Biologics PLC, where she had strategic and operational responsibilities in the UK and internationally. Previously, she was the UK Human Resources Manager at Innovex (part of Quintiles), following roles of increasing responsibility at companies that are now part of Toyota and Unilever. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and holds a post-graduate diploma from the Institute. She graduated from Thames Valley University in Business and Finance.
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About Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Circassia: Circassia is dedicated to point of care asthma diagnosis and management.
Zeshan Ghory
VP of Operations & Analytics of Antidote.me
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About Antidote.me: Antidote is a digital health company that accelerates and improves medical research by combining technologies, data, and business models.
Paul Lyons
Vice President of Platform Delivery & Co-Founder of PredictImmune
Paul is a Principal Research Associate in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He has over 25 years of experience in molecular and cellular biology including Senior Scientist positions in the Dept. Medical Genetics, University of Cambridge, Dept. Surgery, University of Oxford and the Rosalind Franklin Centre for Genomics Research. His primary research interest is the application of high throughput genomic approaches to better understand the genetic and molecular basis of autoimmune disease.
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About PredictImmune: Providing tools to physicians in the treatment of patients with immune-mediated disease, through prediction of long term clinical prognosis.
Simon Ashworth
VP, Head Safety and Pharmacovigilance of Autolus
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About Autolus, Takeda: Autolus is in T-cell programming and manufacturing technology.
Christopher Vann
Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of Autolus
Christopher Vann leads commercial activities for Autolus. An industry veteran with 30 years’ experience in both development and business roles, he joined Autolus from Hoffmann-La Roche’s Swiss headquarters, where he was latterly responsible for leading the lung cancer commercial team and general management of the Tarceva brand. He has extensive experience of global lifecycle management of oncology products as well as implementing marketing strategy at a regional and national level. This includes launching several oncology, immunology and transplant products in countries such as China, Japan, Romania, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the USA. He gained his degree in toxicology and pharmacology from the School of Pharmacy, University of London.
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About Autolus: Autolus is in T-cell programming and manufacturing technology.
Simon Viggers
Vice President Human Resources of Otsuka Pharmaceuticals
Simon Thule Viggers is a Senior HR Leader with deep global experience. Almost 20 years of experience within Pharma, 15 years in leadership roles across three continents. Proven ability to lead through challenging change and with an ability to approach business in a holistic way. Simon takes the starting point in the business agenda and translates that into actions for the organization and the people. Simon has a strong leadership background as he has been part of executive teams for more than a decade and has been preferred coach to many executives.
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About Otsuka Pharmaceuticals: Otsuka Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company that operates throughout the globe.
Gareth Ridge
Senior Vice President of Operations & Site Head of Cambridge Epigenetix
Gareth has a degree in Pharmacology from the University of Cambridge and has worked in the pharmaceutical sector for over 20 years. During his career he has worked for both large and small pharma, biotechnology and clinical research organisations, he also has five years’ experience in business consultancy. In addition to delivering successful clinical research projects Gareth has managed business change projects – including system implementations, process reengineering and organisational change. He has held many leadership positions with responsibility for project and revenue delivery and strategic growth and has had oversight of over 70 clinical research studies, either directly as project manager or as responsible head, and has worked in high growth companies where he successfully built a team to successfully deliver 700% growth in project delivery & revenue in 2 years.
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About Cambridge Epigenetix: Cambridge Epigenetix is using epigenetics to reduce several routine & important diagnostic tests for common cancers to a simple blood draw.
Joanna Holbrook
Senior Vice President of Research of Cambridge Epigenetix
Joanna started her career in GSK R&D, working for seven years in the UK bioinformatics department, processing the integrating ‘omic data for drug target identification and validation mostly focussing on neurological disease, and then for three years in GSK USA Oncology R&D working on biomarkers for targeted therapies. She then left GSK and the USA for Singapore and built an academic group in A*STAR Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences. Her group focused on epigenomic trackers of complex disease, especially the interaction of genetic, environmental and disease states in shaping the human epigenome. Her work in Singapore encompassed set-up of observational and interventional cohorts, biobanking, clinical databases, production, processing and analysis of biosample ‘omic profiles and multiple industrial collaborations. Moving back to the UK five years later, she took up a professorship at the University of Southampton, still working on epigenomics and also integration of electronic health record data to clinical cohorts. Most recently she has been VP of Translational Medicine at BenevolentAI, a fast growing British Biotech, where she initiated and led integration of ‘omic data into a large biomedical knowledge graph and machine learning approaches to analyses of patient-level data for precision medicine.
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About Cambridge Epigenetix: Cambridge Epigenetix is using epigenetics to reduce several routine & important diagnostic tests for common cancers to a simple blood draw.
Kurt Kelln
EVP of Sales and Marketing, CBO of SuperSonic Imagine
Kurt Kelln has lived and worked in the USA, Germany and the UK and has an extensive knowledge of the International Healthcare Markets. In addition, Mr. Kelln possesses a wealth of experience in the field of ultrasound imaging, a domain he has worked in for more than 25 years. Prior to joining SuperSonic Imagine in April 2012, Mr. Kelln served as Vice President of Ultrasound and Women’s Healthcare at Philips Healthcare where he implemented successful sales and marketing strategies for mature and growth markets. He was responsible for leading one of the largest and most successful sales and marketing teams in the industry. Before Philips, Mr. Kelln spent 11 years with ATL Ultrasound in various strategic leadership positions in Operations, Administration, Sales and Marketing. He has vast experience in business strategy, sales and marketing leadership, and general management.
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About SuperSonic Imagine: SuperSonic Imagine develops and manufactures ultrasound medical imaging systems for evaluating and visualizing tissue elasticity.
Patrick Darby
Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary of Encompass Health Corp.
Patrick Darby was named executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of HealthSouth in February 2016. Prior to joining us, Darby was a partner of the law firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, in Birmingham, Alabama. He is listed in Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America and Alabama Super Lawyers. He received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and his law degree from Washington & Lee University School of Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Washington & Lee Law Review.
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About Encompass Health Corp.: Encompass Health Corp. (HealthSouth), is an owner and operator of inpatient rehabilitation hospitals.
William Richardson
Executive Vice President of Savaria Corp
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About Savaria Corp: Savaria provides accessibility solutions for the elderly and physically challenged to increase their mobility and independence.
Nick Child
Vice President of Stablepharma Ltd
Nick Child – Vice President & Co Founder Experienced company leader, business developer, multi-disciplined & experienced in UK & International markets, manufacturing & distribution. Initiated various start-ups, acquisitions, & funding rounds.
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About Stablepharma Ltd: An innovative Biotech, developing a wide range of reformulated thermostable and fridge free StablevaX vaccines
Paul Marcun
Executive Vice President, Chronic Care of Coloplast Denmark
Paul Marcun is the Executive Vice President of Chronic Care at Coloplast.
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About Coloplast Denmark: Coloplast is a Danish company that develops and markets products and services related to ostomy, urology, continence, and wound care.
Bryan Olin
Senior Vice President of LivaNova
Bryan Olin, PhD is the Senior Vice President, Clinical, Quality & Regulatory Affairs at LivaNova. Dr. Olin joined Cyberonics in May 2009 as Vice President, Quality. In August 2009, he assumed additional responsibility for Clinical Affairs, and in April 2011, his responsibilities were expanded again to include Regulatory Affairs. With the 2015 merger between Cyberonics and Sorin, his responsibilities expanded to include corporate-wide responsibilities for the clinical, quality and regulatory affairs functions at LivaNova. Prior to May 2009, Dr. Olin was employed at Zeltiq Aesthetics, Inc., a privately held medical technology company in the San Francisco area, where he served as Sr. Director, Quality Assurance since October 2007. Prior to Zeltiq Aesthetics, Dr. Olin was employed at the LifeScan and Cordis companies of Johnson & Johnson from 1999 to 2007, holding several positions of increasing responsibility in quality assurance, statistics and clinical data management. Dr. Olin began his career with Procter & Gamble in 1993 after obtaining his Ph.D. in Statistics from Iowa State University. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Medical Devices Innovation Consortium (MDIC) and as an industry representative on the Advisory Committee for The National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet).
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About LivaNova: LivaNova PLC is a global medical technology company built on nearly five decades of experience and a relentless commitment.
Lynn Purkins
Vice President & Chief Development Officer of Ziarco
Lynn Purkins is the vice president of clinical operations for Reneo Pharmaceuticals. Lynn has nearly three decades of drug development experience in large and small biotechnology companies. Before joining Reneo, Lynn was a founder and chief development officer at Ziarco Pharma, which was acquired by Novartis in 2017. Prior to Ziarco, Lynn held numerous roles at Pfizer, including clinical pharmacology, clinical operations and team leader for projects from target selection to clinical proof of concept. Her experience spans multiple therapeutic areas including dermatology, pain, respiratory and gastroenterology. Lynn received a Ph.D. in nutrition and immunology from University of Leeds and a B.S. in dietetics from Leeds Beckett University.
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About Ziarco: Ziarco develops therapeutic agents for treating inflammatory and allergic diseases.
Stephen Langlois
Vice President of Actuarial of Coverys
Steve Langlois has been with Coverys since 1989 and manages the actuarial function for the entire organization as the vice president of actuarial. Langlois first joined the organization as an underwriting assistant and has worked as an underwriter, a statistical analyst and actuarial analyst during his tenure with Coverys. Langlois received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Boston College and an associate degree in underwriting designation from the Insurance Institute of America.
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About Coverys: Coverys is a provider of medical professional liability insurance for physicians, hospitals, dentists and advanced practice providers.
Stephen Langlois
Vice President of Actuarial of Coverys
Steve Langlois has been with Coverys since 1989 and manages the actuarial function for the entire organization as the vice president of actuarial. Langlois first joined the organization as an underwriting assistant and has worked as an underwriter, a statistical analyst and actuarial analyst during his tenure with Coverys. Langlois received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Boston College and an associate degree in underwriting designation from the Insurance Institute of America.
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About Coverys: Coverys is a provider of medical professional liability insurance for physicians, hospitals, dentists and advanced practice providers.
Brad Bailey
Vice President of Sales of Ivy Sports Medicine
Brad Bailey, Vice President of Sales brings over 19 years of experience in the medical device industry with a focus in Sales management and Marketing. He has extensive experience in building teams to execute sucessful product launches and realize sustained sales growth. Mr. Bailey has worked in and run sales organizations focusing in Sports Medicine, he was Director of Sales of the Sports Tissue and Biologics Division at ConMed Corportation. He has also held leadership positions with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF), DePuy Spine and Spar Medical. Mr. Bailey graduated from Birmingham Southern College in 1993 with a B.S. in Management.
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About Ivy Sports Medicine: Ivy Sports Medicine is a young, dynamic company with extensive expertise in the development and production of meniscus implants.
Douglas Anderson
Founder & Vice President of Global Advocacy of Optos
Founder & Vice President of Global Advocacy, Optos plc, Douglas has a 35 year business career yielding huge experience in almost every aspect, and at every level, of healthcare technology development and commercialisation; initially as a highly creative hands-on designer, then as a design manager and technology innovator, transitioning through sales and marketing, and finally into business leadership as a serial entrepreneur.
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About Optos: Optos operates as a medical retinal imaging company.
Robin Marriott
Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development of PowderMed
PowderMed at Co-Founder.
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About PowderMed: PowderMed developed the Particle Mediated Epidermal Delivery (PMED) technology.
Jerome Declerck
Vice President Research & Develop,ment of Optellum
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About Optellum: Optellum develops an imaging biomarker for smart lung cancer detection.
