Diane is known for her ability to translate in-depth scientific and commercial understanding, stakeholder insights and complex access and uptake challenges into strategy that works ‘in practice’. She has a D.Phil. Physiology in diabetes research from University of Oxford and an MBA. Diane has over 25 years’ experience working in leading pharmaceutical and consumer health companies, as well as a UK medicines trade association, and as the Managing Director, International Region, and Global Senior Vice President, Strategy, Integrated Intelligence, in a leading consultancy prior to joining Uptake.
Having worked at every stage of the development pathway in a range of disciplines, Diane prides herself in being able to bring stakeholders together both internally and externally to develop successful integrated strategies and actionable plans that deliver on business goals. She started her career in 1998 in technical roles first at P&G, responsible for technical readiness of launch products across the EMEA region, as well as being part of the Global Vicks Strategy Team, accountable for the claims strategy, before moving to GSK where she led the Scientific Platform development, Global Publications Strategy, Congress Activity and advisory boards for the newly formed Urology franchise, winning awards from the Global, European and US teams for the work she did engaging external stakeholders and supporting country capability development.
Diane then moved to the UK trade association for OTC medicines and health supplements, where she led industry-wide market shaping, chairing expert panels on topics such as prescription only to OTC switches. Following this, she moved to AstraZeneca UK, where she launched Faslodex for breast cancer, before moving to Cardiovascular Disease and Primary Care. She then joined MSD UK as Policy & Communications Director, where she represented the company on a wide range of industry working groups such as the Pharmaceutical Oncology Initiative, ABPI Cancer Policy Group, Orphan Drug Industry Group and Partnership for Action in Diabetes, amongst others, in order to shape new access and mechanisms for medicines. In that time she launched a number of innovative medicines, but is particularly proud of co-pioneering the Early Access to Medicines scheme to make Keytruda the first ever medicine available through the scheme in the UK.
Diane moved to consultancy in 2016, where she has provided strategic counsel across a wide number of Global, EMEA, LATAM and APAC pharmaceutical clients, including Vaccines, Immunology, Oncology, HIV, Rare Disease and more, in a wide range of disciplines including commercial, medical affairs, communications and market access & policy. In this role she also supported a number of not-for-profits, including the Embracing Complexity Coalition that brought together over 50 mental health and neurodevelopmental organisations.
Diane is a passionate advocate for blending human empathy, experience and instinct with cutting edge innovative tools like AI/ML to deliver insights, engagement and promote diversity & inclusion. She is proud to be a judge for the International Stevie Business Awards, Communique and Pharmatimes awards.
