Meet our Team

Stephanie Hall founded Uptake Strategies in 2005, a strategic marketing consultancy and has built a team of expert senior industry marketers who deliver outstanding results with a growing range of healthcare clients.

As a chartered accountant and a chartered marketer and with a degree in French and Italian, Stephanie brings a unique approach to solving your business challenges.

Therapeutic experience spans the major diagnoses e.g. cardiology, respiratory, neuroscience, obesity, oncology, diabetes and ADHD.

With 25 years experience in marketing, finance and sales roles and consultancy projects in multi-national pharma companies (GSK, Eli Lilly & Co, Sanofi) and alliance partnerships.
Stephanie and her team have a 100% repeat consultancy business rate and regularly achieve the highest feedback rating levels of business impact and quality workshop outcomes. Stephanie has personally worked for months at a time in Boehringer Ingelheim UK on a variety of marketing projects.

Stephanie regularly lectures for the Chartered Institute of Marketing at Post Graduate level, is a judge on the PMEA Awards programme for the UK and Europe (including Launch Excellence) and also on the judging panel for the UK Customer Experience Awards in 2014 and Digital Experience in 2015.

Stephanie describes herself as strategic, driven, passionate about healthcare marketing and fascinated by new challenges, cultures and languages.

Maxine leads the largest and most complex projects across Uptake Strategies with her significant industry and consulting experience in commercial strategy, launch and marketing excellence, delivering outstanding client feedback. Maxine has been recognised personally by the PMEA for an award-winning marketing capability programme.

Maxine has a broad base of marketing, business and launch planning experience developed from over 20 years within the industry. She started her career at GSK on the fast-track graduate commercial programme before moving into sales, UK, EU and Global marketing roles. Maxine followed this with senior marketing roles within Sanofi. Therapeutic experience has been gained in a broad range of areas including respiratory, allergy, oncology, CNS, anti-virals, diabetes, AF, MS, IBD and BPH. Maxine has personally coached and mentored global and local Launch Leaders in pharmaceutical companies and led major Launch Excellence consulting projects.

Having worked with brands from Phase II through to patent expiry in both operational and strategic positions, Maxine brings a focused, engaging and practical style to facilitation, marketing and launch excellence, brand planning, insight and brand development and individual marketing mentoring.

Maxine describes herself as passionate, capable and organised.

Simon is a commercially minded and results-driven finance executive

With a track record of delivering profit growth through both the development and execution of growth strategies with sales and marketing and driving cost transformation programmes across operations. With experience across IT, telecoms and healthcare industries, Simon has successfully built and developed finance business analysis and procurement teams.

Simon has a BSc. from the University of Bristol, is a chartered management accountant, chartered treasurer and has an MBA from the University of Cranfield.

Simon describes himself as results-driven, analytical and people-focused.

Belinda has a wealth of experience in project management and science education, as well as being a qualified Prince2 project management practitioner.

With 14 years’ experience delivering complex operational projects in the form of a suite of conferences at the Association for Science Education, along with work on highly confidential school pupil testing projects, Belinda manages multiple projects with a wide range of clients to ensure they are delivered at the highest level of client service.

Having started out her career as a teacher of biology and general science in London, then Southern Africa, she returned to the UK to work in educational consultancy where she managed a number of contract-based projects, including the recruitment of science teachers.

Belinda has extensive people and project team management expertise at a high level and is skilled at leading flexible and disparate teams and overseeing the work of project leaders working to her, bringing exercises in on time, to quality and on budget.

Belinda has a driving passion about delivering against project milestones whilst maintaining the highest of quality and being open and flexible to changing priorities.

Belinda describes herself as diplomatic, open-minded and supportive.

Kelly has a background in Health Promotion and Behavioural Sciences and eight years experience working as a trainer in major multinational companies such as Bayer, BASF and Sony.

Kelly has a Master of Public Health in Health Promotion and Behavioural Sciences from the University of Texas Health Science Centerat Houston located in the Texas Medical Center-the largest medical centre in the world. Her focus on healthcare behavioural change and healthy behaviour uptake, particularly related to disease management and prevention adds a unique dimension to her training. As part of her degree programme, she worked on behavioural interventions in major hospitals and gained an understanding of multiple disease therapy areas.

Kelly worked as a qualified school teacher for two years before beginning a career in adult education. She spent eight years working as a trainer in major multinational companies such as Bayer, BASF and Sony in the United States and Germany and speaks fluent German. Kelly has designed and delivered training programmes and webinars with excellent client feedback.

Kelly has worked on a variety of training and consulting projects for Uptake Strategies, including brand planning workshops, a major EU Pharma launch, and a US competitor strategy project.

Kelly’s style of facilitation has been described by clients as: engaging, motivational and supportive.

Elizabeth is a skilled digital designer with a degree in Social Communications and Digital Marketing from Universidad Monteavila located in Caracas, Venezuela.

She is fluent in both English and Spanish.

In her previous roles she has worked as a TV Producer and a Business Assistant Manager. These experiences gave her the opportunity to develop a strong eye for detail, a unique and creative style and the confidence to deliver the best results working under pressure.

Along with her practical experience in graphic design, Elizabeth brings an exceptional array of skills and abilities that she will use to support both internal and client-focused communications and design projects.

Elizabeth describes herself as creative, capable and passionate.

Sophie has a varied background in Finance and Administration with a keen interest in Biological Sciences and Healthcare.
Sophie has a degree in Animal Science from The University of Reading where she was able to focus her studies on health subjects, choosing modules such as Neurobiology, Immunology and Endocrinology.

In her previous roles she has worked for a large construction company in the finance team, taking responsibility for a wide range of finance functions including reporting, sales, payables and VAT.

Sophie has also run her own business in children’s entertainment and was an Ofsted registered childminder. She brings to Uptake her flexibility and ability to organise and plan ahead, keeping the office functions running smoothly.
Sophie describes herself as inquisitive, supportive and focused.

Alice is a highly experienced Project Manager and an accredited Digital Marketer working at global, regional and local level across a variety of healthcare clients and projects, across the eight service platforms offered by Uptake Strategies.

With 6 years’ experience working in pharmaceuticals and healthcare across all major therapy areas and Consumer Healthcare and with a background in biological science and genetics, Alice successfully manages multiple projects, ensuring key milestones and deliverables are met on time and to budget. Recent projects delivered include a Global Marketing Academy roll-out programme over the course of a 12-month period, training internal digital communications to marketers and developing the strategy for a local therapy portfolio.

Alice also leads on creative design including digital design and strategy for client projects when required. Experienced in branding healthcare marketing programmes and launches she has a passion for creativity and digital and is Google accredited having studied a broad spectrum of Digital Marketing modules including advanced optimisation tactics, internal and external communications across multiple channels and platforms, and user journeys and experience.

Alice describes herself as creative, versatile, determined.

Lauren manages a wide-range of projects for both local and global healthcare companies with a high level of agility to adapt and understand the needs of her clients.

With a degree in Fashion Communication and Promotion from the University of Huddersfield, Lauren developed strong research skills and a creative flair. Lauren is further pursuing her interest in marketing by studying towards a CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing.

She is skilled at organising complex projects and has a thirst for continuous improvement in aiding her clients with end to end support. Her extensive experience in customer facing and retail management positions established her skills in sales, business and people development. She also has a passion for health and is a certified nutrition coach.

Lauren describes herself as innovative, driven and enthusiastic.

Lauren has a BA(Hons) in Business Management and a MSc in Marketing Innovation from the University of Winchester, UK.

Lauren’s academic experience has allowed her to amass a strong knowledge of business and marketing processes, in addition to developing the ability to work under pressure. During her time at Winchester, Lauren worked closely with various small organisations to improve their marketing strategies and branding.

In her previous roles she worked as a Retail Supervisor and a Sales & Administration Assistant, where she developed skills in sales, customer service and communications.

Lauren has recently joined Uptake Strategies as a Graduate Marketing Trainee, on a two year graduate programme, to support global healthcare commercial excellence and research projects.

Lauren describes herself as creative, inquisitive and driven.

Connor has a degree in Contemporary Media Practice from the University of Westminster where he has developed interdisciplinary skills within interactive media, photography and moving image.

Connor thrives using his aesthetic proficiency and attention to detail in all that he does.
In his previous roles, Connor has gained experience within the retail industry and believes that delivering excellent customer service is the heart of success within any business. Retail has provided Connor with communication, sales and customer liaison skills.

He also possesses avidity for colour, composition and everything graphic design in order to deliver innovative branding to bring to market. Connor has joined Uptake Strategies as a Graduate Marketing Trainee on a two-year graduate programme, supporting client work in operations, planning, and graphic design.

Connor describes himself as contemporary, ambitious and a visionary.

Charlotte has an HND IS Business Studies from Bournemouth University.

In a previous role she has worked as a Clinical Trials Administrator for a large pharmaceutical company. She has enjoyed working directly with people throughout her working life, which includes running a day centre for the elderly and operating a tour bus company.

Charlotte brings her adaptability and enthusiasm to Uptake, ensuring support to the whole team.

She describes herself as a people person, organised and friendly.

Waqar has recently completed an MSc in Project Management at Coventry University.

Before achieving a distinction in his Master’s in Project Management, Waqar gained a First Class Honours Degree in Business Management.

As part of his Masters Waqar, undertook an internship at Coventry City Council looking into how customer services can be improved in the Regulatory Services department. Much of his time involved conducting and analysing primary qualitative research with employees; after reviewing the analysis he was responsible for making conclusive recommendations to improve customer services.

Waqar thrives when working in teams and enjoys working towards a goal. He also engages in charity work and social events which allow him to appreciate and understand a variety of cultures.

Waqar has recently joined Uptake Strategies as a Graduate Marketing and Project Management Assistant on a two-year scheme, focusing on designing and managing projects for clients.

Waqar describes himself as focused, reliable and open.

Isabelle has an Upper Second-Class Joint Honours degree in French and Spanish from the University of Kent and a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education from the University of Exeter.

She has two years of experience teaching French and Spanish at Secondary level.

Isabelle has lived, studied and worked in a variety of countries. She has also gained experience in the hospitality industry where she achieved excellent customer service skills adopting a can-do attitude.

Isabelle has recently started the two-year Uptake Strategies’ graduate programme in Project Management and Marketing, supporting a variety of global healthcare commercial excellence projects.

Isabelle describes herself as thorough, insightful and adventurous.

Jessica has developed a strong creative style in branding and marketing after studying for her degree in Media, Communication, and Advertising at the University of Winchester. She has recently joined Uptake Strategies as a Project Assistant, supporting client work in planning and design.

During her time at University Jessica gained industrial experience, job shadowing a marketing team within a software company. This gave her a great insight into how corporations work and inspired Jessica into the marketing industry. It is from these experiences that Jessica has adapted a strong eye for detail and design style, by working on multiple creative projects including logo designs, website creations and point of sale displays.

In her previous roles, Jessica has worked in hospitality and retail, gaining valuable customer service experience and thriving in a fast-paced work environment. These previous experiences have also allowed her to develop the ability to work well under pressure and to a tight deadline.

Jessica describes herself as innovative, reliable and passionate.

Liz has over 28 years’ experience working in, and with, the pharma industry. She has enjoyed a highly varied career working in both local affiliate and global teams at Director level. Her experience spans senior marketing and sales roles within the industry and latterly in consulting roles with major pharma clients.

She has led marketing, sales and market research teams and has experience in a wide variety of therapy areas including migraine, respiratory and neurology.

In her consulting work, over the past 12 years, Liz has designed and delivered multiple Marketing Excellence programmes including customer insight and branding, and strategic and operational planning with client companies. She is able to draw upon her broad experience base to bring theoretical marketing concepts to life and support her clients to connect strategic decisions to the point of practical application.

Liz has worked with one major client in particular since 2012 across the UK, Europe and AMESA regions delivering brand planning, MEX and MCM workshops with consistently excellent participant feedback. Her structured approach to marketing planning, brand positioning and brand development always has the customer at the heart.

Clients describe Liz as energetic, engaging and experienced.

Rachel has worked in pharmaceutical and biopharm commercial roles for over 25 years. Her experience spans UK based marketing management, European and global commercial process design and many years in senior Global Commercial roles for a variety of treatments,from early development decisions to established brand marketing.

She has worked on many therapy areas including respiratory, CNS, immuno-inflammation, ophthalmology and rare diseases.

Rachel pioneered one of the first pharma industry Marketing Excellence programmes, and more recently designed and led a very successful and enduring medicine strategy development process, aligning Commercial, Market Access and R&D for pipeline medicines. This involved her facilitating cross-functional and cross-regional workshops across all disease areas and ensuring a close link to investment decisions, launch excellence and brand planning processes and capability.

Rachel is skilled at insight generation, business opportunity evaluation, honing a differentiated value proposition and developing competitive lifecycle strategies to maximise the value of the brand. She also has excellent insight into the links between R&D planning and successful brand plans, together with extensive experience partnering with market access and health outcomes experts on payer value proposition, evidence plans, pricing and reimbursement strategy.

Her style is to engage, challenge and support in order to capture insights from across the team and together craft an optimised strategy and plan.

Vanessa is a senior marketing leader with 25 years’ experience in leading healthcare businesses in the UK and Australia. She has unique experience across the range of healthcare (pharma, OTC and FMCH). As a result, Vanessa has specific expertise in, and passion for, branding, positioning, insights, multi-channel thinking and strategy, and planning.

In her consulting work, Vanessa has lead the development and implementation of global strategic capability strategies, brand planning frameworks and capability frameworks. She also partners with brand teams to drive marketing excellence including working live with teams on their brands to diagnose critical performance drivers and barriers and develop cross-functional success plans.

Vanessa is also an accomplished facilitator designing and delivering engaging, motivational business workshops and coaching teams to develop best in class plans helping teams embed learning. Her unique experience across pharma and consumer enables her to bring to life ideas and concepts in practical imaginative ways.

Vanessa has a passion for enabling people to flourish in life, is a qualified coach, and is studying Positive Psychology.

She has an inspiring, energetic style that supports constructive challenge, creative thinking and empowers learning through practical application of concepts.

With over 20 years' experience in pharmaceutical sales, marketing and medical roles, Jane's expertise ranges from hands-on product launches to creating commercialisation strategies for early-and late-phase products.

She is skilled in opportunity assessment for business development projects, defining target market, developing value propositions and identifying key messages for customer groups.

Previous global and local roles have involved defining the global market, leading cross-functional teams and presenting at decision level boards at a senior level. In addition, she provided commercial support for business development.
Jane’s recent consulting work has included creation of an eLearning marketing training module, revision of a global new product strategy workshop and creation of a UK launch plan.

In addition she is an experienced Project Leader and has worked on developing materials and workshops for new marketing platforms, marketing excellence and multichannel marketing, and leads on Uptake’s largest, global accounts.

Melissa is highly experienced marketer. She has experience across a breadth of therapy areas across the commercial cycle, specialising in launch and growth for medicines.

Melissa leads some of Uptake Strategies largest projects on launch and marketing capability across European and Asian clients.

Melissa started her career at GSK where she held a number of marketing and sales roles. These included Head of Marketing for Vaccines UK, Head of Strategy [including Marketing and Launch Excellence] for GSK International and Head of Haematologyfor GSK Oncology International.

From GSK she went to found the European Commercial business for the Japanese Pharmaceutical company Shionogi. As VP Marketing Europe she built out the commercial teams in UK, France, Germany and Spain.

Most recently she founded and ran Accretio Limited. Accretio co-invests with Pharmaceutical companies in medicines that the Pharma company cannot focus on to ensure access to patients in the UK.

After building a portfolio of 10+ medicines Melissa successfully exited Accretio earlier this year to allow her to focus on her 3 passions: delivering growth for medicines, working with women in business and her family.

Melissa loves to work with teams to co-create solutions that will deliver sustainable growth for medicines.

Ian is a highly experienced international pharmaceutical sales and marketing leader with a consistent track record of delivering results.

A graduate in Chemical Engineering from Birmingham University UK, Ian worked in biotechnology R&D with Astra Zeneca before completing an MBA at the Kenan Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. Joining Eli Lilly in 1990, Ian has held leadership positions in marketing, new product development, market access, sales management and business unit leadership. Having worked in local affiliates in the UK, Ireland, Italy and the USA and having held marketing responsibility for Europe, Ian brings first-hand experience of pharmaceutical marketing across diverse markets. Ian has deep therapeutic experience in diabetes, neuroscience, infectious diseases and osteoporosis gained across both primary and specialist care.

As Lilly’s UK & Northern Europe Diabetes Business Unit Leader, Ian returned a declining insulin portfolio to growth and successfully launched four new brands (three in partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim) across 9 countries. He achieved the Lilly President’s Award for exceeding sales and profit targets for seven consecutive years and took Lilly’s share of new patient starts in diabetes from fourth to first place over a three year period. In his role at Uptake Strategies, Ian is focussed on strategy development and launch.

Ian describes himself as thoughtful, pragmatic and results-driven.

Nick is an international strategic marketing and communications specialist with over 16 years’ experience, gained in London, Barcelona and Latin America, with both blue chip and smaller clients mainly in the FMCG and pharma/PCH industries. He trained and practised as a strategic planner at top advertising agency networks and now works with consultancy clients across the world.

Nick’s areas of specialist expertise include leading brand strategy projects with outputs that are high-level, inspiring and are practical and implementable. He has developed communications platforms as strategic springboards into multiple media formats, including digital. Other areas of expertise include positioning, insight development, innovation and concept development. Nick has practical experience in workshop design and delivery, ensuring accountability and follow-up, whilst defining and employing both hard and soft measures of success.

Nick is also experienced at working across international markets and cultures with sensitivity and understanding. He is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish with a working knowledge of French and German.

Pharma experience includes corporate branding, Patient Association and Medical Society engagement/communication. Therapeutic experience includes cardiology, respiratory, gastroenterology.

Nick has supported a number of projects with Uptake Strategies in both consumer and pharma, including insight and branding projects across Europe and LatAm.

Nick describes himself as passionate, curious and engaged.

Neil has over 21 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, leading brands across Oncology, Hospital Specialist, Secondary and Primary Care sectors in both large blue chip and smaller pharmaceutical companies.

A marketing specialist with broad “hands-on” expertise leading strategic and operational planning and execution for critical brands.

Extensive experience across oncology (lung, colorectal, ovarian, breast and glioblastoma) and cardiovascular disease areas but also including invasive fungal infections, respiratory, migraine, osteoporosis and mental health.

Neil has significant launch leadership expertise together with market access strategy/implementation and NHS policy influence experience.

Well versed in the PCMPA Code of Practice with over 7 years as a final signatory and with an advanced certificate from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Neil describes himself as strategically focussed with excellent planning and problem-solving capabilities. Someone who enjoys a challenge both within and outside work and is passionate about helping brands to achieve their full potential.

With over 25 years’ industry experience Karen has won multiple awards for capability building including The Marketing Society’s prestigious Grand Prix.

Joining ICI on the fast track graduate scheme, she spent the early part of her career in a range of marketing roles. Having demonstrated a passion for building performance teams, in 2004 Karen was asked to establish a high profile Global Marketing Academy which subsequently won external recognition for its transformative impact on capability and performance.

During her 10 year tenure, Karen travelled the globe, working in the BRIC markets of Brazil, India and China and extensively in North America and Europe to diagnose the needs and develop and deliver learning programmes to embed a world-class company way of marketing. When ICI was acquired by AkzoNobel and underwent a number of management changes, Karen sought to adapt the agenda to ensure it aligned with the key strategic imperatives and prevailing leadership style. Recognised as the pioneer in functional excellence, Karen’s remit expanded to establish a company blueprint for role profiles and to spearhead a new cross functional business planning process.

Since leaving a corporate environment, Karen has worked on a range of consultancy projects both within and outside the pharmaceutical sector and brings expertise in insights and brand development alongside a wealth of experience in developing and managing capability programmes.

Karen speaks fluent French and describes herself as collaborative, passionate and tenacious.

Katya is a trusted strategic marketing advisor with 15 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry gained as a strategy consultant at Deloitte Consulting and as a Global Product Strategy Director at GlaxoSmithKline.

Katya has successfully delivered marketing strategy projects across the entire product development and commercialisation lifecycle from early R&D to post-launch sales optimisation.

Her particular strength is business analysis, forecasting and product strategy development. Katya delivered numerous successful business development projects including acquisition target reviews and portfolio optimisation assignments. Her most recent project involved detailed assessment of potential partnering opportunities, companies and products, for a well-known pharma company wishing to expand their presence in the European markets.

As a Product Strategy Director on several product teams, Katya was recognised for her contribution to brand strategy by a company award for outstanding leadership and contribution to product development.

She is able to make complex strategic decisions as well as roll up her sleeves to ensure successful delivery earning strong client feedback on her intellectual rigour, positive and professional approach, delivering results of the highest quality.

A strategic marketer who through practical in role experience brings great credibility in designing and delivering Marketing Excellence programmes.

From 2008 to 2017 Liz was an internal consultant for Shire International Sales & Marketing Training. She is credited with not only the marketing training curriculum, but also embedding key principles of marketing excellence across the 11 countries of the international organisation. Liz has also been a key part of the brand planning process, from design, to evaluation and on going coaching.

Prior to her consultancy work at Shire, Liz worked at Bayer, latterly leading successful teams in both marketing, market research and marketing planning. Liz has worked across a diverse range of therapy areas, including haemophilia, respiratory, cardiovascular, men’s health & ADHD. Liz has also consulted for creative agencies, developing strategic and brand propositions.

Liz has a great ability to ‘cut to what is important’ and works with teams in a confident consultative style. She is both analytical and creative, and is an engaging coach in both classroom and virtual environments.

Having worked with both international and country affiliates, with senior leaders on executive panels as well as operational managers, Liz is very able to see the perspective of all stakeholders and arrive at mutually successful solutions.

Liz’s first degree was in German & Management Studies at Leeds University, followed by a further Diploma in Management Studies from Portsmouth Business School. She is also a Chartered Marketer and an accredited virtual classroom facilitator.

She is a competent German speaker and speaks conversational French.

Georgina is highly experienced in marketing and consultancy. She has lead many major projects for Uptake Strategies and consistently delights clients with her approach, insights and quality outputs, receiving glowing testimonials time and again.

Georgina has held senior roles within Boehringer Ingelheim, Abbott and GSK and has managed a diverse range of therapy areas including respiratory, obesity, hypertension, anti-infectives, gastro and allergy. More recently, she has successfully applied her expertise in the technology sector -for Microsoft –excelling in a fast-moving, digital and highly complex marketing environment.

Georgina has a positive and engaging approach and is both confident and passionate about strategic and operational excellence. She is able to help clients succeed by combining a sound understanding of their challenges with practical, business-driven solutions.

Areas of specialist expertise include:
•Strategic planning, brand planning and operational excellence
•Launch excellence processes, launch planning and launch readiness
•Digital marketing strategy and customer journey mapping
•Opinion Leader and Advocacy Development with supporting processes, roles and tools

Georgina has a passion for excellence and delivers practical, business-driven solutions.

Trudie has over 25 years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industry in a Consultancy, International Medical Education Charity and at GSK.

Trudie led marketing, strategy and business development teams within GSK and as a Director of Education for Health, an accredited Medical Education Charity. She has experience in a wide variety of therapy areas including respiratory and allergy, anti-infectives, urology, diabetes, pain and oncology.

In her consulting work, Trudie has worked with a range of major pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Novartis and BMS at Global, Regional and Affiliate level to design, develop and deliver face-to-face and virtual Marketing Excellence training programmes and consulting projects.

Her particular areas of expertise include: brand planning, patient and customer insights, product launches and strategy development. She has an insightful and rigorous approach to problem solving and delivering practical solutions to clients.
As a skilled, enthusiastic trainer and facilitator, Trudie takes pride in gaining commitment to solutions and developing others to deliver results.

Jon is a Chartered Marketer, qualified trainer and skilled workshop facilitator with marketing excellence consulting experience across a multitude of FMCG and Pharma clients including AZ, Stiefel and Boehringer-Ingelheim.

Jon is the founder of the only accredited Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) student support and revision training group and has supported over 18,000 working marketers with their CIM professional qualifications. Jon is also a member of the London CIM Board as Studying Member Champion and regularly produces marketing related articles, podcasts and webinars for CIM. He is currently working on the CIM Syllabus Review, advising on how to enhance customer experience.

He is the MBA Marketing Module Leader for Brunel Business School (winner Times Higher Education Awards Business School of the Year 2013).
Jon has a direct, positive, constructively critical style of workshop delivery which many clients find demanding and very stimulating.
Jon’s particular areas of expertise include: digital marketing solutions, performance measurement and corporate social responsibility.

Person-focused care runs like a thread through Carla’s career. Via various national and international functions within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry she worked with issues and solutions regarding Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC).  

She has managed various patient support programmes, leading the strategic evolution, implementation and operations of patient solutions in Europe. Programs designed to improve health outcomes and experiences for patients in different disease areas.

Carla’s strength is strategy development for person focused care solutions, which are based on the principles of value based healthcare (VBHC), patient experiences, as well as outcomes.
In her work she looks for a challenge, a clear vision and a combination of theory and practice. Her style of working is relationship focused and has a human approach to complex issues, without losing sight of the objective of the organisation.

Carla is experienced at working across international markets and cultures with sensitivity and understanding. She is fluent in Dutch, English and German.

Carla describes herself as decisive, proactive and collaborative.

Marc has over 25 years’ experience in biotech and pharmaceutical commercial roles, both in-country in the UK and France, and internationally in European, Emerging Markets and Global positions.

The bulk of Marc’s career has been spent at GlaxoSmithKline working in respiratory, diabetes, rare disease and thrombosis before moving onto positions in HPV vaccines at Sanofi Pasteur MSD and rare GI at Shire / Takeda. As an Anglo-French dual national now living in Switzerland, who has launched brands around the world, Marc brings a truly international perspective to tackling strategic issues.

Solving complex and challenging issues is what Marc enjoys most. He has a structured and analytical approach to problem-solving, likes to challenge the status quo and develop creative and innovative solutions. He leads teams and workshops with passion, energy and commitment, pulling on the expertise of others to drive practical solutions that can be implemented in the real world.

As well as product launches, Marc has led due diligence and divestment projects, device and pipeline asset development, strategic brand repositioning and a number of other strategic projects.

Marc describes himself as energetic, thoughtful, passionate and results orientated.

Jo is an international pharmaceutical commercial leader, with standout impact in terms of ability to maximise business results.

A graduate in Neuroscience from University College London, Jo has an impressive 21 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry. This includes a variety of commercial and market access roles requiring high level strategic application and operational implementation, spanning the full spectrum of the product life cycle.

Jo brings a wealth of specialist launch and oncology market access knowledge from 2 years heading up the oncology market access division at Roche UK and 3 years operating as the Business Unit Head for the Breast cancer division. This included overseeing the launches of new molecular entities, indications and formulations.

Jo has also played pivotal roles in a strategic review of a Diagnostics business and developing and implementing a new more profitable pharma organisational structure, when she was accountable for UK pharma commercial operations at Roche.

More recent international work in 2018 /19 has encompassed a role as Global Launch Excellence Director accountable for the development and execution of GSK’s current Global medicine’s commercialisation framework for pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Followed by Global Oncology Capabilities Director focussed on GSK’s new Global to local oncology therapy area capability build.

Jo’s business accomplishments are numerous, resulting in her receiving top performers awards and securing places on coveted talent acceleration programs at both Roche and GSK. Achievements include leadership of the most successful subcutaneous biologic launch worldwide, with 70% of accounts converted from intravenous, within 3 months of marketing authorisation. In addition, reversing a negative performance trajectory to +37% gross versus previous year for a metastatic breast cancer brand. Finally developing the vision and managing execution of a RWE program, resulting in a “do not switch” directive from NHS England to a competitor brand, with a significantly lower list price.

Jo describes herself as dynamic, driven and dedicated.

Louise Collins has over 14 years of pharmaceutical experience, and significant commercial and business expertise.

Louise led the Global KAM and Marketing Excellence programmes for AstraZeneca until April 2017; this included prioritised support for Japan, China, Asia, India, Europe, Russia and the USA. She has extensive practical experience designing and rolling out KAM programmes across all major healthcare markets including training, coaching, creation of tools and competency frameworks for embedding KAM across global organisations. Prior to this, she was the Strategic Account Manager for London, one of the most complex health systems in the world.

Louise’s recent project work across a variety of pharmaceutical companies includes the development of an end to end KAM programme with the creation of a bespoke capability framework and behaviour and train the trainer programme. Smaller projects have involved the delivery of patient journey workshops, account planning guidelines and the delivery of Webex sessions on KAM principles.

Louise has a strong background in sales and marketing across a breadth of therapy areas including pain, cardiovascular, diabetes, oncology, mental health, respiratory, biologics, gastrointestinal, anaesthesia and female health.

Louise describes herself as energetic, rigorous in thinking and collaborative and has received excellent client feedback on her recent consulting projects on her ability to deliver quality, practical outputs to tight timelines.

Following a successful corporate career in commercial and medical leadership roles within the pharmaceutical industry, Caroline brings her energy and enthusiasm to facilitate change for individuals, teams and organisations. She takes a client-centred approach to collaboratively deliver the desired outcome through the application of authenticity and mindfulness.

Caroline has multi-functional experience encompassing sales, marketing, market access and launch. She started her career at MSD in sales and marketing before moving to Sanofi where she held several director-level positions including VP Global Marketing and Market Access. She has worked across broad therapeutic areas including CV, Thrombosis, Oncology, CNS, Urology, Diabetes, Obesity and Atrial Fibrillation. Caroline has also led transformative organisation-wide projects including medical excellence, governance, training and compliance, focused on end-user and customer requirements introducing a LEAN and AGILE capability build.

Caroline has personally coached and mentored many people at all levels to board level including volunteering for the HBA.

Having worked with brands from Phase II through to post-patent expiry in both operational, strategic and global positions, Caroline brings an energetic and engaging style to facilitation of strategic projects and coaching assignments which is also embedded in a practical and realistic approach.

Caroline describes herself as enthusiastic, curious and empathetic, demonstrating a strong desire to understand the client requirements and deliver above and beyond.

Zoe Hall is Chief Welfare Officer and responsible for ensuring there is a positive and productive working atmosphere at our offices in Ascot. Her skills in listening are a great resource for the Uptake Team when needing to work through complex challenges and she is a great sound board for brainstorming new ideas.

Zoe can often be found checking on each individual member of the team throughout her day and skillfully uses her warm and empathetic attitude to encourage regular rest breaks, thus improving the team’s efficiency. With 8 years’ experience in her current role, Zoe is a valuable asset to the Uptake team!

Luna is the newest addition to the welfare support team and being only 5 months old, is working under the close supervision of Zoe Hall, Chief Welfare Officer.
Luna’s exuberant nature makes her the perfect candidate for this role, although she is currently only working in the office part-time to allow the Uptake team some peace and quiet from her playful exploits.