100 - Keynotes & Plenaries

Monday, April 3
8:45 - 9:30 am

Every successful partnership is built on a common mission and requires bringing a group of people together to meet the objectives. Great leaders use negotiation and management skills to align teams strategically while also overseeing the execution. But what if the human dimension gets left out of the equation? How do you lead the people instead of just the formation?

U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Farina, Assistant Professor at West Point, shares his approach to managing up and leading down—sometimes without authority, or even when diplomacy has failed—based on a distinguished military and teaching career including 10 deployments, work with numerous government organizations, and research on human development, leadership, and behavior.

Speaker:

LTC Andrew Farina, PhD, MBA
Assistant Professor, Management Program Director
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership
U.S. Army, West Point

LTC Andrew Farina is originally from Franklin, New Hampshire and is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, Class of 2001. He has been an Army Officer for the last 21 years and has 10 combat deployments, serving as an Infantry Platoon Leader and Company Executive Officer, Ranger Platoon Leader and Company Executive Officer, Brigade Future Planner, Stryker Company Commander, Special Operations Troop Commander and Operations Officer, Joint Sensitive Activities Operations Planner, and a West Point Instructor and Assistant Professor.

LTC Farina has taught undergraduate courses in Military Leadership (PL300), Research Methods (PL361 and PL462), Managerial Finance (MG410), and Operations Management (MG420) within the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. He currently serves as the Management Program Director and Department Personnel Officer. He previously served as the Department Executive Officer and the Deputy Director of the West Point Leadership Center.

Monday, April 3
11:40 am - 12:30 pm

In what’s been called the Decade of the Ecosystem, we’re increasingly seeing channels, partnering programs, and ecosystems converge, with a focus on routes to market and what’s best for the end customer. The rise of cloud and “everything as a service” (XaaS) has also changed the way partnering gets done, causing every company to move toward becoming a tech company. ASAP audience favorite Jay McBain will give us his latest thinking on what’s new—and what’s next—in technology partnering, and how that will affect industries, ecosystems, and alliances across the spectrum of business.

Keynote Speaker:

Jay McBain
Chief Analyst – Channels, Partnerships & Ecosystems

Canalys

Jay McBain is one of the most visible and respected thought leaders in the global channel ecosystem. Named 2021 Channel Influencer of the Year by Channel Partners Magazine, Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, as well as numerous channel magazines top influencer lists, he is often sought out for industry guidance and future trends. He has spent his 28-year career in various executive channel sales, marketing, and strategy roles within IBM, Lenovo, Autotask, ChannelEyes, and Forrester. Jay is chief analyst at Canalys - the world's leading research firm with a distinct focus on channels, partnerships, alliances, and ecosystems.

Tuesday, April 4
8:30 - 9:15 am

The evolution of international partnering brings both exciting opportunities and new challenges. The growing need for and presence of biopharma alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in China, requires organizations to develop different approaches, capabilities, and internal interfaces and operating models to be successful. In this keynote, our speaker will discuss how Simcere, a Chinese-owned biopharma company, is innovating and driving mutual value through these paradigm shifts in alliance leadership and management.

Speaker:

Kevin Oliver, PhD
Senior Vice President, Global Head of BD&L | COO, US & Europe
Simcere Pharmaceutical Group

Kevin is a BD&L, M&A professional with 30+ years biopharmaceuticals experience. His responsibilities include close leadership of Simcere BD&L, as well as operational leadership for Simcere outside of China.

Before joining Simcere, Kevin was global head of BD&L-external alliances at Alcon/Novartis. Prior to this he spent 9 years in Merck BD&L, having previously led CNS target validation for 12 years at MSD, notably leading the validation of CGRP as a new class of anti-migraine agents.

Kevin holds a Ph.D. degree in neuropathology from the University of Cambridge, and a B.Sc in Immunology from King's College London.

Tuesday, April 4
9:20 - 10:10 am

The path to leadership in alliance management is changing as the value of the profession becomes more relevant. Inspiring current colleagues and a new generation of alliance professionals requires collaboration, curiosity, and commitment, both within ASAP and in our individual organizations, to move beyond the status quo. In this session, you’ll hear four ASAP and industry alliance leaders, all senior executives who are at the forefront of advocacy and change, share their experiences, challenges, lessons, and career advice on the journey to alliance leadership. This promises to be a fascinating and illuminating conversation about the professional and personal qualities and attributes needed in the next generation of alliance leaders.

Moderator:

Christina Neary
Corporate Vice President, Global Microsoft Alliance
Avanade

Christina Neary is the global Microsoft alliance leader for Avanade, a joint venture created by Microsoft and Accenture. As the alliance leader for one of the technology industry's most successful joint ventures, Christina is passionate about the power of partnerships to fuel sustained value creation and accelerated growth. She is responsible for growing Avanade's business alongside Microsoft and as the engine powering Accenture's Microsoft business group. A leader in strategic transformation and industry consulting services, Avanade holds a unique distinction as Microsoft's "partner zero" – at the forefront of harnessing the power of Microsoft technology to fuel digital innovation that transforms and grows our clients' businesses. Christina's team drives joint go-to-market strategy and execution of strategic growth initiatives with Microsoft. Christina is leading the transformation of Avanade's global alliance organization as part of Avanade's Ambition 2025 initiative and sits on Accenture/Avanade's global leadership team.

A veteran of the technology industry, Christina spent more than 20 years leading tech alliances across ISVs, cloud providers, global systems integrators, industry and technology partner ecosystems. She has held leadership roles with DXC Technology, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and HP Inc where she helped establish the HP Microsoft "Frontline Partnership" as the industry standard for $B+ technology alliances.

Christina is a passionate advocate of diversity in the technology sector and speaks internally and externally on inclusion and empowering the next generation of female leaders. She serves on the board of advisors for Girl Scouts, as a mentor for Camp CEO, and as board trustee for the Litchfield Education Foundation. She is a member of Women in Technology, Women in Cloud, Women of the Channel, Girls Leadership, Inc., and the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

Christina holds a B.A. in English from the College of the Holy Cross. She is based in Connecticut.

Panelists:

Nicole Colwell
Executive Vice President, Chief Alliance Officer
PraSaga Foundation

 

 

Cherie Gartner
Partner
KPMG

Cherie is a partner at KPMG who is responsible globally for the Microsoft relationship. As the Microsoft global lead partner, Cherie is responsible for developing the overall Microsoft comprehensive go-to-market strategy and overall relationship. Cherie brings more than 30 years of go-to-market strategy, client development and alliance management expertise coupled with technology and advisory consulting experience. Twice recognized by CRN, as Woman of The Channel 2021: Power 60 Solution Providers; Cherie is a strategic thought leader having held executive leadership positions at PTC, Cognizant, DXC Technology, Oracle, and PwC.

Living 13 years overseas in Thailand, Singapore, Japan, and Switzerland, Cherie is a globally proven business leader with diverse US and international experience. Cherie has demonstrated success in managing high performing teams, creating and driving client and partner strategies that strengthen revenue, increase market share, and solidify competitive advantages in today's changing digital landscape.

Cherie holds a BA from the University of Minnesota. She attended the Accelerate Executive Insight Leadership program, sponsored by Oracle, at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

Cherie and her family now live in Mclean, VA.

Brooke Paige, CSAP
Digital Alliances
Novartis

Brooke Paige is a digital therapeutics and external innovation pioneer, and one of the first alliance managers in the biopharma industry. After writing her business school thesis in "The optimal management and structure of a pharmaceutical alliance," Brooke became a global practitioner in the space. Prior to her current role, Brooke joined Pear Therapeutics as Employee #42, where she served as Vice President, Alliance Management. Brooke was Chairman of the Board for ASAP, the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, for six years, and remains active as Chairman Emeritus. She is most proud of having been hired by two different former alliance partners to represent their interests in alliances–including her current employer, Novartis, where Brooke manages the organization's digital collaborations.

200 - Panel Discussions

Monday, April 3
2:25- 3:10 pm

Building an alliance management function today is neither a simple matter nor the same as it was in the past. As partnership portfolios accelerate in growth, deal structures become increasingly complex, and functional team members are asked to collaborate externally, building (or rebuilding) an alliance management function based on past design principles is pretty much a nonstarter—and unlikely to produce maximum success for your organization or for patients in the long run. In this panel discussion, join three biopharma alliance leaders as they discuss their experiences designing, building, and scaling alliance management functions that are truly capable of adapting to today’s demands, while continuing to harness learned best practices from the past. The panelists will explore questions such as:

  • What changes have you seen in the landscape of life science partnerships that necessitate rethinking how alliance management functions are designed and built?
  • How have hiring profiles needed to change over time to support and keep pace with these changes?
  • How has the role alliance management groups play for their organizations evolved over time? And where do you think it’s headed in the future?
  • What advice do you have for individuals thinking about taking on the challenge of building a new alliance management function today?

Moderator:

Adam Kornetsky
Principal
Vantage Partners

Adam Kornetsky is a principal at Vantage Partners, where he focuses life sciences and healthcare. Adam helps clients unlock the value of collaboration and achieve breakthrough results in a changing healthcare landscape. His experience includes advising organizations on building and executing alliance management capabilities, designing and implementing change management and organizational design initiatives, conducting partnership launches and health checks, and facilitating negotiation and conflict management training. Adam has also supported many clients in their goal of creating a more innovative business environment.

Adam has co-authored several articles on navigating complexities in healthcare partnerships, on topics that include virtual alliance launches and engagement model due diligence. He speaks regularly at Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) conferences and frequently leads workshops at the Strategic Alliance Management Congress, exploring topics such as "Managing and Executing Pharma-Digital Partnerships" and "Alliance Managers as Interventionists."

Adam received his MBA with honors from Boston University's Questrom School of Business, with a concentration in Health Sector Management and focus on Leadership and Organizational Transformation. He received his BA in International Relations and Economics from Tufts University.

Panelists:

Katherine Ellison, CA-AM
Head of Alliance Management
Illumina

Katherine leads Illumina's alliances team in its corporate development and strategic planning organization. Her team is responsible for managing a wide variety of partnership types, including co-development, co-commercialization, technological innovation, licensing, and supply agreements.

As a dedicated servant leader, Katherine focuses on building and supporting an exceptional team to drive results for Illumina. She has 20 years' experience working with critical partners and guides her team in developing partnering competencies, delivering on value, and unlocking new opportunities with existing partners in service to Illumina's mission to improve human health through genomics.

Prior to her 7 years as an alliance management leader with Illumina, Katherine was a product manager who successfully launched multiple major instrument platforms and diagnostic testing products used by thousands of clinical laboratories worldwide. A lifelong learner, Katherine has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Chemistry, a graduate certificate in Marketing, and an MBA, and in 2017, she earned her Certification of Achievement-Alliance Management (CA-AM) from the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

Jarrod Midboe
Director of Clinical Affairs & Vendor Alliance Management
Upsher-Smith Laboratories

Jarrod has led the buildout of alliance management systems and process at Upsher-Smith Laboratories, a specialty branded and generic pharmaceutical company. In this role, he is responsible for maturing pharmaceutical licensing, manufacturing, and development partnerships to realize growth strategy.

During his term at Upsher-Smith, Jarrod has served as a senior project manager, and led clinical affairs in creating a global partnering strategy. Previously, Jarrod held operations and sales leadership positions at Clinical Research Organizations satisfying sponsors early and late clinical phase submission requirements. Jarrod has extensive experience delivering value through domestic and international strategic partnerships.

Jarrod is motivated to work synergistically to optimize alliance relationships, has been a corporate member of ASAP for 5 years, and holds professional certifications as a Clinical Research Coordinator and Project Management Professional.

Lucinda Warren
VP Business Development, Neuroscience
Johnson & Johnson Innovation / Janssen Business Development

Lucinda (Cindy) heads the Neuroscience Business Development Team which includes scientific finding, licensing transactions, mergers, acquisition, out licensing, divestitures and alliance management.

With over 24 years of broad industry experience, Lucinda began her pharma career in Canada. In 1999, she joined the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies and has held various USA and Global roles of increasing responsibilities, including sales, marketing, new product development, alliance management, and business development leadership. Lucinda has been responsibility for the leadership and oversight of some of Janssen's longest and largest global commercial alliances in addition to leading the global integration of Johnson & Johnson's single largest asset REMICADE®, back into the organization in 2011.

Just prior to joining the Janssen business development leadership team, Lucinda led the immunology business unit in Australia, returning to the USA in 2014 as VP alliance management, Janssen, responsible for leading the total Pharmaceutical portfolio of collaborations.

Lucinda received her bachelor of science degree from the University of Alberta, Canada.

Monday, April 3
3:30 - 4:15 pm

Entering large software ecosystems can be massively beneficial and drive significant growth, but the competition (and competition for attention) is fierce. There are best practices and playbooks available that can help new and existing partners maximize your potential and growth. However, there are differences in strategy on how to win more than your fair share between ecosystems built around applications vs infrastructure products. Learn from experts on the Salesforce AppExchange and the hyperscaler Marketplaces such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google. Take home new ideas on how to accelerate your success, build a strong cloud go-to-market foundation, and employ new best practices to ensure you don't find your new integration standing in a field of dreams next to Kevin Costner - if you just build it, they will not come.

Moderator:

Drew Quinlan, CA-AM
Vice President, Business Development & Partnerships
Motive

At Motive, Drew has global responsibility for all partnerships including insurance, financial cards, ISV, SI, resellers, OEMs, and more. His primary focus is to design an overall partnership strategy to help support Motive's key corporate initiatives. Drew is also responsible for the development, operationalization, and scaling of the associated programs to meet the stated outcomes.

Drew has extensive experience designing and launching partner programs of all types, working on both sides of many major large tech ecosystems and launching joint solutions to market that span software, hardware, and services. Drew has also led the integration of ASAP certifications and methodologies at several of the companies he has worked for and has seen tremendous value from doing so.

While not at work, Drew lives with his family in Denver and enjoys sharing an active lifestyle with them mainly focused on soccer and dance. He also spends his free time following his favorite teams across soccer, football, and basketball.

Panelists:

Mike Davis
Chief Revenue Officer
InVisory

Founder of GTM Guides, Mike has over ten years' experience and deep knowledge of the Salesforce either working within the ecosystem or helping smart teams with great tech become successful partners. The majority of his career and previous experience with companies such as Xactly, Conga, and TaskRa, has been focused on sales and alliance leadership including every functional aspect of the Salesforce ecosystem.

The success of GTM Guides has led to a recent acquisition by InVisory, where he's now serving as Chief Revenue Officer. In his new role, his team helps ISVs customers fast track success, reduce risk, and accelerate evaluations and deals in crowded cloud ecosystems.

When Mike is not obsessing about cracking ecosystems for ISVs, he enjoys an active lifestyle with his wife Jen, in Denver and Silverthorne, Colorado. They enjoy board games, hiking, skiing, and cycling, US soccer (USMNT & USWNT), and of course, the Denver Nuggets.

Lauren Newby
Senior Director, Cloud Partnerships
Tackl.io

 

 

Tuesday, April 4
1:00 - 1:45 pm

Change may be uncomfortable, perplexing, and difficult to grapple with—but it’s inevitable! Whether in the rapidly evolving biopharmaceutical industry or amid the uncertainties of a global pandemic, alliance teams must prepare to be innovative in their approach to changing times. The process of building a strong, agile alliance team is subject to the same challenges, but successfully developing such a team can help adapt to the changes. This panel of alliance team members will share a few ways their organization has incorporated and leveraged diverse skill sets to build a strong, effective team that is focused on driving alliance value for the company.

Moderator:

Karen Berna, CA-AM
Senior Director, Alliance Management
Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Karen Berna is a senior director in alliance management at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a global pharmaceutical company that develops life-changing medicines for people with serious diseases. Karen manages several strategic alliances within the Jazz alliance portfolio, delivering value for global partnerships in development and commercial life-cycle phases. An 8-year veteran of Jazz, she has held various leadership roles in corporate strategy, operations, project, program, and portfolio management. Prior to her current role, Karen was the chief of staff to the chairman and CEO where she led several corporate strategy projects to evolve company operations. For more than 20 years, Karen has focused on building highly effective and collaborative teams to achieve ambitious objectives in the biotechnology, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical industries. She has held various leadership positions at Genentech, Genomic Health, and Pfizer, and began her career at Eli Lilly & Company. She is passionate about creating unique insights and influencing teams to develop meaningful patient-focused solutions. Karen holds a BS in Biology, a MS in pharmaceutical science, and has been an active member of ASAP since 2021.

Panelists:

Lauren Griffey, CA-AM
Senior Manager Business Operations, Alliance Management
Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Lauren Griffey is a senior manager within the alliance management team at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a global biopharmaceutical company, that develops life-changing medicines for people with serious diseases. Lauren serves in a business operations role where she is creating for the first time at Jazz - the Alliance Management Office. This is where the processes, procedures, training, and tools will be housed formalizing how Jazz manages alliances. The Alliance Management Office adds value to the experience of strategic partners with Jazz and enhances the Jazzician alliance member skills.

Prior to joining alliance management, Lauren spent over 20 years within commercial sales and commercial business operations. Lauren was an accomplished senior specialty sales consultant and Jazz Master Award winner before joining North America Training and Development where she led a variety of training efforts for multiple business units and products. She was a significant contributor to Jazz's first commercial launch. Although Lauren has been with Jazz for 12 years, she has previous experience with Pfizer, Kowa, and Azur.

Lauren is passionate about helping patients and is driven by the desire to seek innovative solutions. Lauren holds a BS in human and organizational development from Vanderbilt University and obtained her CA-AM in 2021.

Katherine Kendrick, CSAP
Head of Alliance Management
Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Katherine Kendrick is Head of Alliance Management at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a global biopharmaceutical company that develops life-changing medicines for people with serious diseases, who often have limited or no options. Katherine leads the Jazz Alliance Management team and department, delivering alliance portfolio management and value for global partnerships in development and commercial life cycle phases. Prior to joining Jazz in 2019, Katherine was with Eli Lilly & Company and Elanco Animal Health, where she established and led the Alliance Management organization. For more than 20 years, Katherine has focused on global clinical development and strategic alliance partnering in the human and animal health pharmaceutical sector. She is passionate about building and optimizing alliance teams and advising alliance leaders, enabling challenging decision-making with a patient focused, alliance value driven approach. Katherine holds a BS in Biomedical Science from Texas A&M University and has been an active member of ASAP since 2011. It's not all about work for Katherine–in her personal time, she is a veterinary nursing student at Purdue University and volunteers with the veterinary team for Save Elephant Foundation in Thailand, rescuing and rehabilitating endangered Asian Elephants.

Danielle Martinez, CA-AM, PhD
Associate Director, Alliance Management
Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Danielle is a member of the alliance management team at Jazz Pharmaceuticals where she manages alliances within Jazz's research and early development portfolio. Trained as a scientist, Danielle uses her passion for advancing science as a key principle in how she approaches problem solving and trust building within alliances.

Danielle's interest in collaborations began during her research training where she managed research activities across academic and clinical research teams. Her interest led her to roles in intellectual property licensing (including copyrights) at The University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston and then onto leading business development and collaboration negotiations at AbbVie.

Danielle is currently a member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), achieving her Certificate of Achievement - Alliance Management (CA-AM) in 2020.

Steven Roy
Alliance Management Consultant
Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Steven Roy is an alliance management consultant at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a global biopharmaceutical company developing life-changing cancer and neuroscience medicines. Steven covers several new Jazz strategic partnerships spanning development and commercialization.

Prior to joining Jazz, Steven had a 14-year career with Amgen, where he led planning and operations for the commercial launch of ARANESP®, and he also established and led Amgen's alliance management organization, with responsibility for over 70 strategic collaborations.

Steven later became CEO of VetDC, Inc., a pet-focused cancer healthcare company that developed and commercialized TANOVEA®, the first ever FDA-approved drug for the treatment of lymphoma in dogs (acquired by Elanco Animal Health in 2021). From there, he joined OneHealth Company as VP, business development & strategy, focusing on precision medicine oncology collaborations.

Steven holds a BA in molecular biology from UC San Diego, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and is a certified Franklin Covey Conflict Resolution Trainer. Outside of work, Steven enjoys cycling in the Berkeley hills, gardening, surfing, and trail running with his cocker-poodle-lab, Tyson.

Tuesday, April 4
3:00 - 3:45 pm

What is special about industry-academia partnerships compared with other types of collaborative business relationships, and how can alliance managers optimize the likelihood of success? For biopharma companies, the push to leverage external innovation is growing, and partnering with academia brings the promise of greater innovation and value creation. At the same time, partnerships at the interface between non-profit institutions and for-profit businesses come with unique needs and challenges. Differences in organizational size, culture, and stakeholder obligations and expectations are constants in this arena. To ensure productive collaboration and mutual success, it is imperative to address the special challenges that arise from these asymmetries in organizational missions and operating models. Panelists in this moderated session will share their observations and learnings from a range of alliances between researchers in academia and industry. You’ll hear their keen insights about the essential principles, priorities, and tools for alliance management success in academic-industrial collaborations, including:

  • Best ways to set the stage for success when research outcomes are unpredictable
  • Examples of adaptive alliance structures used to leverage complementarity between partners
  • Creative approaches to promoting best practice collaborative leadership behaviors

Moderator:

Jason Felsch, CSAP, PhD
Senior Director of Alliance Management
Atomwise

 

 

Panelists:

Seema Basu, PhD
Strategic Innovation Leader
Mass General Brigham Innovation

As strategic innovation leader, Seema Basu, PhD, directs the strategy for open innovation and strategic alliances. She leads a team responsible for enabling strategic corporate alliances and new initiatives, such as the Innovation Fellows Program for collaboration with industry. Additionally, team manages licensing and partnering of IP portfolios from Regenerative Medicine, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, and MGH Center for Global Health. She represents Mass General Brigham at numerous national and regional organizations.

She has more than a decade of deep experience in industry-academic collaborations and business development & licensing at Mass General Brigham and Harvard and a successful laboratory career at Parke-Davis and Albany Medical Center. She earned her PhD from the University of Notre Dame.

Bill Kubasek
Director of Strategic Alliances
Broad Institute

Bill is a biotech leader with over 25 years of experience in business development, translational science, program leadership and alliance management in both industry and academia. Since 2018 he has been director of strategic alliances at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where his primary focus in on managing the Broad's collaboration with Deerfield Management, a healthcare investment firm. Prior to joining the Broad, Bill was vice president of business development at HiFiBiO, a discovery and development company that utilizes its proprietary microfluidic platform to screen for novel antibody therapies. From 2008 through 2016 Bill was as at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals where, in collaboration with Sanofi, he led the company's anti-Her3 program, MM-121 (seribantumab) through five Phase 1 and four biomarker driven Phase 2 clinical studies in breast, ovarian and lung cancers. In addition, he played a key role in various financing and business development activities at Merrimack. From 2004-2008, Bill cofounded the CRO Y-Point Bioanalytical and also consulted with GreenFuel Technologies to develop collaborations to enhance biodiesel production from algae. From 1994 to 2004 Bill was at Praecis Pharmaceuticals where he joined as a start-up scientist and held position of increasing responsibility in the areas of business development and program management.

Bill earned his B.A. degree in Biochemistry from the University of California at Davis and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology/Biophysics from the University of Oregon. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (1988-1989), and then at the Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School (1989-1994).

Stefan Walke, CA-AM, PhD
Head, Alliance Management
Boehringer Ingelheim

Trained in biochemistry at University of Regensburg and Cambridge, Stefan gained 20 years of healthcare experience in consulting, biotech and pharma – always with a strong focus on strategy and business development. Within the human pharma business development organization at Boehringer Ingelheim, he led a combined contracts and alliance management team globally before taking up a newly established role as global head of alliance management in 2020 to further strengthen Boehringer's relationship with a growing portfolio of strategic external innovation partners. His team of alliance managers is enabling the success of discovery research and preclinically stage alliances with academic and biotech partners across the globe.

300 - Master Classes

Monday, April 3
9:40 - 11:10 am

Platform partnerships are increasingly becoming a significant new focus in biopharma. Fintech and technology partnering managers have been working on these types of alliances for a long time—but what lessons from those industries can be applied to the very different realm of biopharma? This master class will explore both key wins and a few failures in platform partnership case studies and build alliance management skills and strategies for biopharma and tech alliance managers alike. Attendees will:

  • Examine successes and pitfalls of platform partnership management in technology alliances
  • Practice skills and best practices to manage platform partnerships in biopharma and technology
  • Glean insights from experienced peers across a range of industries

Speakers:

Ben Siddall
Partner
Vantage Partners

Ben Siddall is a Partner at Vantage Partners, where his practice focuses on helping companies build and execute strategies which involve collaboration. Ben works primarily in the biopharma, device, and healthcare sectors, with additional experience in the technology and professional services sectors.

Ben's projects include a blend of strategic analysis and supporting individual relationships. His work often includes defining partner ecosystems, conducting scenario planning and war-gaming, defining criteria and processes to support selection of partners, launching new collaborations, and helping organizations define and improve their capability to partner effectively. He works with both innovation and customer related collaborations, and regularly works with cross-industry partnerships.

Prior to joining Vantage, Ben worked as an economic consultant and a commercial litigator. Ben received his J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. magna cum laude in political science from Boston University.

Jessica Wadd
Partner
Vantage Partners

Jessica Wadd is a Partner at Vantage Partners, where her practice focuses on helping companies maximize the value of collaboration–with customers, suppliers, and partners. She frequently leverages ideas from the fields of behavioral economics and game theory to help clients develop practical approaches to improve their businesses. Jessica has worked with clients across a broad range of industries, including high-tech, manufacturing, financial services, life sciences, healthcare, and professional services.

Prior to joining Vantage, she was a strategic relationship manager at Lincoln Financial Group where her responsibilities included negotiating and managing several of the company's most critical alliances. Jessica holds an MSc in Behavioral Economics from the University of Nottingham as well as BAs in both English and Economics from Bryn Mawr College.

Outside the corporate arena, Jessica co-led an initiative with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) at the United Nations, to develop and implement a strategy for partnerships with private sector companies.

Tuesday, April 4
10:25 am - 11:55 pm

An emerging area where alliance professionals can add significant value is in the way alliance operations are organized. When this organization is done right, people are empowered to contribute their best, getting the leverage desired by each partner. Done wrong, there is burnout and team churn. It can also be very expensive in an era when talent is scarce and competition strong. Alliance operating models include how work is distributed, teams are formed, communication flows, stakeholders are managed, plans made and implemented, and progress measured and reported.

The presenters will draw on data from their work to show the impact of ineffective operating models and provide guidance on how alliance professionals can orchestrate the models that will bridge differences in structure and ways of working while facilitating actions, decision making, and the flow of value between and among partners. A cross-industry case study will provide participants with an opportunity to apply frameworks shared.

Participants will come away with insights that will help them:

  • Design the team model best suited for their alliance that reduces duplication of effort
  • Build a scalable onboarding program to align new members with the work of the alliance and their teams or governance committees
  • Design, implement, and manage a “no surprises” communication program, enlisting functional leaders in the smooth operation of alliances

Speakers:

Jeffrey C. Shuman CSAP, PhD
Co-Founder, The Rhythm of Business
Professor Emeritus of Management, Bentley University

Jeff is an educator and trusted advisor to executives who are building, leading, and managing alliances and partner networks. His mix of operational, consulting, research and classroom experiences allow him to blend the theoretical with the practical, providing useful, easily implementable and repeatable advice.

At The Rhythm of Business he partners with global companies in multiple industries to advance their alliance and collaboration management capability. Consulting engagements focus on driving results through enabling all functions of the business to work effectively with their partners throughout the lifecycle. He works with senior executive teams to shape partnering strategy, enable operational and organization readiness, and implement overarching governance. Partnering professionals benefit from his ability to quickly diagnose underperforming alliances, and accelerate the path to profitability. Customized education and training bring alliance and collaboration skills to all who interact with partners.

Jeff has been a member of ASAP since 2002. He was involved on the teams that developed the Certificate of Achievement - Alliance Management (CA-AM) certification and the CSAP certification and contributed to the Handbook of Alliance Management. He frequently presents at ASAP and other organization's conferences and events. Together with business partner Jan Twombly, he has a rich history of developing and publishing strategic and practical thinking that advances the art and science of partnering and alliance management.

Jan Twombly, CSAP
President
The Rhythm of Business

Jan Twombly, Certified Strategic Alliance Professional (CSAP), is president of The Rhythm of Business, a service provider with core expertise in strategic alliances, alliance management, and collaboration. For more than 20 years, she has been developing and sharing thought leadership to enable success through partnering and alliances.

Twombly is a trusted advisor to leaders in both industry and academia, helping to develop their organizations' partnering and alliance strategies and operations. She offers education, training, and mentoring services to build the mindset, skillset, and toolset needed to succeed. Her clients count on her to advise on establishing new alliances, to develop alliance management organizations and practices, and to step in when alliances are in trouble. Data-driven, contextual assessments of complex alliances provide deep insights that solve problems and drive measurable improvement. Digitizing workflow helps alliance managers scale and optimize their work.

She serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), overseeing their editorial and content strategy. She is a frequent contributor to Strategic Alliance Quarterly, regularly speaks on collaboration and partnering, and authors The Partnering Guide blog and numerous whitepapers at www.rhythmofbusiness.com.

400 - General Sessions

Monday, April 3
9:40 - 10:25 am

In the continuing quest to derive the maximum value from our alliances, one of the basics is fostering trust-based relationships—which includes the skillful handling of conflict. When trouble arises in an alliance, understanding the nature of the conflict is key. How do the partners and internal stakeholders perceive and interpret the conflict? What factors play a role? What conclusions can be drawn when often opposing interests are trying to work toward common goals? This session will demonstrate how to apply Game Theory, the science of strategic decision making, to analyze conflict and ultimately lead to conflict resolution in a typical alliance management case. Based on assessments using Game Theory, a systematic framework that helps to identify problems early on, alliance professionals can set up solution-oriented communications that not only allow a timely resolution of conflicts but can also play a major role in the prevention of future conflicts. Participants in this session will:

  • Learn how to employ Game Theory to analyze potential conflicts before creating an action plan
  • See how Game Theory can be used to take partners’ viewpoints into account to develop strategies that avoid or resolve conflict
  • Understand the importance—and the benefits—of thinking through situations involving conflict in detail

Speaker:

Stefanie A. Schubert, CA-AM, PhD
Professor of Economics
SRH University Heidelberg

Stefanie A. Schubert is Professor of Economics at SRH University Heidelberg, executive coach and consultant for strategic management & negotiations. In her university role, she is the lead of the economics group and head of the international bachelor program. As a coach, she guides coaches through transformational thinking. In the role of a consultant, she fosters solutions to decision making problems and supports clients in influencing negotiations on the basis of game theory.

Her work experience includes the assistant professorship of organization theory and management at WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management. She has published in distinguished international journals, such as the Journal of Health Economics, Applied Economics and Small Business Economics.

Apart from higher education, she has experience in alliance management and the biopharma industry and is active member of the Association of Alliance Management (ASAP) and European Women on Board (EWOB) as well as the DACH Chapter Lead of EWOB. Reach out to connect linkedin.com/in/stefanie-schubert

Monday, April 3
10:30 - 11:25 am

After the Ink Is Dry: Kicking Off a New Partnership

You've received the signed contract. Maybe you were involved in the negotiation, or maybe it's simply been handed off. What happens next? Attendees will discuss the importance of alliance management having a seat at the table in early discussions, and how to begin the partnering relationship from scratch if not.

Facilitator:

Dionis Taveras
Director, Global Networking Partners | Dell Technologies EMC


Building an Ecosystem Marketing Strategy

For companies with dozens or hundreds of partners, there is a delicate balance to supporting the marketing needs of both the company and the ecosystem. To be successful, an ecosystem team needs to eliminate traditional silos and align closely with marketing on multiple levels. Attendees will discuss why having strategic and regular marketing and ecosystem alignment can create alliance efficiency and provide better support for sales objectives, while also focusing on customer needs and how to solve them.

Facilitator:

Chris White
Senior Manager, Ecosystem Marketing | Protiviti


The Evolving World of Portfolio Management

Managing various types of partnerships requires a multifaceted lens. Partners come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of partnering readiness, and meanwhile the C-suite simply wants to know that strategic objectives and goals are being met. However, taking an "enterprise" view of all alliances and their performance can be daunting without the right framework. Attendees will discuss observations and offer feedback on how the alliance management role has had to mature to meet these needs, and share successful approaches to adapting and improving processes and systems to support their efforts.

Facilitator:

Jarrod Midboe
Director, Clinical Affairs and Vendor/Alliance Management | Upsher-Smith Laboratories, LLC


Hiring the Right Talent and Developing Alliance Management Core Competencies

Finding ideal candidates for the complex role of alliance management can be difficult. What are the key attributes applicants should inherently possess, and which ones will they need to develop? In this discussion, share different perspectives and approaches for building highly skilled, well-balanced, and ultimately successful alliance management teams.

Facilitator:

Katherine Ellison, CA-AM
Senior Director, Alliances | Illumina


Not Just an Alliance Manager but a Team Leader

Beyond their day jobs, alliance managers also need to be team leaders of internal and external stakeholders. Proving the value of the alliance management role takes maturity, patience, and effort as alliance leaders work to resolve conflicts and move the partnership forward. In this discussion, attendees share experiences where taking a leadership role has worked successfully as well as situations where they faced and overcame obstacles.

Facilitator:

Cindy Warren
Vice President | Janssen BD, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson


Managing Internal Relationships

A large percentage of an alliance manager's time is typically spent driving alignment with functions within their own organization such as business development, project management, R&D, finance, and others. In this discussion, attendees will share experiences and best practices for navigating these relationships to support alliance success.

Facilitator:

Christoph Huwe, CSAP, PhD
Director, Strategic Alliance Management | Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals


Making the Move to the Cloud

The growing demand to move to cloud, consumption models, and marketplaces (e.g., AWS, GC) is expanding the role of alliance management, the makeup of their portfolios, and the skill sets required. If you're working on these challenges, or expect to be doing so soon, come share your thoughts, experiences, insights, and questions on:

  • Understanding pay as you go (PAYG) license models, units of measure (UoMs) for billing and chargeback, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for business systems integrations
  • Determining independent software vendor (ISV) partner readiness for moving to a PAYG consumption model or establishing a marketplace presence
  • Evaluating partners to target for these programs and the recruitment and enablement differences from traditional technology alliances

Facilitator:

Philip Sailer
Senior Director, Strategic ISV Engagements | HPE GreenLake


Unlocking the Value of Your Virtual Ecosystem

Many companies implement software to support and manage their partner ecosystem. However, determining the best approach can be overwhelming. Join this discussion to explore the advantages ecosystem apps can bring to alliance management, important things your organization should consider, and tips for avoiding common pitfalls along the way. Questions to be explored include:

  • Does your company take a holistic and/or multi-workload approach to ecosystem apps?
  • When considering ecosystem reach, do you take a quantitative or qualitative approach to expansion?
  • What privacy and security concerns are top of mind within your organization?

Facilitator:

Greg Fox
Strategic Alliances & Partner Ecosystem, Board Advisor | TIDWIT Inc.

Monday, April 3
1:30 - 2:15 pm

As new alliance combinations proliferate across previously unconnected industries, they’re bringing together IT and AI, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, as well as financial services (particularly insurance payers), nonprofits, regulatory bodies, and more. While such alliances show the potential to create great value, these partners often differ radically from one another in terms of skills, people, customers, timeframes, governance, investors, and regulators. Such differences create significant challenges to forming, then managing successful alliances. Success requires an explicit understanding of each particular setting, and a conscious approach to building the alliances upon important commonalities.

Using real-world case studies, the speakers will present a framework with tangible tools for alliance professionals and explicit guidance for achieving success in these increasingly important alliances, based on these principles:

  • Clearly define the purpose and business objectives of the alliance
  • Set and communicate expectations and interests of the parties
  • Craft clearly defined and purpose-driven governance structures and processes
  • Adapt constructive problem-solving approaches to the new mix of players; identify joint interests and use those as guidance for alignment
  • Adhere to agreed and aligned dispute resolution processes

Speakers:

Nick Palmer
Partner
BTD

Nick Palmer is an internationally recognized expert on alliance management and has three decades of experience helping clients accelerate growth through strategic alliances, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures in energy, pharmaceutical and tech. Nick was an original ASAP Board member and lead partner for Accenture's Alliances & JV Practice. Now as a Partner at BTD, Nick's immediate focus is on bringing M&A practices and artificial intelligence tools to alliance management.

Knut Sturmhoefel, CA-AM, PhD
Consultant, Alliance & Collaboration Advisor

After over 27 years in biotech and big pharma and 17 years at the frontline of business development and alliance management, Knut has seen many success stories as well as failures of collaborations. By sharing his experience and deep insights he enables companies to drive innovation through creating tailored collaborations and executing their alliances with excellence - generating new value for all parties.

At Novartis, Knut served as vice president, global head of alliance management where he strengthened the corporate alliance management function across five divisions, managing a team of seasoned alliance leaders who were responsible for a portfolio of over 300 alliances. Previously, he served as global head of BD&L for two franchises, ophthalmology and respiratory. Knut's teams were responsible for all business development activities, in- and out-licensing, all variations of collaborations, M&A activities and due diligences, and managing the alliance portfolio. In the early years of his 20-year career at Novartis in Switzerland, Knut was leading clinical stage R&D and commercial projects.

Knut started his industry career in two biotech companies in the Boston area as clinical stage project lead in the immuno-oncology space and as preclinical scientist. His earlier 12-year scientific career took him from the Cancer Research Center in Germany to the United States with National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Monday, April 3
2:25- 3:10 pm

With a transformation occurring across industries involving a transition from bilateral alliances to ecosystems, is taking a traditional, “standard” approach to building alliance capability still relevant? Can it still be effective, or is it doomed to failure? The presenters’ research and experience in this area suggests that ecosystems may require a quite different management approach from bilateral or even multipartner alliances. This session will explore some of the elements of that approach and identify what’s needed, what’s new, and what can be retained from traditional alliance management.

Speakers:

Ard-Pieter de Man, CSAP, PhD
Professor
VU University Amsterdam

Ard-Pieter de Man PhD CSAP is Professor of Knowledge Networks and Innovation at the VU University Amsterdam. He also is an active alliance consultant. Key themes in his work are designing alliance governance structures, building up alliance capabilities, alliance evaluation, business modeling and open innovation. He is a prize-winning (co-)author of over fifty articles and fifteen books, mainly on alliances and innovation. His latest book Alliances: An executive guide to designing successful strategic partnerships is widely used in practice and is a handbook for alliance design and governance.

Leona Kral, CSAP
Chief Connections Officer
Mycelia Solutions

Leona has over twenty years of global high tech partnership experience from creating and expanding new partner ecosystems to leading innovative partner programs and strategic alliance teams. She is the founder of Mycelia Solutions, where she takes a holistic approach to help partnership teams and ecosystem stakeholders reduce stress and enhance their wellbeing. Leona believes that all partnerships have a greater chance of reaching their true collaborative potential when team members focus on their wellbeing and deepening connections with themselves, nature and others.

Monday, April 3
3:30 - 4:15 pm

Combination therapies have radically improved patient outcomes for many diseases, and yet the pathway to assess and validate these combinations can depend on often-fierce competitors learning to carefully and productively work together. In such a “coopetition” situation, alliance managers tread a thin line in protecting their company’s proprietary know-how and information, while also ensuring that their company can sufficiently contribute to the alliance and communicate openly and in a trusting manner with the goal of achieving collaborative aims. This session will discuss best practices for addressing such competition in an alliance, including the promises and pitfalls to consider in structuring and governing the alliance.

Speaker:

Susana Parathath, CA-AM, PhD
Senior Director, Alliance Leadership
Vir Biotechnology

Susana is part of the alliance leadership organization at Vir Biotechnology. Vir was incorporated in 2016 with the vision of a world without infectious disease. At Vir, alliance leadership works to achieve this goal by maximizing alliance value through leadership of efficient and effective collaborations, by bridging partnering organizations and by fostering a "one team" mindset. Susana was excited to come to Vir in 2022 to help drive this vision forward by leading global collaborations while shaping alliance business process for optimal sustainability during a period of rapid company growth.

Prior to Vir, Susana has been in the pharmaceutical industry for over 13 years including roles in medical communications and medical affairs. She spent the last 5 years in business development and alliance leadership roles. Over those last 5 years she led business critical, global alliances in oncology, neurodegenerative disease, and inflammation. As part of her role, she assisted or co-led various follow-on business development deals to expand the portfolio.

Susana holds a PhD in cellular and molecular biology from Stony Brook University and completed a post-doctoral followship at Memorial Sloan Cancer Center where her research focused on cerebellum development and medulloblastoma formation.

Monday, April 3
4:25 - 5:10 pm

"Building alliances, especially global ones, is often difficult for startups due to lack of resources, and many choose to postpone investing in partnerships until later stages. But this is a mistake! When done skillfully at an early stage, pursuing a focused alliance strategy can significantly accelerate a startup’s critical growth phase. The flip side is also true: larger organizations that do not incorporate startups in their portfolios are likely missing out on important innovation opportunities. This session will share some of the methods for partnering efficiently and effectively and in ways that benefit both startups and their larger partners.

Speaker:

Kristian Gyorkos, CA-AM
Vice President, Alliances and Partnerships
Solo.io

Kristian Gyorkos leads global Alliances and Partnerships at Solo.io, a Cambridge, MA, based unicorn startup focused on cloud-native application networking. Kristian is responsible for driving partner ecosystem growth including cloud service providers, global system integrators, technology partners and global channel. Prior to Solo he incubated partner business in other high growth startups like Apigee (now Google), Trifacta (now Alteryx) and Kong.

Kristian started his Alliance career in Microsoft and Dell, where he was responsible for growing large global and regional partnerships. While changing from the corporate to the startup world, he developed a partnership framework specific to high growth startups trying to develop enterprise ecosystems with limited resources. Kristian is passionate about advancing Alliances profession. He enrolled his Alliances team in ASAP and led full team CA-CM certification.

Monday, April 3
4:25 - 5:10 pm

Building a great partner experience results in greater loyalty, productivity, and profitability—but it can also bring with it so much more. Partners have become an integral part of the entire customer journey—so much so that it’s no exaggeration to say that partners are the customer experience. The presenters will reveal some of the results from their research into how partner experience impacts customer experience and how you can leverage that dynamic to drive value and better business outcomes for your ultimate customers. Among the topics this session will cover:

  • How customers benefit from a strong partner experience
  • What elements of the partner experience have the most impact on creating the customer experience
  • What you can do to promote growth and innovation through your partners

Speakers:

Nancy Ridge
Founder & President
Ridge Innovative

Nancy Ridge is founder and president of Ridge Innovative and a committed ecosystem strategist. She brings over 25 years' experience as a trusted advisor to her clients, with a laser focus on enabling business outcomes through technology. In addition, Ridge offers programs for developing channels, leadership, team selling and one on one professional coaching.

Previously, Nancy was EVP of a leading national master agency. Over 14 years, she built the company's partner program to offer a personalized approach delivering partner growth. Ridge focused on business plan modeling, breakthrough sales strategies, ongoing training and competitive commissions in a collaborative environment.

Nancy was VP of sales for ATI, where she was responsible for creating and managing the indirect sales channel. Prior to that she was a vice president for a consulting firm that pioneered the telecom expense management and was also a principal in a demand-side energy service company for 10 years.

Nancy regularly speaks on panels, acts as a moderator and serves as a keynote on topics ranging from technology to mentoring and gender diversity. She is the co-founder and past president of the Alliance of Channel Women.

Norma Watenpaugh, CSAP
Founding Principal
Phoenix Consulting

Norma Watenpaugh is the founding principal and CEO of Phoenix Consulting Group (www.phoenixcg.com) which provides education and consulting services with expertise in go-to-market strategy, channel and alliance management, and ecosystem development. Prominent clients include Amazon, Adobe, Cisco, Dupont, Dell, Google, Nationwide, PayPal, and SAP. She was named a Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal for her work in advancing best practices in collaborative business relationships. She was recently inducted into the Forbes Business Council, an invitation only community of successful business leaders.

Norma has delivered seminars for Duke Corporate Education, the Reuters Foundation, Digital Vision Fellowship Program at Stanford University, San Jose State University Professional Development, the American Management Association, and many corporate clients. She is a frequently requested guest lecturer and speaker at industry events speaking on partnering trends in business ecosystems and digital transformation.

Norma is an advisory board member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals and former Best Practices Committee Chair. She has led the organization in developing the CA-AM and CSAP professional certifications and in revitalizing the ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management. She led the US delegation to the ISO standards committee in developing the ISO-440001 Collaborative Business Relationship Management Standard.

Tuesday, April 4
10:25 - 11:10 am

Effectively working with senior leaders and your sales force are skills every alliance manager can profitably develop. The goal of the alliance team should be to work toward solutions that ultimately drive revenue through the sales force, collaborating with them productively and aligning your objectives with their goals for the success of the alliance. The presenters will show how in these engagements involving high-ROI alliances, preparation is 90 percent of creating successful outcomes. They’ll focus on the following areas:

  • SWOT of the partner
  • Financial profiles
  • Internal alignment and partner agreement
  • Definitions of short- and long-term alliance success
  • Required follow-up action items
  • Alliance Portfolio Management

Speakers:

Neil Blecherman, CSAP
Director, Technology Alliances Ecosystem & Partner Program
Nutanix

Neil Blecherman is Director of the Technology Alliances ecosystem and the Technology Partner Program at Nutanix, a leading Cloud Management Platform provider. He is responsible for the Elevate Technology Partner Program, over 400 technology partners, and the technical validation program between Nutanix and its technology partners, providing assurances to ISVs, channel partners, and customers that validated solution stacks can be sold and supported with confidence.

Prior to Nutanix, Neil managed the largest tech partnership and the multi-million-dollar co-op marketing program for hardware server manufacturer, Supermicro, and was an independent IOT and digital transformation consultant helping clients with partnerships, product and marketing.

Earlier in his career, Neil was a Global Director of Technology Partnerships and Platform Partnerships in various positions for Intel, including building out the IOT partner ecosystem, and developing new technology and business models with some of the company's largest global ISV Partners in the areas of cloud, security, media, data center, AI and client. Neil also directed Intel's mobile microprocessor product line and managed the company's corporate branding and naming strategy.

Neil holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's in Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business, He lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and sons, and welcomes making new business connections on LinkedIn.

Amy Hansen, CA-AM
Senior Alliance Manager
Nutanix

Amy Hansen is a Senior Alliance Manager at Nutanix, a cloud computing provider, focusing on developing joint go to market strategies with data protection providers. She is passionate about driving ideal customer outcomes by helping to develop strong ecosystem solutions with strategic ISV partners. Amy has been working in the tech industry for more than 20 years and has extensive sales and channel experience, a background that lends itself nicely to managing alliance relationships with the goal of driving revenue for all involved parties. Although born and raised in New England, she currently resides outside of Atlanta, GA with her husband and four children. Outside of work, Amy enjoys live music and traveling.

Tuesday, April 4
11:15 am - 12:00 pm

After the Ink Is Dry: Kicking Off a New Partnership

You've received the signed contract. Maybe you were involved in the negotiation, or maybe it's simply been handed off. What happens next? Attendees will discuss the importance of alliance management having a seat at the table in early discussions, and how to begin the partnering relationship from scratch if not.

Facilitator:

Dionis Taveras
Director, Global Networking Partners | Dell Technologies EMC


Building an Ecosystem Marketing Strategy

For companies with dozens or hundreds of partners, there is a delicate balance to supporting the marketing needs of both the company and the ecosystem. To be successful, an ecosystem team needs to eliminate traditional silos and align closely with marketing on multiple levels. Attendees will discuss why having strategic and regular marketing and ecosystem alignment can create alliance efficiency and provide better support for sales objectives, while also focusing on customer needs and how to solve them.

Facilitator:

Chris White
Senior Manager, Ecosystem Marketing | Protiviti


The Evolving World of Portfolio Management

Managing various types of partnerships requires a multifaceted lens. Partners come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of partnering readiness, and meanwhile the C-suite simply wants to know that strategic objectives and goals are being met. However, taking an "enterprise" view of all alliances and their performance can be daunting without the right framework. Attendees will discuss observations and offer feedback on how the alliance management role has had to mature to meet these needs, and share successful approaches to adapting and improving processes and systems to support their efforts.

Facilitator:

Jarrod Midboe
Director, Clinical Affairs and Vendor/Alliance Management | Upsher-Smith Laboratories, LLC


Hiring the Right Talent and Developing Alliance Management Core Competencies

Finding ideal candidates for the complex role of alliance management can be difficult. What are the key attributes applicants should inherently possess, and which ones will they need to develop? In this discussion, share different perspectives and approaches for building highly skilled, well-balanced, and ultimately successful alliance management teams.

Facilitator:

Katherine Ellison, CA-AM
Senior Director, Alliances | Illumina


Not Just an Alliance Manager but a Team Leader

Beyond their day jobs, alliance managers also need to be team leaders of internal and external stakeholders. Proving the value of the alliance management role takes maturity, patience, and effort as alliance leaders work to resolve conflicts and move the partnership forward. In this discussion, attendees share experiences where taking a leadership role has worked successfully as well as situations where they faced and overcame obstacles.

Facilitator:

Cindy Warren
Vice President | Janssen BD, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson


Managing Internal Relationships

A large percentage of an alliance manager's time is typically spent driving alignment with functions within their own organization such as business development, project management, R&D, finance, and others. In this discussion, attendees will share experiences and best practices for navigating these relationships to support alliance success.

Facilitator:

Christoph Huwe, CSAP, PhD
Director, Strategic Alliance Management | Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals


Making the Move to the Cloud

The growing demand to move to cloud, consumption models, and marketplaces (e.g., AWS, GC) is expanding the role of alliance management, the makeup of their portfolios, and the skill sets required. If you're working on these challenges, or expect to be doing so soon, come share your thoughts, experiences, insights, and questions on:

  • Understanding pay as you go (PAYG) license models, units of measure (UoMs) for billing and chargeback, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for business systems integrations
  • Determining independent software vendor (ISV) partner readiness for moving to a PAYG consumption model or establishing a marketplace presence
  • Evaluating partners to target for these programs and the recruitment and enablement differences from traditional technology alliances

Facilitator:

Philip Sailer
Senior Director, Strategic ISV Engagements | HPE GreenLake


Unlocking the Value of Your Virtual Ecosystem

Many companies implement software to support and manage their partner ecosystem. However, determining the best approach can be overwhelming. Join this discussion to explore the advantages ecosystem apps can bring to alliance management, important things your organization should consider, and tips for avoiding common pitfalls along the way. Questions to be explored include:

  • Does your company take a holistic and/or multi-workload approach to ecosystem apps?
  • When considering ecosystem reach, do you take a quantitative or qualitative approach to expansion?
  • What privacy and security concerns are top of mind within your organization?

Facilitator:

Greg Fox
Strategic Alliances & Partner Ecosystem, Board Advisor | TIDWIT Inc.

Tuesday, April 4
1:00 - 1:45 pm

Alignment is essential in strategic alliances, as it focuses the efforts of stakeholders on important goals. For this reason, most alliance managers spend a significant amount of their time and effort on fostering alignment. Yet surveys show that many alliances suffer from poor alignment—either among internal stakeholders, externally with partners, or both. In this session, attendees will learn how the most effective alliance management teams drive the success of their alliances by fostering strong internal and external alignment through insights that enable stakeholders to clearly understand, evolve, and execute on alliance goals.

Speakers:

Louis Rinfret, PhD
Founder & CEO
allianceboard

Louis Rinfret is founder and CEO of allianceboard, the alliance management platform. Louis has over two decades of experience in the software industry moving from technical and product management roles to leading business units and strategy for organizations ranging from start-ups and research institutes to multi-nationals such as SAP Business Objects and Expedia CruiseShipCenters. Combining his passions for technology and alliance management, Louis is on a mission to empower alliance managers to succeed with their strategic alliances.

Louis has been active in managing, teaching about and researching strategic alliances for the past 15 years and has been a member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) since 2005. Louis holds a PhD in Strategy from Lancaster University (UK) where he wrote a thesis on the performance of strategic alliances.

Louis is an avid trail runner and when he is not at his desk you will probably find him training for the next race with his wife and two daughters.

Michael Roch, CA-AM
Chief Commercial Officer
Allianceboard

Michael Roch is the Chief Commercial Officer of allianceboard, the alliance management platform. Michael loves helping organizations succeed with their partnership-based business models and has been working alongside partnerships, alliances and joint ventures in the knowledge services, technology, power generation and real estate sectors for most of his career as a consultant, attorney and entrepreneur.

Prior to joining allianceboard as Louis' partner, he served as Co-CEO Europe of a 4,000-member platform-based ecosystem originated in Australia. Michael also was co-founder and CEO of a London-based management consulting firm focused on partnerships and global alliances; within nine years, the firm served market leaders in more than 40 countries.

Michael has been a member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals since 2016 and holds ASAP's CAAM certification. He holds an MBA and Juris Doctor from the University of Denver (USA) and is currently working on his DBA on coopetition management at Grenoble École de Management (France).

Michael's passion are music, tennis and skiing; he's an active member of Lions International. He lives in Zurich, Switzerland, with his wife and their most recent adoption, a Chocolate Labrador.

Tuesday, April 4
1:55 - 2:40 pm

According to ASAP data, as many as 50 percent of alliances fail. This could be in part because the path to success looks different for every individual alliance, every alliance type, and every alliance portfolio. Embracing that fact means recognizing that not all alliances can be managed the same way; ecosystems are constantly evolving and demand frequent adaptation and optimization. Alliances require leadership engagement, cultural considerations, metrics of success, and strategic lenses. As companies grow their portfolios, it is critical that alliance managers are proactively educated on how to be nimble and aware of the unique nature of each partnership. Using examples of different alliance portfolios, the presenters will show how to recognize key differences in their deal structures and illuminate the skills required to be successful across them, including how to:

  • Identify and define different alliance portfolios
  • Synthesize key themes of each portfolio type
  • Highlight what skills are needed most
  • Apply these lessons to your own portfolios

Speakers:

Caroline Baratz
Alliance Manager
Illumina

As an alliance manager for Illumina, Caroline Baratz manages global alliances in oncology companion diagnostic (CDx) development and commercialization to deliver on Illumina's precision medicine strategy. She joined Illumina from Johnson & Johnson where she managed global partnerships across the tuberculosis (TB), HIV and vaccine portfolios to better identify, engage and support patients to reach appropriate diagnosis and care in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Prior to her work in partnership management, Caroline worked on teams in data science, behavior science, digital health and human-centered design. She has her MPH in epidemiology from Columbia University and a BA from UC San Diego in Anthropology and Pre-Medicine. In her spare time, she is an avid hiker, swimmer and coach with Girls on the Run, San Diego.

Erika C. Johnson
Senior Manager Alliances
Illumina

Erika Johnson is a senior manager and portfolio lead on Illumina's alliance management team. Illumina's mission is to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome. In Alliances, she manages multiple cross-functional partnerships and is a member of Women at Illumina Network (WIN). A certified Program Management Professional (PMP) and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB), she has held prior roles in technical program management and consulting, including at Intuit and Accenture. Erika also enjoys continuous learning, yoga, meditation, running, tennis, travel, mentoring, volunteering, the performing arts, and spending time with her family, friends, and pets.

Tuesday, April 4
1:55 - 2:40 pm

We live in a world that presents ever-increasing challenges on an international, national, regional, and local scale, including discord between governments and constituents, a global climate crisis, surging inflation and economic uncertainty, and the aftershocks from a worldwide pandemic. As alliance professionals, we face the additional challenge of needing to optimize partnering effectiveness while navigating increasingly unpredictable economic, political, sociocultural, and technological changes. There is an urgency to understand and apply partnering competencies that value diverse perspectives and ways of thinking and encourage a collaborative and unifying mindset among all stakeholders. Evolving our strategic partnering capability to include collaborative intelligence provides value and embraces a culture of collaboration as an innovative capability for continuous improvement. Doing so in a comprehensive way positions alliance professionals to lead and influence complex alliance ecosystems and drive a solid shared value proposition across an organization.

The presenter will share stimulating insights on how alliance members can engage in a new way of thinking together and will provide an opportunity to practice collaborative intelligence by having participants engage in breakout groups to collectively resolve internal and external hypothetical partnering challenges. Participants will:

  • Acquire an understanding of collaborative intelligence (CI), its core principles, and best practices that apply to alliance management
  • Enhance their capacity for collaborative partnering
  • Gain a useful appreciation of the untapped potential in optimizing diverse perspectives
  • Identify how to integrate collaborative intelligence principles into the fabric of strategic alliances

Speaker:

Lynda McDermott, CA-AM, MSOD, CSP
President
EquiPro International

Lynda McDermott is President of EquiPro International, Ltd., an international management consulting firm which specializes in leadership, team and business development for Fortune 500 and medium-size companies and professional services firms. She is also an alliance management consultant for organizations working in strategic partnerships and joint ventures. Her client list includes such companies as Pfizer, Biogen Idec, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BMS, and Sanofi Pharmaceuticals.

Ms. McDermott is co-author of the best-selling book World Class Teams (Wiley). She is a certified speaking professional with the National Speakers Association and is on the faculty of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals and received the Certification of Achievement-Alliance Management (CA-AM). Ms. McDermott is an instructor for ASAP's CA-AM certification exam prep workshop and TE-AM Alliance Training program, and is an ASAP Educator Provider Partner. Ms. McDermott is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University and has a master's of science in organization development from Bowling Green State University.

Tuesday, April 4
3:00 - 3:45 pm

Continuous improvement is a must for every alliance organization. The Partnering Capability Assessment Platform (PCAP) enables partner organizations to measure their capability against an objective set of parameters developed by ASAP and to benchmark that capability against peers in their industry as a measure of competitiveness to achieve results through partners.

Intel’s Cloud Partner organization deployed PCAP across their portfolio of cloud partners. By leveraging the only assessment endorsed by ASAP and compliant with the International Standard for Collaborative Business Relationships, Intel was able to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses in their partnering practices and used this knowledge to embark on a journey and plan of action, targeting key areas of partnering practice to “raise the tide.” The presenters will discuss how Intel translated the assessment into actions and results and how it benefited from higher-performing partnerships. In addition, they will show how Intel was able to:

  • Assess its overall partnering maturity
  • Identify the key practices to improve what matters most
  • Determine best practices with the organization that could be more broadly adopted
  • Benchmark against other industry organizations to gauge Intel’s competitiveness to achieve results through partnering

Speakers:

Parth Amin, CSAP
ASAP Facilitator
US Technical Advisory Group

 

 

Ann E Trampas, CSAP
Professional Development Practice Lead | Phoenix Consulting Group
Senior Lecturer | University of Illinois – Chicago (UIC)

As practice lead Ann works with clients developing and delivering skills mastery classes in collaborative relationship management and consulting in optimizing their strategic alliances. At UIC she teaches channels of distribution and ecommerce, marketing, sales management and business strategy and advises the American Marketing Association Collegiate Chapter. She is also a faculty member of the American Management Association, where she facilitates a variety of courses.

Ann is currently a board member and former president of the mid-west chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) and a member of the Technical Advisory Group for the ISO standard for Collaborative Business. She is a member of the Executives Club of Chicago and the American Marketing Association. Previously Ann has held positions including ASAP certification program director and vice president of global alliances for IBM-SPSS.

Tuesday, April 4
3:55- 4:40 pm

The Accenture-Avanade-Microsoft partnership requires a common vision and consistent leadership that transcends three global organizations. To succeed, the alliance function must lead alignment, set high standards of trust and accountability across teams (executive leadership, sales, delivery, operations), and challenge the status quo. This session will discuss alliance management approaches for translating, defining, and distilling three strategies into one, demonstrating the value of trust—or the risk/cost in its absence—developing a predictable model, and executing against the collective vision.

Speaker:

Frederique Dennison
Regional Alliance Lead
Avanade

 

 

Tuesday, April 4
3:55- 4:40 pm

When an organization goes through a major corporate restructuring and transformation, it’s like moving to a new house: a lot is happening, but some things can get lost in the shuffle. During corporate restructuring, there can be significant, unanticipated impacts on alliances and partnerships, such as changes in personnel and governance committees, portfolio prioritizations (and de-prioritizations), termination of certain projects (including alliances), strategic refocusing, budget cuts, etc. The presenters in this session have gone through it—and lived to tell the tale! With the benefit of hindsight, there are things they realize they could have done better—and they’ll share those hard-earned insights with attendees. Since restructuring comes to many organizations eventually, either your company or your partner’s might be next—so this topic is applicable to companies of various sizes across industries.

Speakers:

Shiho Kaneta, CA-AM
Director Alliance Management
Novartis Pharma AG

Shiho is a member of the alliance management team at Novartis Pharma AG, based in Basel Switzerland, where she manages multiple partnerships within Novartis' development and commercial portfolio. Trained as a pharmacist, Shiho started her business development career in her home country Japan, but soon stepped out of her comfort zone and worked in various small-mid-large international pharma companies in Europe over 20 years always related to alliances and partnerships.

Shiho has a deep expertise in negotiations and managing collaborations in the areas of technical R&D, manufacturing & supply, drug development and commercialization as well as implementation of divestments and M&A.

Alliance Management is my profession and lifestyle(!), and I love sharing my passion with internal and external teams and making new connections.

Lori Tomassian
Director of Business Development & Licensing
Novartis Pharmaceuticals

Lori Tomassian is a director of business development and licensing at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, where she manages various oncology and cell and gene partnerships spanning early research, clinical and commercial stage and leads re-negotiations of existing alliances.

Lori most recently served as director of due diligence and operations in the oncology BD&L group. Prior to that, she spent 5 years within the cell and gene therapy CAR-T development team working on the Novartis- University of Pennsylvania alliance in project management and clinical functions leading to the successful approval for Kymriah®.

Lori holds a B.S. in molecular and cellular biology from the University of California Berkeley, an M.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology from The Johns Hopkins University and an executive M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Networking & Special Activities

Tuesday, April 4th
6:45 a.m. – 7:45 a.m.

A growing number of research studies have highlighted the amazing health benefits of mindfully being in, and with, nature. Join Leona, a certified forest therapy guide and breath coach, to discover easy and practical ways you can partner with nature to improve your well-being. This unique session will also guide you through breathing exercises that can help you sleep better, improve digestion, boost energy, and relieve stress.

Speaker:

Leona Kral, CSAP
Chief Connections Officer
Mycelia Solutions

Leona has over twenty years of global high tech partnership experience from creating and expanding new partner ecosystems to leading innovative partner programs and strategic alliance teams. She is the founder of Mycelia Solutions, where she takes a holistic approach to help partnership teams and ecosystem stakeholders reduce stress and enhance their wellbeing. Leona believes that all partnerships have a greater chance of reaching their true collaborative potential when team members focus on their wellbeing and deepening connections with themselves, nature and others.