Speakers Preview

Benjamin Anderson, CA-AM, J.D., Esquire
Partner Asset & Licensing Program Manager
Thomson Reuters Elite

Ben is the Partner Asset and Licensing Program Manager for the Legal division of Thomson Reuters. His role is dedicated to establishing and maintaining alliances with strategic technology and go-to-market partners that have complex value propositions and partnership structures. With seven years of alliance management experience, his responsibilities include creating executive business cases, negotiating agreements, and implementing partner program infrastructure. The mission of his work is to facilitate transparent, data-based decision making and assist with delivering amazing client experiences through partnering.

Ben is a licensed attorney with extensive alternative dispute resolution training and a deep obsession with technology. When away from his desk, he can typically be found walking his Corgi puppy in Minneapolis.

Susan Cleveland, J.D.
Manager, Global Strategic Alliances
Thomson Reuters Elite

Susan is a Global Strategic Alliances Manager at Thomson Reuters (TR). In her role as Manager, Susan is responsible for all partnerships in the small and mid-size law firm market segments and supports the TR products for those markets. She works with partners to maximize the value of the alliance by monitoring the business, legal and interpersonal portions of the relationship. Susan negotiates contracts between partners and TR to create a framework for the success of the relationship and to protect both parties legally. Over the years she has developed a specialty in cloud hosting arrangements. She is also actively involved in planning the annual Legal user conference and the partner involvement at that event.

Susan has worked in a variety of roles in her dozen years at TR, including editorial enhancements and managing court relationships for Westlaw. Prior to Thomson Reuters, Susan worked extensively in professional theater as Director of Development for both the Minnesota Fringe Festival and History Theatre. She also founded a theater company and worked at Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Northrop Auditorium, among others. She lives in the Twin Cities with her family.

Bruce C. Cozadd
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc

Bruce C. Cozadd co-founded Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in 2003 and has served as our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since April 2009. From 1991 until 2001, he held various positions with ALZA Corporation, a pharmaceutical company acquired by Johnson & Johnson, most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, with responsibility for research and development, manufacturing and sales and marketing. Previously at ALZA Corporation he held the roles of Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Corporate Planning and Analysis. Mr. Cozadd serves on the board of Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), a biotechnology trade association, where he serves on its Health Section Governing Board. Mr. Cozadd also serves on the boards of two non-profit organizations, The Nueva School and SFJAZZ. He received a B.S. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Andrew S. Eibling, CSAP
Founder and Senior Partner
Forty86 Consulting Group

Over his 30 plus year career, Andy's roles and companies have changed, but one thing has not - his involvement in structuring and managing partnerships of all types.

Andy Eibling is an experienced senior leader with over thirty years of experience in the life sciences industry specializing in soliciting, analyzing, negotiating, and managing strategic partnerships.

During his time working for a top 20 pharma company, a leading contract research organization, and various startups, he has been involved in a wide range of partnerships, from major global joint ventures and multi-billion dollar strategic provider relationships to early stage technology deals. His experience has allowed him to gain multiple perspectives firsthand - as a pharma company, service provider, and life science startup.

Andy founded Forty86 in 2018 and advises startup and midsize companies in business development, partnership strategy, alliance management, and fundraising.

In addition to his work at Forty86, Andy also served as VP of Business Development and Alliance Management at Enable Injections, a medtech startup, where he was responsible for establishing and maintaining strategic alliances with biopharma partners.

Prior experiences include VP of Enterprise Alliance Management at Covance, and 24 years at Eli Lilly & Company, where, as a founding member of Lilly's pioneering Office of Alliance Management, he managed a variety of partnerships ranging from early discovery technologies to global drug development.

Christoph Huwe, CSAP, PhD
Strategic Alliance Manager Therapeutics
Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals

Christoph has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in different roles at Bayer (Germany), Berlex Biosciences (USA) and Schering AG (Germany).

He has been responsible for alliances and consortia in Europe, the US and China for more than 10 years, covering various therapeutic areas.

He is also a founding member of Bayer's Alliance Community Excellence team focussing on alliance management capability development, and has served as member of the Pharma Industry Benchmarking Forum and the EFPIA Industry Liaison Group.

Alicia Kropelnicki, J.D., CA-AM, Esquire
Manager, Global Strategic Alliances
Thomson Reuters

Alicia is a Global Strategic Alliances Manager for the Legal division of Thomson Reuters. Her role is dedicated to establishing and maintaining alliances with strategic technology and go-to-market partners for several to Thomson Reuters' premier workflow and legal research products. She has been with Thomson Reuters for over nine years and previously held roles in Judicial Content and Product Management. Her responsibilities include negotiating agreements, launching partnering for new Thomson Reuters products, and facilitating the integration of new partners post-product acquisition. Loving a good challenge, she enjoys working in a cross functional capacity with a large number of stakeholders and tackling complex problems with the goal of delivering superior client experiences through partnering.

Alicia is a licensed attorney with a passion for analysis and understanding the "why" of use cases. When away from her desk, she can be found training for marathons, trying to keep up with her kids on a mountain bike, or baking cakes.

Rachel Kuperman, MD
CEO & Co-Founder
Eysz

Rachel Kuperman, MD is the CEO and co-founder of Eysz, an early stage startup developing a digital health platform to measure disease progression, intervention efficacy and side effects to assist clinicians in developing a personalized care plan for people with epilepsy. Epilepsy affects 70 million people worldwide. There is a significant need to improve QOL for people with epilepsy by speeding up time to seizure freedom while minimizing side effects. The company spun out of her research showing that eye movement analysis can be used to detect seizures. Eysz has been recognized by the Epilepsy Foundation, IEEE/NIH, NSF and most recently by the International Society for Optics and Photonics. Prior to co-founding Eysz, Rachel was the Medical Director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Program at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland for 10 years. She was the principal investigator in multiple clinical trials for the treatment of epilepsy from neonates with acute seizures to adults with genetic epilepsy. Rachel received her undergraduate training in physics from UCSD before attending UCSF Medical School, pediatrics training at NYU, Child Neurology Fellowship at Columbia, and Epilepsy Fellowship at UCSF.

Beatrice Lana, CA-AM, PhD
Strategic Alliance Executive
Cancer Research UK

Beatrice is a Strategic Alliance Executive at Cancer Research UK. She joined the CRUK's Commercial Partnerships team in 2018 to provide best-in-class alliance management to drive, support and expand CRUK's innovative portfolio of strategic commercial alliances. Beatrice has played a key role in maintaining and progressing the CRUK-iOnctura alliance and more recently to establish the new launched CRUK-Abcam partnership. Before that Beatrice worked as Commercialisation Executive at Queen Mary Innovation, where she acquired expertise in opportunity sourcing and business development, leading on the translation of early stage research projects into therapeutic, diagnostic and research development technologies.

Dean Sengstock
National Alliance Leader
RSM US LLP

Dean Sengstock is a partner with RSM US LLP and national leader of the RSM Alliance, a premier affiliation of independent professional service firms in the United States, Canada, the Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico. His team is focused on building an engaged community of high performing professional service firms that trust and promote each other with a desire to collaborate to create strategic value for our members and RSM.

Dean is passionate about:

• Evolving as a leader and helping people accomplish their goals and aspirations thru effective collaborations and alliances.
• Providing business advisory and strategic planning services to professional services firms and internal practice groups at RSM.
• Serving as a performance coach to enable RSM and RSM Alliance members to collaborate more effectively, resulting in enhanced pursuit effectiveness and client service delivery tactics.
• Growing and developing an ecosystem of strategic alliances for the benefit of RSM and our Alliance community.

Dean resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife Jodi and his two children, Blake and Ella. He enjoys golfing, boating, hockey and generally being outdoors.

Lars van der Veen
Chief Operating Officer
iOnctura

Lars is COO of iOnctura. He holds a PhD in homogeneous catalysis (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam. He is an experienced project and alliance manager with demonstrated leadership in pre-clinical and clinical development. He has managed >25 alliances for in-licensed and out-licensed products of both biologics and small molecules, driving governance, delivery of results and issue resolution.

As a medicinal chemist and team leader he delivered clinical candidates and lead compounds for different therapeutic areas including oncology. He brings a wide network in academia and c-levels in biotech. Lars has previously worked at Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Organon, Boehringer-Ingelheim and Merck.

Norma Watenpaugh, CSAP
Founding Principal
Phoenix Consulting Group

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, multi-channel and alliance management, and ecosystem development. Prominent clients include Amazon, Adobe, Cisco, Dupont, Dell, Google, PayPal, Plantronics, 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, and the American Management Association. She is a frequently requested guest lecturer and speaker at industry events speaking on partnering trends in Digital Transformation and Internet of Things initiatives.

Norma is a Board member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals and former Best Practices Committee Chair. She has led the organization in developing professional certifications and in revitalizing The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management. She currently leads the US delegation to the ISO standards committee for Collaborative Business Relationship Management and is the liaison to the Innovation Management Technical Committee.