Coulter Partners Places Board Members for Our Future Health Trading
February 9, 2023 – Life sciences recruiting specialist Coulter Partners has placed three board directors—Cristina Ortega Duran, Andy Richards, and Simon Sturge—for Our Future Health Trading Ltd., the trading subsidy of Our Future Health, a U.K.-based collaborative health research program.
“It has been our privilege to work with Coulter Partners over the last six months with our recruitment of three non-executive directors,” said Dr. Andrew Roddam, CEO of Our Future Health. “It was evident after the first meeting that they understood our needs and rapidly helped us secure three outstanding NEDs to join our board. They were meticulous, extremely professional, and an absolute pleasure to work with throughout the whole process.”
Our Future Health is a collaboration between the public, charity, and private sectors to develop new ways to prevent, detect, and treat disease. The board of trustees of Our Future Health, which is responsible for the charity’s policies, activities, and assets, established a trading subsidiary, Our Future Health Trading Ltd., which carries out specific activities in furtherance of the organization’s objectives – entering into funding agreements, licensing access rights, and entering into translational research projects with external parties. Our Future Health is the U.K.’s largest health research program.
Strong Experience
Ms. Ortega Duran is chief digital health officer, R&D at AstraZeneca, a global role covering all therapeutic areas within the organization. She has held several senior leadership roles across AstraZeneca over the last 13 years, including global commercial, in-country commercial, global finance, and transformation roles. Before this, Ms. Ortega Duran was a senior management consultant at Accenture, leading large transformation programs. She currently contributes to courses at Cambridge University to prepare the next generation of innovators, clinicians, and researchers to embrace digital health.
Dr. Richards is chair of Arecor Therapeutics, Ieso Digital Health, Congenica, Closed Loop Medicine, and Owlstone Medical. He is a director of Cancer Research Horizons (CRUK), council member of the UKRI MRC, and an advisor to several investment funds. Dr. Richards graduated from Cambridge with a doctorate in chemistry, and his early career spanned positions with ICI (now AstraZeneca) and PA Technology. He was a founder and executive director of Chiroscience until 1999, and since then has founded, invested in, and helped to scale over 30 innovative ventures.
Mr. Sturge has over 40 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry and is currently chairing four biotechnology companies in the U.K., Switzerland, Belgium and the U.S. He also runs his family investment fund and consultancy company, as well as being a trustee of Weizmann UK. Mr. Sturge joined Kymab, a U.K. biotechnology company, as CEO in 2019, before selling it to Sanofi two years later. Before Kymab, he spent six years at Merck in Germany as COO of the healthcare division. He was also a member of the healthcare executive committee.
Related: Coulter Partners Recruits Chief Medical Officer for Memo Therapeutics
Founded in 2020, London-based Our Future Health works to create a highly detailed picture of the U.K. population’s health by recruiting up to five million adult volunteers from across the U.K. Each volunteer is asked to fill out a questionnaire and provide a blood sample that can be linked to their health records. Taken together, the data will present health researchers with a powerful tool to identify new ways of tackling diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and dementia. The organization is supported by UK Research and Innovation, life sciences companies, and disease-related charities. Our Future Health is a registered charity in England, Wales, and Scotland.
Life Sciences Focused Recruiters
Coulter Partners is a board- and senior-level global executive search specialist focused exclusively on life sciences. The firm works closely with those at the cutting edge of innovation in the industry to understand their challenges. With an extensive global network and expertise gained over 25 years in the sector, Coulter Partners have become trusted advisers on leadership in the pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical technology, diagnostics, health tech, CRO, and services sectors. The firm also works closely with the global investor community, hiring for their own teams as well as building the boards and executive leadership teams of their portfolio companies. Its team of 95 completes over 260 assignments a year working from 14 offices across the U.K., EMEA, the U.S., and APAC.
Coulter Partners Forms Alliance with Differing Minds
Coulter Partners and Differing Minds, a neurodiversity training and consulting specialist, have formed a partnership agreement. “We are extremely interested to learn about neuroinclusive recruitment and how we can attract neurodivergent people, not only in recruitment of our own talent but with clients, too,” said Bianca Coulter, CEO of Coulter Partners. “This exciting partnership will allow us to gain a solid understanding of Neurodiversity and show us how to best support neurodivergent people in the workplace.”
Differing Minds empowers organizations to welcome neurodiversity as a competitive advantage, so both the organization and its neurodivergent employees can thrive. It supports organizations to recruit neurodiverse talent and ensure their neurodivergent employees succeed at work. The company´s aim is to raise awareness of neurodiversity and equip organizations with the knowledge, tools, and strategies to create, and embrace, the change needed to make this happen. Services offered include consulting and training, digital resources, as well as a Differing Minds community network.
CEO Bianca Coulter founded Coulter Partners in 2003 and has 25 years’ experience of board and C-level global search, building the leadership teams of early stage, mid-cap and global multinationals in over 20 countries. Through appointing leadership, Ms. Coulter channels her judgement and expertise to impact patient benefit and assist those at the cutting edge of life science to achieve their goals.
Related: Coulter Partners Recruits Chair and Non-Executive Director for 2N Pharma
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
