2022 Fall Symposium - Speaker Bios

Shri Amrute

Director of Commercial Analytics, Indegene

Shri is currently a Director of Commercial Analytics at Indegene and has been managing their engagements with large US-based pharmaceutical clients for over a decade. With over 25 years of industry experience, Shri's expertise spans forecasting, advanced analytics, and systems solutions. He has led client and consulting projects focused on forecasting, supply chain, data sciences, and sales and marketing analytics. Prior to Indegene, Shri had worked at ZS Consulting, Sanofi-Aventis, Kraft Foods, and Nabisco Brands. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Management Sciences.

Amni Chandi

Manager, Forecasting, Genpact

Amni Chandi is a Manager, in the Healthcare and Life Science Industry at Genpact. She holds a Masters in Economics from Gokhale Institute, Pune. Amni has 10 years’ experience in the pharma industry having previously worked with multiple Pharma analytics services organizations in her career.

She has strong experience in building Commercial Strategies for clients, assist in Capacity Planning and make Business-case Assessments for markets. These experiences have honed her skills in making long-term strategic forecasts in the pharma industry.

Amni is a committed professional and a result-oriented leader with a passion for solving business problems through fact-based analysis for commercial priorities. She is an engaging conversationalist; who likes to bring to the work-place a sense of humor, creative thinking and inspired team work.

Erle Davis

MS, PMP, VP, Client Solutions, OncoHealth

Erle Davis has spent over 20 years in Healthcare, most of it leading teams and projects at leading Pharmaceutical and Biotech companies. His responsibilities have included building tools and databases for commercial users and performing analytical support for sales, marketing and managed care. More recently, he has been responsible for supporting Real World Evidence needs of Life Sciences companies first at Optum and most recently at OncoHealth where he was responsible for supporting clients using the company's unique data offerings to investigate real-world uses of novel oncology products across tumor types. Erle received his B.S. in Biology/Psychology from Union College, NY and his Masters in Cognitive Psychology from Rutgers University.

Arindam Ganguly

Senior Consultant (Forecasting), ZS Associates

Arindam is a Senior Consultant in commercial sales forecasting practice area at ZS’s Princeton office. He has hands-on expertise in building patient based and flow, projection-based forecasting models across Immunology, Oncology (Hem/Onc + Solid Tumors), Infectious Disease (HIV market), Neurology. Arindam led variety of forecasting engagements for both inline and pipeline products across US markets.

Prior to ZS, Arindam was a Associate Director Financial Planning and Analysis at Cardiovascular franchise at Novartis (Brand Entresto).

Arindam holds PhD in Analytical Chemistry & Oral Biology from University of Missouri-Kansas City and MBA in Finance, Strategy and Healthcare Investment Analysis from Cornell University Johnson School of Business at Ithaca, NY.

Bruce Ho, PhD

Chief Data Scientist, BigR.io

Bruce Ho is formerly a professor of Radiology at Harvard medical school. He holds a PhD from Caltech, and a BS from MIT. Dr. Ho currently serves as the chief data scientist for Bigr.io. He has published over 100 articles on Medical Imaging during his tenure as a researcher. Since stepping into the industry, Bruce worked as a software architect, Big Data Engineer, and for the past 7 years as an AI consultant. He has as special interest in generative modeling and neural NLP in the healthcare and pharmaceutical area.

Arun Jain

Principal, ZS Associates

Arun is a Principal in ZS’s Business Consulting practice, with a focus on Analytics, and Specialty and Oncology Therapeutics. He advises clients in the areas of commercialization strategy planning & operations, sales and marketing analytics, customer centric marketing and AI/ML/data science applications.

Arun leads large scale commercial analytics program delivering better connected insights, driving innovative capabilities and capturing cost efficiencies.

Arun is a core team member to ZS Oncology Vertical supporting thought leadership and capability development in Oncology space.

Arun holds an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India.

Rahul Karkhanis

Commercial Analytics SME, WhizAI

Rahul has 20 years of strategic and analytical experience in brand commercialization, brand strategy, product planning and consulting. He has worked at leading companies including Novartis, IQVIA, Boehringer Ingelheim and IMS Health implementing go-to market commercial models across therapeutic areas. Rahul is a part of the solution team in leading solution delivery, client relations and building commercial domain expertise to help achieve customer success. He has a Bachelors in Pharmacy from Mumbai University and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Razek Karnoub

Commercial Analytics SME, WhizAI

Razek Karnoub, Ph.D., has more than 15 years of experience in pharma commercial analytics inside pharma and as a consultant. His projects span forecasting, marketing, sales, and payer analytics. He has worked on numerous primary care, specialty, oncology, and vaccine brands with both US and global scopes. Razek has a special appreciation for poorly structured problems and leverages a wide range of approaches in mathematical and statistical modeling, simulation, and machine learning.

Ewa J. Kleczyk, PhD

Senior Vice President, Analytics & Data Operations, Target RWE

Ewa J. Kleczyk, PhD is a Senior Vice President of Analytics & Data Operations at Target RWE. Previously, she was a Vice President of Advanced & Custom Analytics at Symphony Health, ICON, plc. With nearly 20 years of experience, Dr. Kleczyk has been healthcare industry’s analytics and operations leader with a proven record for establishing high performing teams and delivering innovative analytics solutions.

Dr. Kleczyk is also a highly sought-after conference speaker with experience speaking at leading industry conferences, including presentations at Pharmaceutical Marketing Sciences Association, Southern Economic Association, Intellus, DTC Perspectives, CDM Media, Pharmaceutics & Novel Drug Delivery Systems, and Conference for Business and Economics at the Harvard University, etc. She also has published in multiple academic & industry journals, contributed chapters to several academic books as well as has been a board member of several peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Kleczyk has been an active advocate of mentoring future women leaders of the healthcare industry for which she has been recognized with multiple leadership awards, including HBA’s ‘Rising Star’ & ‘Luminary’ recognitions.

Along with her husband, she is also a Board Member on the Community Cancer Council for the Northern Light Health Network in Bangor, ME. that provides advocacy for cancer patients. She is also a graduate faculty in the School of Economics at the University of Maine, Orono, ME and an Advisory Council Member for the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ.

John Lin

Senior Vice President, Practice Lead, Epsilon Data Management, Inc. A Publicis Groupe Company

John Lin is a Senior Vice President in the Strategy & Insights Group at Epsilon. He leads the data sciences practice that supports Epsilon’s clients in all verticals including Healthcare. He has 30 years of experience in predictive modeling, targeting/segmentation, measurement, and optimization with the most recent twenty years focused on consulting in the pharmaceutical industry. John specializes in the tactical implementation of statistical tools and techniques to maximize the efficiency of clients’ marketing efforts. His areas of expertise include machine learning, experimental design, and patient-level data (PLD) analyses.

Rohit Mahajan

Managing Partner and CEO, BigRio

Rohit is an experienced entrepreneur, investor and leader with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and software industry. He has been providing innovative Data and Analytics solutions and products to clients in Digital Health, Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, Automotive, Manufacturing and other industry segments. He is the Managing Partner at BigRio and Saviance Technologies, President at Citadel Discovery, Advisor at CarTwin, Managing Partner at C2R Tech, Board Observer at Forest Devices and Founder at BetterLungs.

He holds a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering, is a Wharton School Fellow and a graduate from the Harvard Business School. He has served on the board at Diversity Alliance for Science. He has completed executive education programs in AI in Business and Healthcare from MIT Sloan, MIT CSAIL and Harvard School of Public Health. And, he has recently completed the Global Healthcare Leaders Program from Harvard Medical School.

Mayank Misra

VP, Head of Business Insights & Analytics, US Oncology, Takeda Pharmaceuticals

Mayank leads the Business Insights & Analytics function with US at Takeda Oncology that enables Medical, Patient Value and Access, Advocacy, Sales, and Marketing functions with data driven decision making.

The functions responsibilities includes forecasting, competitive intelligence, primary research, secondary brand insights, payer and managed market analytics, incentive compensation, real world data analytics, digital campaign analytics, decision sciences, and related data acquisition, cataloging and curation.

Before Takeda, Mayank was with Melinta Therapeutics, as Vice President, Commercial Strategy, Analytics and Operations and held various roles at Pfizer in his 14 year tenure, including Global Commercial Excellence team lead, supporting business assessment, planning and post-approval commercialization of Pfizer’s oncology assets.

Lauren McKenzie

Data Analyst, BlueDot

Lauren McKenzie is a mathematician with extensive experience in infectious disease modelling and epidemiology. She holds an MSc. in mathematics, during which she focused on modelling drug resistance and improving patient adherence to HIV-1 therapy. Her work as a data analyst at BlueDot involves using advanced analytics and machine learning to drive insights and solve problems in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space. She has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is experienced in presenting results to pharmaceutical clients, and at academic conferences.

Nick Pinero

Director, Analytics Solutions, Tellius

Nick Pinero is the Director of Analytics Solutions at Tellius, where he guides customers through the technical evaluation, implementation, and deployment process, and helps customers maximize the value of their data with AI-powered analytics.

Prior to joining Tellius, he was a Lead Data Scientist at IBM. Over the course of his career, he has developed an extensive track record of designing and implementing analytics solutions leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms across various industries, such as life sciences, healthcare, retail, and financial services.

Andres Quintero, MD, MPH, MBA

Global Medical Affairs Director, Glucocorticoid Portfolio Lead, Pfizer

Andres Quintero is a physician with board certification in Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He is also a Global Medical Affairs director for Pfizer’s hospital business unit, where he currently leads the glucocorticoid portfolio.

Across various roles at Pfizer and as a former healthcare consultant, Dr. Quintero has relied on data and meta-data to inform strategic and operational decision making for organizations at various levels of leadership. He focuses on delivering systems-based solutions through structured problem solving that offers quantitative rigor and qualitative perspective, with an emphasis on deriving defensible, practical, and actionable solutions that emerge from data inferences.

After nearly a decade of adopting analytics in various capacities, he has come to appreciate that this diverse ecosystem faces many challenges. Those challenges are often served well by ensuring that the proper mix of skillsets are represented in all advanced analytics endeavors. By and large, experts with programmatic skills to access and manipulate large datasets are front and center to these endeavors and pairing this with the proper medical subject matter expertise is increasingly recognized as being critical for proper context. What is often missing, however, is the epidemiological expertise that’s necessary for proper methodological oversight. As an early adopter of advanced analytics within Pfizer’s medical affairs function, Dr. Quintero advocates assertively for the representation of these three skillsets as part of stewardship for responsible analytics.

Dr. Quintero is passionate about approaching medicine and decision making as probabilistic endeavors; about recognizing the many tradeoffs at play with various types of data; and proceeding with data-driven endeavors despite those limitations when the next best alternative is to make decisions in the absence of empirical information.

Jerry Rosenblatt

Managing Partner, Foster | Rosenblatt

Jerry has been a leading figure in life sciences opportunity assessment and forecasting for the past 30 years. He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Pharmaceutical Management Science Association (PMSA), and is a former academic with a distinguished career as a marketing scholar.

Jerry has supported most of the world’s major life sciences companies and brands with analytic consulting services, and has been an expert witness in many of the industry’s most significant litigations.

Nirav Shah

Director, Real World Advanced Analytics & Data Science, BMS

Nirav has 18+ years of experience a broad knowledge of the Healthcare industry with an outstanding track record of success in large corporations and start-up environments. He has focused on Data and AI democratization, Digital Transformation, leading and delivering on strategic initiatives across diverse industries. He has been a decisive thought leader in driving innovation, establishing significant internal and external partnerships, and shaping the Data Science community. His experience includes providing AI thought leadership, building Data Analytics & Data Science COEs for Fortune 500 companies solving complex industry problems.

Nirav leads BMS Real World Advanced Analytics & Data Science group enabling emerging and disruptive AI solutions in R&D and Medical to improve BMS’ impact on patients, providers, and payors.

Anuj Sharma

Assistant Vice President, Genpact

Anuj is a techno-functional manager focusing on Pharma analytics (Both Commercial and development) over last 17 years of his career. He is resourceful and highly analytical professional with extensive experience developing data-driven solutions to increase efficiencies and ensure optimal business success. He is well-versed with creating and designing automated processes to reduce costs. He is an adept communicator with strong interpersonal skills, experienced in working closely with senior management to deliver consistency and quality. He is results-driven individual with a strong record of accomplishment and of performance in successfully collaborating and managing efforts of cross-functional teams responsible for identifying and evaluating opportunities across different geographies. He led and manage solution consulting teams to grow business across life science and healthcare clients. Anuj enjoys the fun “game” of business problem solving, applying analytical, and management techniques from diverse disciplines and decision making under uncertainty.

Parijat Sharma

Principal, ZS Associates

Parijat has been a strategy, M&A, and transformation leader in the healthcare industry for over twenty years. During that time he has led a variety of analytics based projects across portfolio strategy and decisions, M&A, R&D, and commercial forecasting. As part of the ZS efforts to support clients through Covid-19, Parijat led several efforts to utilize learning models to improve Covid-19 forecasts at a county level, and to support clients in improving commercial forecast accuracy given the range of potential pandemic trajectories.

Patryk Skowron, PhD

Data Scientist, Veeva Systems - Analytics

Patryk is a data scientist with a decade of research experience in the healthcare industry. He is a recent PhD graduate having studied the genomics of rare pediatric brain cancers. He is Proficient in Python, R, and Bash-scripting with a strong foundation in statistics and machine learning. He earned his undergraduate degree at Ryerson University in Computational Biology, and his PhD degrees at the University of Toronto in Bioinformatics. He has authored numerous papers in journals such as Nature and Cell.

Susheel Sukhtankar

Partner and Head of Commercial Analytics, Trinity Life Sciences

Susheel heads Trinity’s Commercial Analytics group and provides operational support across demand forecasting, field operations, and ad hoc analytics to our partners in the life sciences industry. Susheel started his consulting career in pharmaceutical data management and reporting before going on to lead engagements leveraging primary research and secondary data with a focus on commercial operations and analytics. With in-depth knowledge of the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device industries, Susheel has worked in multiple therapeutic areas including diabetes, oncology, infectious diseases, central nervous system, and gastrointestinal disorders.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Mumbai and a master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Georgia Tech. Susheel enjoys family time with his wife and two children as well as swimming, music, and soccer.

Aayush Tandon

Director Head - US Forecasting, Novartis

Aayush leads Forecasting Analytics across the US portfolio streamlining the process for demand forecasting and scaling the enterprise-wide solutions across brands in Pharma and Oncology. He developed a high-performing forecasting team that is empowered and unbossed supporting many strategic decisions for the US business. He also led the Insights and Analytics for BD&L deals to drive informed decision making with precise forecasting, HCP targeting, AI predictive modeling, CI, and insights generation.

Prior to Novartis, Aayush has worked with AstraZeneca where he led the US Diabetes Portfolio Forecasting and CI. In addition, he has also worked as a consultant leading the Global Oncology Forecast support for Bristol Myers Squibb in the US and Germany. Aayush has more than 14 years of experience in the field of Insights and Analytics with working in both Global and Regional markets for multiple therapy areas. Aayush holds Bachelor’s in Pharmacy from Mumbai University and Executive MBA from IIT Bombay.

Eleanor Tipa, PhD

Senior Vice President, Epsilon Data Management, Inc., A Publicis Groupe Company

Dr. Tipa is a Sr. Vice President in Data Sciences within the Strategy and Insights Group at Epsilon. Eleanor has more than 20 years of experience in marketing analytics across various industries with special focus in the healthcare vertical. She specializes in the design, management, and execution of analytic projects that support the optimization of clients’ multichannel marketing campaigns. Her areas of expertise include the use of advanced statistical techniques in predictive modeling, segmentation and profiling, experimental design, and multichannel campaign performance measurement including media mix models and attribution models.

Jean Patrick Tsang, PhD & MBA

Founder and President, Bayser

Jean-Patrick Tsang is the Founder and President of Bayser, a Chicago-based consulting firm dedicated to sales and marketing for pharmaceutical companies. JP is an expert in data strategy and advanced analytics. JP has published 25+ papers, given 80+ talks at conferences, and completed 250+ projects. In a previous life, JP deployed Artificial Intelligence to automate the design of payloads for satellites. JP earned a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from Grenoble University, advised 2 PhD students, and earned an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He was the recipient of the 2015 PMSA Lifetime Achievement Award. PMSA Lifetime Achievement Award 2015.

Anshuman Verma

Head of Access Analytics & Forecasting, Takeda Oncology

Anshuman Verma is head of Takeda’s Access Analytics & Forecasting functions. He leads teams responsible for Takeda’s US Forecasts and also heads Market Access analytics, which include U.S Pricing and Contracting, Patient Services, Trade & Distribution and all Payer Analytics.

Anshuman has lead key insight functions in large and small pharma, including Global Strategic role at Merck , Forecast Lead at AstraZeneca and Sr. Director of Insight and Analytics at Intarcia.

Anshuman holds an M.S from Univ. of Delaware and a Bachelor’s in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

Vikash Verma

Associate Director, HEOR & Commercial Analytics, Optum Life Sciences (part of UnitedHealth Group)

Vikash has 15 years of leadership experience in forecasting, HEOR, managed market analytics, portfolio/data strategy, sales force excellence, and KOL management. He has worked in the US and Europe with leading pharmaceutical companies for new product launches, building digital strategies for patient engagement, and building next-generation analytical platforms for forecasting and managed market analytics. Currently, he leads the Optum Life Sciences India team, comprising consultants, doctors, data scientists, and data engineers to support projects on healthcare commercial effectiveness and real-world insights solutions. He has presented/authored over 20 posters/whitepapers in international journals/conferences.

Prior to joining Optum, Vikash worked with companies like TCS, WNS, and Pharmarc (part of IQVIA now). He received his BS degree in pharmaceutical science from Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, MBA (marketing) from Manipal Institute of Management, and an Executive program in business analytics from IIM Kolkata.

Adrian Watson

Director, Trinity Life Sciences

Since joining Trinity in 2006, Adrian has been involved in hundreds of forecasting and analytics projects in the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and diagnostics industries. Adrian’s forecasting experience spans dozens of clients and a wide range of project types, ranging from early-stage business development deals to detailed inline-brand forecasting. Adrian leads Trinity’s Forecasting Team, helping to develop user-friendly and dynamic in-line, pipeline, and operational models for our clients. Adrian is also active in helping to establish forecasting best practices through published articles and conference presentations. Adrian is a graduate of Princeton University with a BA in Economics.

Outside of the office, Adrian enjoys traveling, weightlifting and spending time with his Labrador Retriever.

Steven White

Forecasting Practice Lead, Research, Analytics and Insights, Indegene

Steven is currently a Practice Lead in Forecasting at Indegene, a position he has held for the last seven years. He has about 35 years of industry experience in all aspects of pharmaceutical and medical device marketing and marketing analytics, including product management, market research, strategic planning, and new product commercialization and business development. Steven has been involved in forecasting throughout his career, and has focused on that since joining Indegene. He has worked in many therapeutic areas; his most recent work has been in oncology, neuroscience and women’s health. He has been involved in projects from early development through end of lifecycle. Prior to Indegene, Steven worked at companies like Bayer, ConvaTec, Becton Dickinson and the late, lamented Ciba-Geigy. Steven holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and M.B.A. in General Management.