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John has over 30 years of experience in management consulting and creating value with pharmaceutical and medical product companies.

He founded Novasecta in 2003 and has built the company by selecting and developing top quality consultants who work successfully with clients across R&D, corporate/business development and commercial disciplines. John has directed many strategic and management initiatives, achieving amongst others, strategic organisational change, major licensing deals, corporate transformation, optimised asset portfolios, and improvements in strategic partnerships.

Pete Culpepper, CPA, MBA, has spent 20 years in the financial field working for a wide range of companies and industries in the U.S. and abroad, especially high-growth startups. His experience with for-profit companies ranges from private start-ups to publicly traded, global conglomerates. He also has worked with large non-profits and a national CPA accounting firm. He led the national operating unit of a $1 billion publicly traded telecommunications company, as well as numerous operating units in Eastern Europe for a global telecommunications company. He handled the capital reporting process for a $5 billion global construction project and the formation of systems for a division that grew $150 million in revenue in two years. Previous employers include Neptec, Inc., a privately held optical networking component manufacturer; Metromedia Companies; and PageNet, the largest wireless messaging company in the world. Culpepper taught undergraduate and graduate business courses for the University of Phoenix Online. He is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in Maryland and Tennessee. His professional affiliations include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Financial Executives International and the Financial Executives Networking Group. Culpepper holds a master's of business administration (MBA) in finance from the University of Maryland. He earned an AAS in Accounting from the Northern Virginia Community College - Annandale, Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the College of William and Mary.

Chris Britten, Managing Director, Torreya Partners (Europe) LLP

Chris is a Managing Director at Torreya Partners, a leading global investment bank focused on facilitating partnerships, M&A transactions and financings in the pharmaceutical sector worldwide.  He joined Torreya from Sanofi Pasteur-MSD where he had responsibility for all business and corporate development activities.  He is also a Non-executive Director at Phico Therapeutics Ltd.

Prior to Sanofi Pasteur-MSD, Chris held positions at Astellas (Europe) in Business and Commercial Development and several years at Deloitte Corporate Finance where he headed up the Life Science Advisory practice assisting clients across the life science sector in a wide range of transactional activities (M&A, divestments, partnering, valuation, fund-raising).  Previously, Chris was at GlaxoSmithKline where he held roles of increasing responsibility in Business Development, Corporate Ventures and R&D.  He holds a PhD in Biochemistry and an MBA in Finance.

Stephanie Léouzon is Partner and Head of Europe for Torreya Partners, a life sciences boutique advisory firm which she joined in 2012. Previously she worked in healthcare investment banking in the US and Europe from 1989 to 2010, most recently at Credit Suisse in London as a Managing Director and Senior Advisor.

She has advised life sciences clients on more than 25 strategic transactions, valued at over
$65 billion, and has been involved in over 45 financing transactions to provide over $10 billion to healthcare clients.

Stephanie earned an MBA degree from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia in 1989 and a BA degree, cum laude, from Mount Holyoke College in 1985.