Gregg Alton is the Executive Vice President of Corporate and Medical Affairs at Gilead Sciences. Mr. Alton joined Gilead in 1999. From 2001 to 2009 he served as General Counsel. In his current role, Mr. Alton is responsible for legal affairs, government affairs, medical affairs, public affairs and international access activities. Prior to joining Gilead, Mr. Alton was an attorney at the law firm of Cooley Godward, LLP, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, corporate partnerships and corporate finance transactions for healthcare and information technology companies.
Mr. Alton is a member of the board and treasurer of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a member of the board of Oculus Innovative Sciences, Inc. and a member of the board of BayBio, a San Francisco Bay Area life sciences industry organization. Mr. Alton received a bachelor’s degree in legal studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and holds a JD from Stanford University.
Thomas Bollyky is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development where he investigates the legal and ethical issues that arise during the discovery, development, and delivery of essential medical technologies to the developing world.
Mr. Bollyky was Director of Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Policy at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where he led the negotiations for pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medical technologies in the U.S.-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement and represented USTR in the negotiations with China on safety of drug and medical device imports. He was also a Fulbright Scholar to South Africa, where he worked as a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project on treatment access issues related to HIV/AIDS, and a senior attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where he represented Mexico before the International Court of Justice in Avena and other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States of America) and José Ernesto Medellín before the United States Supreme Court in Medellin v. Dretke. He is a former law clerk to Chief Judge Edward R. Korman, E.D.N.Y., an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an Eesti and Eurasian Public Service Fellow at the Estonian Ministry of Education, and a health policy analyst, through the Outstanding Scholar Program, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Bollyky received his B.A. in Biology and History at Columbia University and his J.D. at Stanford Law School, where he was the President of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the New York and U.S. Supreme Court bars and the American Society of International Law.
Rob Chess is Chairman of Nektar Therapeutics, a public biotechnology company (NASDAQ:NKTR) and Chairman of OPX Biotechnologies, a private company in the renewable fuels and chemicals field. Rob joined Nektar as its first non-founder employee in 1991 and led the company as CEO through 1999 and as Chairman since then. In addition to Nektar, Rob served as the first CEO for OPX and for NanOasis, a start-up company in the desalination separation technology field. Rob co-founded and was President of Penederm, a dermatology company that went public and was sold to Mylan Laboratories. He started his career in the technology field and held management positions at Intel and Metaphor Computer Systems (later acquired by IBM). Rob served on the White House Staff in the first Bush Administration as a White House Fellow and Associate Director of the White House Office of Economic and Domestic Policy.
In additional to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Rob is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he teaches courses in the MBA program on starting technology-based businesses and on the health care industry. Rob was a long-time Board member of the Biotechnology Industry Organization where he was chairman of the Emerging Companies Section and co-chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee. He is a trustee of Caltech and Chairman of Caltech’s Biology Advisory Committee, former Chairman and current Board member of Bio Ventures for Global Health, and a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development where he is co-chairman of their Health Care task force. Rob received a BS in engineering with honors from Caltech and an MBA from Harvard.
Richard Chin is a Board Certified Internist with extensive expertise in drug development. He has overseen over 40 Investigational New Drug (IND) Applications for new molecular entities and new indications, as well as eight New Drug Applications (NDAs)/Biologic License Applications (BLAs), and has authored a major textbook on clinical trial medicine. Dr. Chin joins One World Health from OXiGENE, where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer. Previously, Dr. Chin served as Senior Vice President and Head of Global Development for Elan Corporation, where he had worldwide responsibility for Clinical Development, Regulatory, Biostatistics, CMC, QA/Compliance, Safety and Medical Affairs. Dr. Chin has also held various clinical and scientific roles for Genentech, Inc. including Head of Clinical Research for the Biotherapeutics Unit, overseeing approximately half of the drugs at Genentech, and began his career at Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals, where he served as Associate Medical Director. He received a B.A. in Biology, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and the equivalent of a J.D. with honors from Oxford University in England under a Rhodes Scholarship. Dr. Chin holds a Medical Degree from Harvard Medical School and is licensed to practice medicine in California. He previously served on the Adjunct Clinical Faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Genmedica, located in Barcelona, Spain.
Joseph Damond is Vice President for International Trade Policy in Pfizer’s Washington Office. He is responsible for managing and coordinating Pfizer’s international trade issues with the Administration and Congress. Pfizer is the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.
Prior to his appointment at Pfizer in 2006, Mr. Damond was with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). As PhRMA’s Deputy Vice President for International Affairs, he was responsible for managing PhRMA’s programs with respect to market access barriers that affect the research-based pharmaceutical industry, with particular focus on pricing and reimbursement policies in developed countries. He joined PhRMA in 2001 as Associate Vice President for Japan and Asia-Pacific at PhRMA’s International Division in Washington.
Before coming to PhRMA, Mr. Damond spent 12 years as a trade negotiator at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, where his last assignment, from 1999-2001, was as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Asia and Pacific/APEC Affairs. During this time, he was also chief negotiator of the historic U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade agreement, completed in July 2000. Prior to his time at USTR, Mr. Damond also spent four years at U.S. Commerce, working on bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations.
Mr. Damond received his Master’s degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1985, and his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, in 1983. He was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania, and is a 1979 graduate of Cathedral Preparatory School. He resides in Alexandria, VA, with his wife and two children.
Charlie Kinzig is Vice President of Corporate Intellectual Property for GlaxoSmithKline, where he heads the Pharmaceutical patent groups located at GSK’s Pennsylvania and North Carolina R&D centers. The groups handle patent solicitation and prosecution worldwide for inventions arising in the U.S., and handle due diligence, litigation, and counseling activities for the commercial and R&D operations for North and South America.
Charlie graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. and M.A. in Organic Chemistry, and spent over a decade in the medicinal chemistry group at Smith Kline & French Laboratories in Philadelphia, engaged primarily in drug design, synthesis and discovery in multiple therapeutic areas. He left the R&D organization to join the patent department, received his J.D. from Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and continued his career as a patent attorney with SmithKline Beecham Corporation.
Charlie has held various positions within the IP department counseling on intellectual property matters, preparing and prosecuting patent applications, licensing, and litigating patents. He assumed responsibility for managing the U.S. IP department for the Consumer Health Care, Biological, and Pharmaceutical businesses of SmithKline Beecham in 1998, which through merger became GlaxoSmithKline, where he is currently employed. Charlie is a member of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel and the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and is on the Board of Directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
Carol Mimura is the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Intellectual Property & Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA) at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, has served on the board of directors of the Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Oakland, CA and of BayBio, the regional voice of biotechnology in Northern California, and was a former Executive Director of U.C. Berkeley’s Office of Technology Licensing. Prior to her positions at U.C. Berkeley, Carol was an analyst at Technology Forecasters, a consultant to Cor Therapeutics and Genomyx, and wrote for the Genetic Engineering News.
She holds a B.S. degree from Yale University in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Ph.D. in Biology (biochemistry & microbiology concentration) from Boston University. She was an NIH-sponsored postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at U.C. Berkeley in Biochemistry and in Chemical Biodynamics.
Carol’s public policy articles describe IPIRA’s nuanced intellectual property management strategies to promote social impact, and its Socially Responsible Licensing Program. Her scientific publications include articles on the sucrose phosphotransferase system in Streptococcus mutans and the histidine permease in Salmonella typhimurium.
Jenik Radon is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is the founder/director of the Eesti and Eurasian Public Service Fellowship, which gives students the opportunity to intern in Estonia, Georgia and Nepal.
Prior to joining Columbia, Radon was a lecturer at Stanford Law School and Graduate School of Business. He is a visiting professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research in Mumbai, India and has been named Distinguished University Professor at Monterrey Tech, Queretaro, in Mexico. Radon participated in the constitutional peace process in Nepal and was a drafter of the interim peace constitution, which, among other things, granted citizenship to millions of stateless people in the Terai region; and he is a member of the UN Global Compact Academic Initiative taskforce which seeks to have business schools worldwide incorporate the Compact’s 10 principles on human rights into their curriculum and teaching.
In the early ’80s, Radon founded Radon and Ishizumi, an international law firm representing international corporations, including start-up biotech-pharma companies, and foreign public entities, especially in the extractive industry. From 1999 to 2007, Radon was one of the Executors/Trustees of Vetter Pharma, a privately-held German pharmaceutical company, the world leader in the production of pre-filled aseptic injectable systems.
In1980, Radon co-founded the Afghanistan Relief Committee that supported refugees displaced during the Afghan-Soviet war and freedom for Afghanistan. Advisor during Estonia’s independence struggle, Radon co-authored the country’s foreign investment, mortgage/pledge, privatization and corporate laws and was an architect of Estonia’s privatization. In 1990 he was the first to officially raise the U.S. flag in Estonia since the 1940 Soviet invasion and was awarded the Medal of Distinction of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce. Radon was Georgia’s key foreign advisor and negotiator of the multi-billion dollar oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey (the BTC), featured in the James Bond movie, The World is Not Enough. For his work Radon was awarded Georgia’s highest civilian award, the Order of Honor.
Radon obtained his B.A. from Columbia University, a M.C.P. from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Talha Syed is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, where he teaches and researches on intellectual property (with a focus on patents), torts, health law and legal theory. His current work focuses on three overlapping areas: the institutional information economics of pharmaceutical innovation; design of reforms and alternatives to patents as an innovation policy for drugs and vaccines; and normative issues raised by the allocation and distribution of healthcare resources. Some recent publications include “Global Justice in Healthcare: Developing Drugs for the Developing World” (with Terry Fisher), “A Prize System as a Partial Solution to the Health Crisis in the Developing World” (with Terry Fisher) and “Should a Prize System for Pharmaceuticals Require Patent Protection for Eligibility?” He has a BA (Honors) from the University of Western Ontario, a JD (gold medalist) from the University of Victoria and is an SJD (doctoral) candidate at Harvard University.
Hannu Wager is presently Counselor in the Intellectual Property Division of the World Trade Organization and serves as secretary to the Council for TRIPS. Prior to that, he worked for the Finnish Government and represented Finland at many international and regional meetings, including the GATT Uruguay Round negotiations on the TRIPS Agreement. He has written extensively in the area of intellectual property. Mr. Wager has a law degree from the Helsinki University Law School, Finland. He joined the WTO in January 1995.
