Sapna Rughani

During my career, I have built and led high-performing teams to strategically plan and navigate the complex environments of pharma and biotech research, commercialisation, regulatory approvals, reimbursement and brand building and lifecycle management. I have been fortunate to work for category-leading medicines from the beginning of my career. At 21, I left University with a BSc. in Neuroscience and joined the industry as a medical sales representative, launching Lipitor for Parke Davis/Pfizer, Nexium and Symbicort for AstraZeneca and building key accounts across Brent, Harrow, Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster. I moved into medical communications and was soon leading the Global Communications for Seretide/Advair at Burson-Marsteller and led communications for the landmark TORCH mortality study in COPD. Since then, I have worked on global communications for Roche, Novartis, Boeringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, AVEXIS, Hansa Biopharma and many other companies. I have also supported pharma and biotech clients through agency roles at MHP group, Kaizo, M&F Health, Packer Forbes and Publicis. I'm an advocate for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in the healthcare communications industries.

Recalled to deliver an expanded programme, including lifecycle management of nivolumab, ongoing reimbursement negotiations for combination treatment, plus corporate communications throughout the pandemic, communications programme to connect remote workforce with leadership and maintain employee wellbeing and engagement. Delivered thought leadership series to profile the diverse employee profile of Bristol Myers Squibb in the UK, in collaboration with the Campaign to End Loneliness. As part of the corporate communications, I built partnerships with company sponsored organisations Maggie's Cancer Centres and Sebastian's Trust to explore potential collaboration. Supported company reporting: Gender Pay Gap Report, ESG report and UK & Ireland contributions to the Annual Report.

Part of the senior client leadership team of dna/Weber Shandwick and led multiple cross functional agency teams to deliver external affairs, digital, public affairs and patient advocacy programmes. With revenue stream oversight, profitability management and new business strategy responsibilities. Within dna, I delivered global client programmes for Novartis in Respiratory Specialty Care (COPD) and Rare Diseases, and Patient Advocacy & issues and crisis management for Novartis Gene Therapies (formerly AVEXIS). Led communications and policy work for Hansa Biopharma, to prepare for and support launch of Idefirix for rare kidney disease in Europe, included 'from scratch' building of press office, multistakeholder communications toolkits and digital channel/communication set up for global team; writing company policies, development of issues preparedness and materials development for global team and C-suite.