Fraser Skirrow graduated from Pembroke College Oxford in 1985. After several years with the construction and engineering company Mowlem he entered the MBA programme at London Business School graduating in 1989. He spent 15 years in Andersen Consulting (later Accenture) where he was the partner leading the European R&D consulting business. In 2005 he was a founder member of Kinapse, an international R&D Consulting and outsourcing business.

In more than 25 years of consulting he has worked with many of the largest R&D organisations in the world. Typical projects with large pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients include:

• Post-merger integration. He has led the integration of Development functions in 4 major post-merger assignments each taking 18 months to 2 years, covering multiple sites and countries and several thousand staff. The scope of these projects included development strategy, organisation design, Commercial and Development operations. The aim was to restore performance to pre-merger levels and then create unified, world class development organisations.
• Operating model design and implementation. He has led design and implementation of new operating models in several global biotechnology and vaccine companies. In general, these were 18 month programmes of analysis, solutions design and implementation that set out the structure for the governance of R&D, the functional and team structures, operating practices, planning and performance management systems and processes. They covered the US and European development hubs and the European commercial operations.
• Advisory Roles to Senior Development executives. He has supported multiple post-merger integration projects with Kinapse. These were advisory roles with directors of European Development functions on issues including organisation design, performance management, resource management, change management and metrics.

Strategy and Board Advisory roles

• He led business strategy and change management for the European division of a major Japanese company. This 18-month programme covered the setting up of an autonomous European development region within the company, setting the business strategy, creating and implementing the organisation design for functions and teams and the design and implementation of a new governance structure.
• He is a Non-Executive director of Glide Technologies, a needle free injection company based near Oxford. Through the non-executive role assistance has been given in business strategy, fund raising, investor communications, alliance management and planning.
• With other MedInnovate directors he carried out feasibility for setting up a national bio-repository. The objective of the project was to understand the value and benefits of creating a national Bio-Repository to collect, store and analyse tissue, leading to the better understanding of long term population health. It involved identifying the real and perceived barriers to the creation of the repository, defining its operating model and business case and setting out an overall plan to create the facility.
• Set strategy and business model for an R&D service provider prior to trade sale. The objective of the project was to compile a 3-year business plan with supporting financials that set out the growth aspirations for the company and potential exit strategies. Detailed product development plans and business growth strategies were set out and the company was subsequently acquired by a global information provider.

Fraser is also an author and speaker on military tactics and organisation in the First World War (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Massacre-Marne-Battalion-Yorkshire-Regiment/dp/1844154963) and a keen outdoorsman, instructing young people in adventure training and survival skills.

Maureen, a pharmacist by training, has over 30 years’ experience in the life science sector including 25 years at Glaxo companies. She held a variety of leadership roles in R&D, CMC and Clinical Supplies, and supported the Glaxo R&D executive through two major mergers, firstly with Wellcome and later GlaxoWellcome with Smith Kline. On the formation of GSK, she worked in the office of the R&D Chairman as VP, Global R&D Strategy Development working on the early game-changing strategic changes that have since been copied by other organisations (internal R&D business units, competitive external research centres, strategic approach to biological therapeutics, outsourcing R&D). She co-chaired the GSK Innovative Technologies board and was secretary of the Scientific Advisory Board. During this time she represented EU industry in the drafting of the first ICH guidelines on stability testing, and clinical supplies, and the government 25 year strategic review on science.

More recently Maureen has been extensively involved with supporting the growth and development of companies large and small. She is currently a business angel and a founding director of MedInnovate.

She was founding CEO of NovaThera, a biomaterials and regenerative medicine company spun out from Imperial College London, for which she set the business strategy, raised the funding, recruited the board and leadership team. Novathera merged with Vetcell – a vetinary regenerative medicine company.

She was a Non-Executive Director of GW Morocco and Medpharm Ltd– a specialist dermatology company.

Maureen was the MedInnovate representative on the Board of Bioanalab which successfully exited to Merck Millipore at a 6.5x ROI.

She was a consulting partner at Kinapse Ltd, who provide expert advisory, capability building and operational services to the life sciences industries, where she helped them establish their outsourced pharmaceutical technical documentation offering.

Maureen is currently Chairman of Parafricta Ltd which has a range of medical devices protecting fragile skin from friction and shear.

She is also Executive Chairman of CNBio Ltd a bioengineering and drug discovery company with world leading human organ –on- chip technologies collaborating with MIT, Imperial College ,Cambridge and Oxford Universties.

Maureen was educated in Scotland and graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in pharmacy and pharmacology. She was the Organon pharmacology prize winner. She is a member of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Scientists.

Maureen is a member of a number of women’s executive networks and a keen supporter and mentor to women developing their executive careers.

Andy Black graduated in medicine and surgery from Guy's Hospital, London in 1989 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1993. Between 1990-1994, Andy practised as a surgeon in various academic hospitals in London and the South East of England, and also worked as a Prosector at the University of Oxford.

In 1994, Andy joined the strategy consulting practice of Andersen Consulting where he spent almost 10 years as a consultant in the health and life sciences sector, latterly as a Senior Manager in Accenture's global Health and Life Sciences practice. Andy's principal focus was in supporting the formulation and implementation of R&D operating strategies for major pharmaceutical companies. He also worked closely with major Regulatory Agencies in engagements developing strategy and implementing change in the licensing of pharmaceutical products and their safety evaluation. Of note, Andy was instrumental in the acquisition of the General Practice Research Database (GPRD, now CPRD) by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and during this time he seconded to the Agency.

In 2005, after a period as an independent consultant in which he led the operations of CMR International and supported other pharmaceutical clients, Andy went on to co-found Kinapse and was its Chief Executive until June 2016. Kinapse provides a range of life sciences 'Advise-Build-Operate' services and has grown to a team of c. 700 professionals who serve 16 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and the European Medicines Agency from operations in US, Europe and India. Andy remains on the Board of Kinapse as a Non-Executive Director following the acquisition of the business by HgCapital in 2016. Kinapse is one of the UK's life sciences success stories having featured in the Sunday Times Fast Track for several consecutive years as one of the fastest growing and profitable private companies in the UK. Kinapse generated a 16.1X return and IRR of 126% for its previous private equity investor, Synova Capital, at the time of the acquisition by HgCapital.

As well as his ongoing advisory role with Kinapse, Andy continues to work actively in the life sciences sector with current engagements including:

• Advising various Private Equity firms on the life sciences market and potential investments.
• Mentoring the Chief Executive of a pharmaceutical information and services business
• Developing the health and life sciences research strategy for a major UK university, focused on forging new strategic partnerships.

In addition to his roles at MedInnovate and Kinapse, Andy is the Managing Director of Black Life Sciences Ltd., engages in a range of pro bono consulting for not-for-profit organisations, and has published various thought leadership papers on the strategic development of the life sciences sector.