Board of Directors

Cathal is 56 years-old, and is an entrepreneur, starting work at 16 years due to his father’s untimely illness he went on to complete his education at night classes and got an MBA from the University of Ulster in 1990. He spent the following five years lecturing part time in International Marketing and Business Planning at the University of Ulster, while running his own new technology services business. In 2001 he was part of the team who successfully established Merrion Stockbrokers in Dublin and in 2007 he founded Raglan Capital. Cathal is the Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of hVIVO (formerly Open Orphan plc) which IPO’d on the London and Dublin stock exchanges in June 2019. In 2021, hVIVO (formerly Open Orphan) completed a spin-out of one of its non-core assets to form Poolbeg Pharma plc, an infectious disease company with a capital light model, where Cathal is Chairman. He also co-founded Amryt Pharma plc in 2015 along with Joe Wiley, which is listed on the London stock exchange since 2016 and which listed on Nasdaq in July 2020. Prior to Amryt, Cathal founded Fastnet Oil & Gas plc in 2011 which he IPO’d on the London stock exchange. Cathal was a finalist in the International category as part of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2020.

Mo is CEO of hVIVO with over 25 years of experience in clinical research and the CRO industry. Mo has worked as a consultant assisting CROs to develop growth strategies and helping prepare companies for future expansion, both organic and through M&A activity. In addition, Mo worked with Private Equity firms providing insight in identifying potential targets and conducting due diligence in preparation for M&A activity. Prior to this Mo had a variety of senior roles at Pharm-Olam where he played a pivotal role in growing a small niche clinical monitoring business to a global full-service CRO with offices across all continents. In his time at Pharm-Olam Mo had leading roles in Clinical Operations, Project Management, Business Development and Executive Management functions. As a key member of the Executive Team Mo participated in the successful sale of the company in 2017, delivering substantial returns to its shareholders. Prior to this he worked at Innovex and Quintiles (IQVIA).

Stephen Pinkerton is Chief Financial Officer at hVIVO. Having worked at the company for six years, he has developed a strong end to end understanding of the business, working across all key commercial operational decisions. During his time at the company, he helped transform the financial reporting, monthly accounts and forecasting of the business, overhauled the project accounting system, developed pricing models for all the contracts that range in value from £2m to £15m, improved pricing and margin on contracts, oversaw forecast models for mergers, acquisitions and operational performance, and supported on the restructuring of the business to improve efficiencies. Stephen has an extensive career in a range of leadership positions. Prior to joining hVIVO, he worked in Thomson Reuters for eleven years, most recently as Finance Director for Enterprise Risk Management. He holds a Honours Degree in Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Cape Town.

Brendan was Chief Medical Officer of ICON plc until 2017, prior to which he co-founded Firecrest Clinical, a company which focused on improving the performance of clinical trial sites and in turn sold it ICON in 2011. While in ICON Brendan served as a member of ICON plc’s Executive Leadership Team and was actively involved in M&A targeting, assessment and diligence. A medical graduate of University College Cork (UCC) and a doctoral graduate in Biochemistry of Oxford University, Brendan has over 30 years’ experience in clinical research. He was a Director of the Health Products Regulatory Authority of Ireland between 2004 and 2011 and was a member of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products (COMP) from 2000-2003.

Elaine is CEO of Dargle Therapeutics, the Executive Chairman of Keltic Pharma and a Non-Executive Director at hVIVO (formerly Open Orphan), IP Group plc and Active Biotech AB and is a member of the Supervisory Board at Evotec AG which is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. She has over 25 years of international experience working in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Elaine has worked as part of the most senior management teams in R&D at Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca. She served as Vice President Global External Research and Development at Eli Lilly & Company, Inc., Indianapolis, USA, where she led a global workforce delivering access to business-critical external innovation. She was a member of the investment committees of Lilly Ventures and Lilly Asian Ventures and the steering committees of Lilly’s Capital Fund partners. Prior to joining Eli Lilly, Dr Sullivan held various positions in the area of drug discovery and development at AstraZeneca including Vice President R&D, New Opportunities. In this role, she led AstraZeneca‘s virtual therapy disease function which pinpointed new disease areas and created new therapeutic applications for multiple molecular entities and advanced them into the clinic. She also held the role of Vice-President, Science & Technology with the focus on acquiring new technologies which led to decreased attrition of compounds failing for toxicity and efficacy reasons in the clinic. During her career, she gained extensive knowledge of various aspects of drug discovery and development having developed new molecules in virology, cancer and ophthalmology. She co-founded Carrick Therapeutics a European oncology company which has raised €100 million. She has successfully delivered over 250 collaborations and transactions including spinouts, joint ventures, strategic partnerships and acquisitions. Dr Sullivan holds a doctorate in Molecular Biology and Virology from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Glasgow, UK.

Martin brings 30 years corporate finance and development experience in the CRO, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors to hVIVO (formerly Open Orphan). Martin is Global SVP, Business Development at Owkin. He was previously a Partner at Results Healthcare, where he co-led the healthcare practice. He was Head of Lifesciences in the UK for BDO, the Lead for the M&A process in Europe for Quintiles, and Business Development and Licensing Lead at Confirmant, Pharmacopeia, Sareum and CBO at BenevolentAI and Sensyne Health. He has extensive experience buying and selling multi-billion dollar deals across Europe and the US, architecting end to end portfolio out-sourcing deals, and negotiating multi-year research partnerships. He holds a BSc in Genetics and has completed a range of post graduate management courses.