Tech4Eva Roadshow - The Connection to the UK

Charlotte Chenu is the Science and Innovation officer at the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, where she manages the Innosuisse Internationalisation Programme. She graduated from the business school of the University of Lausanne (HEC), and now supports innovative Swiss startups entering the UK market. Along her career in Switzerland, India and now in the UK, Charlotte has built several programmes and events that support entrepreneurs at every stage of their growth. She has successfully guided Swiss startups in their journey by advising them on their internationalisation strategy and connecting them to investors, corporates and partners.

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Mathieu is co-founder and CEO of ASPIVIX SA. He has over ten years of experience in the development and commercial management of medical devices.

He brings a strong track record of building and leading diverse and cross-functional teams for both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies in the life sciences and medical device sector at ASPIVIX and Danaher.

With ASPIVIX, he is a pioneer in FemTech - innovative gynecological devices - and has raised more than US$10 million in dilutive and non-dilutive financing rounds.

Mathieu holds several master's degrees in mechanics from Paris Tech in France, Cranfield University in the UK, and IFP School in France, as well as an MBA from INSEAD/Wharton, France-Singapore-Philadelphia.

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Until end of September 2022 Susan headed Strategic Excellence, for Merck Healthcare, with overall accountability for Strategy Development and Strategic Planning, Global Strategic Insights (Forecasting, Market Research and Business Intelligence) and Decision Sciences. Her focus was on architecting the Healthcare strategy for Merck, project and portfolio decision making, leading the strategy realisation office and overseeing business-critical strategic alliances.

Prior to that she served for several years as the Head of Global Business Development and Alliance Management and member of the executive board within the Biopharma business of Merck responsible for all partnering activities, taking the global lead role for identifying and executing Global Business Development opportunities for Merck Biopharma's R&D, and also the commercial portfolio plus Alliance Management closing the alliance with Pfizer on PDL-1, at the time the single biggest licensing transaction for a clinical stage asset for any company globally. She has experience across the pharma and medical diagnostics industries previously working in R&D, regulatory affairs and manufacturing operations.

Thirty years later it is time for Sue to write the next chapter of her life taking up a new challenge as Lifescience advisor for, as yet to be disclosed, operations.

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Daniela Schardinger is an experienced Vice President (VP) Marketing & Medical Affairs at OCON Healthcare, a women’s health company introducing innovative medical solutions that allow women healthier choices while improving their well-being and quality of life.

Ms. Schardinger has vast experience in Marketing & Sales, Medical Affairs and Management in the medical and pharmaceutical industries specializing in women’s health around the globe for the past decade. She was recently featured on the Forbes SUPERWOMAN series (DACH) for her work in FemTech.

Prior to joining OCON Healthcare, Ms. Schardinger led and built up a Swiss Pharmaceutical Company (Gynial AG) as Managing Director - a Women’s Health Firm focusing on bringing innovative medical solutions for women to the market.

Priya conceptualised and started to build Goddess Gaia Ventures (GGV) in 2021 after a long held belief that women’s healthcare is greatly underserved and underfunded and there remains huge, untapped market potential in this investment vertical. GGV is Europe’s first women’s centred healthcare fund investing in solutions across the spectrum of women’s health. Priya is an avid angel investor and has demonstrated access and a winning formula when investing into promising start ups in GGV ‘s investment vertical.

Priya is also the founder of Oberoi Capital Partners, a regulated company she built from the ground up. She built, managed and ran the firm for over ten years, providing fund raising expertise, strategic business advice and multi-channel scale-up positioning across different asset classes and distinct investment strategies.

Priya is a finance and derivatives lawyer by background and training, attaining of-counsel recognition in 2010 at a magic circle law firm.

Priya holds a BA (Hons) and MA in Jurisprudence from Oxford University.

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FemTech innovator and entrepreneur Kim Palmer is the CEO and Founder of the hypnotherapy app Clementine, which aims to improve the emotional wellbeing of women all over the world. Born after Kim experienced a number of panic attacks whilst pregnant, Clementine has been created to make women feel calmer, more confident and better equipped to cope with everyday life.

The hypnotherapy sessions available on the Clementine app can be used to boost confidence or help you return to sleep by guiding you to relaxed state, similar to daydreaming, and suggests new ways to deal with everyday grievances; allowing you to kick back and continue your daily routine.

Kim was recently named in the longlist of incredible women in Health Tech (2022).  Listed as one of the top 100 women in Fem Tech & Health Tech and winner of the IPA Campaign Women of Tomorrow in 2018, which recognises female industry leaders of the future.

Whilst working at Wunderman Thompson as a strategy director, Kim also helped some of the world’s biggest brands with their global marketing campaigns and was able to develop her personal resilience and kick-start a women’s mentoring programme.

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Dearbhail Ormond is the founder of Frendo - a smartphone app designed to empower endometriosis patients and those suffering with suspected symptoms through advice, support and community.

Despite experiencing symptoms and several misdiagnoses since young adulthood, it took medical professionals around the globe over 18 years to provide Dearbhail with an endometriosis diagnosis that would explain the severe pain, erratic sickness and issues she faced, impacting various parts of her life significantly. As a result, she created Frendo as a means to help reduce the diagnosis delay for the 1 in 9 people with periods who will experience the disease in their lifetime, and to create a community for those to share their experiences and seek support from one another, reducing the isolation that so many feel in those years waiting for a diagnosis.  

Prior to founding Frendo, Dearbhail worked for several years in leadership roles within startups, most recently as founding team member of MedTech cancer app, CancerAid and with KPMG Australia’s High Growth Ventures business as Head of Marketing.

Dearbhail’s hopes for Frendo are to implement endometriosis screening into schools and third level colleges and universities, reducing the stigma and raising awareness of the disease in order to break the cycle early, improving the time to diagnosis and as a result preventing the progression rate of the disease.

Longer term, her objective is for Frendo to become a clinical trials partner with leading pharmaceutical companies, working together with Frendo real world data to create better treatment pathways for endometriosis patients.

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Seedrs is a leading private investment platform and the most active funder of private companies in the UK - with over £2.1BN invested into campaigns and over 1,700 deals funded. We enable all types of investors to invest in businesses they believe in, and we enable all types of growth-focused businesses to raise capital and build a community in the process.

Katherine leads the Scale Team at Seedrs, working with businesses raising £1m+. As Diversity Lead, she advocates for underrepresented founders and works to ensure the platform supports as many founders from underrepresented backgrounds as possible. To date she's helped almost 70 businesses to raise over £36M, half of which are female founded/co-founded.

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Simone has 25+ years of event management, strategy, marketing, relationship building experience. She joined the EPFL Innovation Park team in 2020 and she currently manages the Tech4Eva accelerator operations and the Tech4Growth initiative.

For 16 years she built the brand/network of Tech Tour as their Managing Director leading the events team to implement 25+ tech events per year. She has a proven ability to set up well-oiled processes and leverage networks to open partnership opportunities to build a strong ecosystem by maximizing objectives and engaging all stakeholders (corporates, investors, academia, tech start-ups in all digital sectors).

Previously she worked for the University of NC in Chapel Hill, USA, implementing the new graduate student program. She also worked at SCIP as their global operations & marketing manager both in Alexandria, VA & in London, UK, where she opened and managed their branch office to establish their European presence, as well as overseeing all aspects of international conferences & tradeshows.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA. She is fluent in English, French & German.