Matt Lappen,
Commercial Director – Precision Strip

Ryan O’Connell,
Product Manager – Precision Tube

What do you hope attendees will gain from your webinar?

Matt – I would hope that the attendees can leave the webinar with a more clear understanding of what materials, properties, and products are available for designers that wouldn’t be identified in any standard handbooks.

Ryan – My hope is that attendees will leave the webinar with an understanding of how AMETEK Specialty Metal Products and its wide range of capabilities and engineering expertise can be a great partner in bringing cutting-edge medical devices to market.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the attendees?

Matt – I hope to hear about the problems that attendees are seeing in their product designs so we can start jointly developing solutions.

Ryan – I look forward to hearing what new products and innovations AMETEK Specialty Metal Products might be able to help the webinar attendees bring to market.  I am particularly looking forward to discussions around difficult specs and tolerances and pushing materials to the edge of their capability.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

Matt – The most enjoyable part of the role is learning how our clients use our materials in new and exciting applications. I’ve always likened it to taking a field trip when in school. Learning how our materials are used in one application can generate synergies in completely different markets.

Ryan – Along with the rest of the AMETEK Specialty Metal Products team, I enjoy helping customers to overcome obstacles on the way to finding solutions.  No two days are the same and no two challenges are the same.  I enjoy working with a variety of customers and applications to broaden my knowledge of how specialty metals can help to make the world a better place.

How did you get into the industry?

Matt – I was recruited as a Technical Writer by a consulting firm. My first, and last, position was writing training manuals at a specialty metals plant in North Carolina. I was hired to a technical position by the facility after completing my project.

Ryan – I began as an Engineering Intern with Superior Tube Company back in summer of 2005.  I was offered a full-time position in Supply Chain after graduating with a degree in Industrial Engineering from Penn State University in 2007.  After several years working in operations and commercial roles, I decided to go back to school to pursue an MBA from Temple University, which I just completed last Fall.  What was supposed to be a 12 week position is now approaching 16 years!

Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

Matt – My favorite place in the world is surrounded by my family. The recent pandemic has had silver linings in that it has allowed me to spend much more time with my loved ones.

Ryan – A summer Sunday afternoon at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game.  It doesn’t get much better than that for me.  I look forward to being able to get back to the ballpark when things get back to normal!

Join Matt & Ryan оn a webinar entitled Improving Patient Care through Material Innovation by AMETEK Specialty Metal Products on 28th of January at 3PM London/10AM New York.

Thomas Good, CSMO, Management Board

Christoph Marty, Head of Development & Engineering

What do you hope attendees will gain from your webinar?

Thomas – We would like to convey the areas in which Früh Verpackungstechnik AG specialises. In addition, we want our packaging to contribute to protecting the products of our customers in the best possible way.

Christoph – I hope that the webinar will help the participants to get to know Früh Verpackungstechnik AG and what our competencies are. In addition, the participants should learn more about peel pouches. The intention is to show how unique they are and how they are used.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the attendees?

Thomas – We would like to know from the attendees what their needs are when it comes to the use of packaging materials.

Christoph – We would like to know our attendees’ needs and hope that all their questions and uncertainties will be answered after the webinar.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

Thomas – Bringing the customers’ needs into the company and implementing them.

Christoph – What I like most about my role is the diversity of my work and the variety at Früh. My role not only involves management responsibilities but I also have my own projects and customers, which is challenging but also a lot of fun. Früh Verpackungstechnik AG is a company with a lot of drive and focuses on the quality of its products, work and processes.

How did you get into the industry?

Thomas – By chance, I got a job in the packaging industry and then stayed there :).

Christoph – I got into the packaging industry because of my training as an engineer specializing in construction and plastics. I enjoy being in this exciting industry and it is also an industry with a promising future.

Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

Thomas – I don’t have a specific favourite place in the world. When I travel, I always discover new favourite places. Travelling is about learning and it opens up new perspectives on life.

Christoph – My favourite place is at home with my family. My family and friends are where I find my balance and where I can recharge my batteries.

Join Thomas & Christoph оn a webinar entitled Peel pouch: specifications and application by Früh Verpackungstechnik AG on 11th of February at 2PM London / 3PM CET.

Why did you decide to do a webinar with us?

QPS – In addition to the interruption of business as usual across the company, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 has caused significant upheaval in our usual Business Development processes. Under typical circumstances, the QPS Business Development Team visits customers and potential customers face-to-face in a variety of locations, including our local QPS offices, conventions and the client’s local offices. Due to the global pandemic-driven restrictions on face-to-face interactions, the team quickly pivoted to deeper utilization of their digital technology toolkit. Participation in virtual conferences is one way that the team is reaching out, and Webinars are another one of the digital tools that is proving to be a valuable way to share the vast knowledge of our experts across a digital platform. Even within our webinar planning, we have been focused on ensuring a wide variety of options to reach as many people as possible. This webinar series, in partnership with Arena International, is a great way to reach out to those individuals who we might otherwise have met in person at one of the many local Outsourcing Clinical Trials conferences during the year, and has the added benefit of reaching even those people who would not have been able to participate in an in-person conference event.

What will the audience gain from attending your webinar? 

Patrick – Bringing a new product to the global market has become increasingly more complex. There are a range of decisions that sponsors need to make, and they need to ensure that all stakeholders have a good understanding of the implications of those decisions. Over the last eight years, SAS has had the opportunity to help market access professionals optimize global product launch sequencing. Our approach helps sponsors navigate the complexities of international reference pricing and ultimately identify the best order of countries for global launch.

When we deconstruct the problem of launch sequencing, we can understand not only how complex it really is, but also how the insight discovered should be shared to inform decisions that are made upstream. In short, we discovered we could bridge the continuum between decisioning for clinical operations and market access to share the insights that would be critical in determining the first steps of commercial success.

How did you get into the industry and what do you most enjoy about your role? 

Patrick – I always had a passion for the application of science and the desire to join an industry whose mission was noble. The pharmaceutical industry brings products to market that bring life to our years and add years to our life. After graduating with a degree in Microbiology, my first steps were to pursue a career in pharmaceutical sales. That developed into various leadership roles and eventually led to the opportunity to play a pivotal role in bringing contract sales teams to the industry for the ‘90s and early millennia blockbuster era. I then had the chance to change the direction of my career 13 years ago when I joined SAS software to lead the development of advanced analytic solutions for life science companies. It has been a dynamic time listening to our pharma customers and helping them make better decisions based on analytical insight. 

What are you hoping to achieve in the future in your personal and professional life? 

Patrick – Over the last year at SAS our health care and life sciences team globally has been centre stage in helping our customers respond, recover and reimagine their futures in the wake of the pandemic. One of my major projects going forward will be to introduce our customer intelligence solutions to the pharma world. Over the last year they lost their main channels of communication—representatives, symposia and congress—and turned to online engagement, such as webinars and other digital-first strategies. Engagement analytics can help pharma get a better understanding of the digital behaviours of physicians and patients. SAS worked with a major pharma company during the early stages of the pandemic and saw the power of data-driven insights to significantly evolve and improve digital strategy and engagement.

On the personal side – great question. I think the pandemic has made a lot of people look at what’s important in life and what their priorities are going forward. I think that there will be a renaissance period following the pandemic sunset, and I’m still thinking that one through! Before lockdown, I used to travel extensively around the globe, and I really do miss that lifestyle – looking forward to safely returning to that world.

What would someone be surprised to know about you?  

Patrick – I still ride motocross, a KTM 250 Factory edition. It keeps me young at heart.

https://bit.ly/3oIzvPZ

Matthias Birkhoff, Vice President, Business Development, Aptar Pharma

Why did you decide to do a webinar with us?

Ophthalmic diseases are a global challenge, and the thought leaders in this field are spread worldwide too. This webinar will enable us to engage with our peers directly, while delivering on our sustainability promise, by not needing to travel.

What will the audience gain from attending your webinar?

Aptar Pharma is a global market leader in pulmonary and nasal drug delivery. Using our world-renowned experience and expertise, we are now replicating our market leading position in eye care. With over 250 market references, we want to present how our growing portfolio of eye care solutions is the go-to platform for ophthalmic drug delivery.

How did you get into the industry and what do you most enjoy about your role?

My background is in medicine. Devices were really an unknown quantity when I joined Aptar Pharma over 20 years ago. Today, many of us recognize that the dispensing technology is just as fascinating as the drugs and the diseases they are targeting.

What are you hoping to achieve in the future in your personal and professional life?

From a professional point of view, I would love to see the day when retinal diseases are treated with topically administered drugs, so that the fantastic opportunities we have in the retina space today are available to more patients globally.

Personally, I need to work on my trumpet skills…

What would someone be surprised to know about you?

I lead in a big band, although clearly right now we cannot rehearse the way we used to.

Join Matthias Birkhoff on a webinar entitled Ocular drug delivery: an interesting past with a fascinating future by Aptar Pharma on 9th of February at 9AM London/2:30PM Mumbai/5PM Beijing & 3:30PM London/4:30PM Paris/10:30AM New York

Meera Rao – Senior Director Product Management at Synopsys

What do you hope attendees will gain at your webinar?

• How to move from a reactive, assurance-based model toward a proactive model focused on earlier risk mitigation and prevention.
• Strike a balance between detection (“find”),  mitigation (“fix”), and prevention (“prevent”)
  of software-induced risk.
• Use automation to ensure built-in checks.
• Include key checkpoints/gates at various phases in the pipeline.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the attendees?

Understanding their challenges and hope to guide them in the right direction to build secure software.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

Working with organizations to build security in, and on a day to day basis come up with new solutions to solve their problems.

How did you get into the industry?

I think it’s an interesting story. So I was actually working as a continuous integration practitioner with an earlier company. This was the time when the economy was going down. And then one fine day, I came to know that I had no job starting Monday. I interviewed at Cigital (now part of Synopsys) on Saturday. They asked me to join on a Monday—this is in 2008—after an interview. So by the end of the day, I had a job and an offer letter at Cigital. I didn’t know anything about software security. I learned everything from scratch and have never looked back. It’s now 12 years and I enjoy every day and never feel like I am working, it is my passion now.

Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

My home. I have been traveling a lot for the past decade. Staying at home, spending time with my family, cooking, sewing, reading and listening to podcast is what I love when I am home.

About Meera

Meera partners with security teams and experts from Fortune 500 companies, and multi-national corporations around the globe leading architecture risk analyses, threat modelling engagements, secure design reviews, secure code reviews, and helping organizations start and mature their continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), continuous deployment (CD), and DevOps engineering activities. She advises organizations in defining, implementing, maturing, scaling and measuring DevSecOps.

She is very passionate about getting more women working in the technology industry. Ms. Meera participates, presents and speaks at several conferences, spreading her knowledge of security and the importance of women in the technology workforce. Meera was awarded the SecDevOps Trailblazer award from SecuritySerious in London in 2018. Meera was a finalist in the Computing Women in IT Excellence Awards 2019 for Role Model of the Year.

As a woman in cybersecurity, she is a strong believer that confidence is key. The true key to her success has been making sure her opinions and ideas are heard; and being confident in her vision for projects. In a role predominantly occupied by men, Meera has defied the stereotype of what an engineer looks like. Her expertise and poise are key to her success in working with organizations by implementing cutting-edge tools and processes.

She is an inspiring role model not only for women working in cybersecurity, but also to all professionals who look to excel in the security industry. Her quiet, but continuous dedication and contributions to the field of cybersecurity bring positive changes to some of the world’s largest organizations.

Join Meera Rao оn a webinar entitled Building Security in DevOps with Intelligent Orchestration by Synopsys on 18th of December at 2PM London / 3PM CET.

Karolina Fridolf, Product Manager Lyckeby Careful at SSF

1. What do you hope attendees will gain at your webinar?

I would like the attendees to be curious to learn more about how Lyckeby Careful – our range of sustainable and functional clean label starches performs in their products. They will gain knowledge about SSF, Sveriges Stärkelseproducenter, Förening, and the development work that focus on bringing innovative functional products to the market.

2. What discussions do you look forward to having with the attendees?

I would like to discuss clean label starch solutions and the high performance of Lyckeby Careful in food processes and applications. I believe the attendees would like to talk about the unique functional potato starches designed to provide texture and crispness in coating and batters.

3. What do you enjoy most about your role?

I enjoy working at SSF because of the people and the innovative and agile climate. We are a team of engaged people, working close to the customers. I also enjoy work with people from around the world. They are all engaged and passionate about their brands, products and customers.

4. How did you get into the industry?

I have always been interested in the food we eat and science so it was a quite natural choice to study Food Science. I started working with product development of food supplements but went over to the dairy industry and after that spent some years developing retail products for a global food manufacturer. I started at SSF for 6 years ago and my role is Product Manager focusing on our clean label portfolio Lyckeby Careful.

5. Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

There are many beautiful and awesome places all around the globe. If I should pick just one it would be British Columbia on the Canadian west coast. Because of the friendly people and the beautiful nature.

Steve Lyon, Business Development Director.

Steve began his career working in Housing Management where he developed an interest in how technology can help improve lives. This led to many years working for IT and software firms introducing solutions to public sector organisations including housing, local government and health. Steve also spent 9 years as a Board Member for a large Housing Association. For the last decade Steve’s work has been exclusively focused on the Microsoft Dynamics platform and lately the Power Platform. During this period Steve has been involved in major transformation projects utilising the Microsoft Business Applications suite that have directly impacted on the way services and the customer experience are delivered.

What do you hope attendees will gain at your webinar?

An understanding of how technology is changing with a low code approach from Microsoft,  directly reflecting business needs and empowering users to create their own apps based platform and environment for business processes, workflows and intelligence.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the attendees?

How to introduce and consume the new technologies available and ensure that their organisation can do this competently and securely.  Most organisations will have a list of apps that they want or wish to have and this can be the answer to meeting that need.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I like that every week is different although the last few months have made that less so!  The Microsoft Business Applications platform is growing and building constantly and there are so many interesting and vital projects changing the way people live and work.

How did you get into the industry?

I got involved in a system implementation at the Local Authority where I used to work (quite a few years ago now) and was bitten by the bug eventually moving to a software house.

Where is your favorite place in the world and why?

Bestwood Woods near Nottingham, an ancient royal hunting grounds, been walking and cycling around there for decades and never get tired of it.

Stephen Roostan, VP EMEA at Kenna Security

What did you hope attendees gain at your webinar?

Understand which IT security projects delivered a fast ROI and why cloud security has been such a game-changer in 2020. We talk about how cloud security can support quick and straightforward deployment of IT projects enabling customers to leverage ‘as-a-service’ offerings, harness data science, and automate labour-intensive tasks.

What discussions did you look forward to having with the attendees?

Always interested to find out how organisations measure the value that IT Security projects are delivering. Also whether they benchmark their risk posture against others in their industry, and what IT risk indicators they would like to track in their business.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I’m relishing the opportunity to build and lead the EMEA team at Kenna Security as we grow our business in Europe and expand further. I’m privileged to be working for an innovative technology company that is changing the old premise of vulnerability management by numbers to a risk-based approach, and in so doing is helping IT, Security and Operations work together more effectively.

What motivates you at work?

My colleagues! Every day I’m inspired by colleagues past and present as I try to listen more carefully, embrace innovative concepts, and work harder to become a better leader. I believe that creating a collaborative and supportive working culture is hugely productive for both an organisation and its employees – which I think has been more important than ever in 2020.

The webinar “The Cloud Security Game Changer” with Stephen Roostan & Colin Williams with Kenna Security is now available to watch on demand here

Dr Julie Suman, President, Next Breath, an Aptar Pharma company

Why did you decide to do a webinar with us?

Webinars are a fantastic way to showcase thought leadership and engage the audience in a scientific and technical discussion. As many conferences and events have now gone virtual, webinars are an hour’s window to capture your interest when we are all so very busy. We also like to learn from the audience on what matters to them via the question and answer session.

What will the audience gain from attending your webinar?

Our objective is to highlight how Aptar Pharma can support a drug development program from end to end. It’s not about simply supplying a device. It’s the regulatory knowledge and the supporting services. Many of our customers these days have exquisite knowledge on their compound. However, they need a helping hand to navigate the drug delivery aspects. It is my goal that the audience will understand and appreciate that we want to be a partner to help de-risk and accelerate time to market.

How did you get into the industry and what do you most enjoy about your role?

I’ve done nearly everything backwards in life. I started a company when I was a graduate student, established a brand and became a part of Aptar Pharma in 2008. I never get tired of learning and this role helps to satisfy that part of me.

What are you hoping to achieve in the future in your personal and professional life?

Professionally: I want to help a Pharmaceutical or Biotech company bring a ground breaking COVID-19 treatment or vaccine to market. I can’t think of anything more important than that right now.

Personally: I have spent way too many hours on airplanes and like many, have realized what it feels like to now have zero jetlag and the energy to focus on a few hobbies and (socially distant) time with friends. I hope that I’ll be able to maintain that balance for the long term.

What would someone be surprised to know about you?

In addition to authoring scientific publications, I am also a published travel writer and photographer. I enjoy these creative outlets and from time to time, get to share that with others.

Sam Warner, Dev Ops Specialist at Black Pepper Software

Martin Blower, Head of DevOps & Technical Strategy at Black Pepper Software

What do you hope attendees will gain at your webinar?

Following the webinar, I would like the attendees to leave with a better understanding that without the right mindset and approach, DevOps is just a buzzword and any return on investment in the above will be limited at best.