Melissa has over 25 years of sales, operations, and strategy development experience across multiple industries including clinical research, healthcare consulting and technology, and health insurance. Melissa started her professional career with ClinTrials Research before moving to SAS Institute where she worked for six years leading business development and proposal functions. Her most recent clinical research experience includes nearly three years leading the contracts and proposal development function at PPD. Here she created the first strategic finance team focused on developing innovative pricing models to support client partnerships. After PPD Melissa moved to UnitedHealth Group where she first worked for Optum leading the sales operations function. She also sat on the acquisition integration team supporting the integration of multiple small- to medium-sized businesses. In her last four years at UnitedHealth Group Melissa led sales operations for the Medicaid business unit and held operational leadership roles.

Melissa is passionate about spending time traveling with her husband Patrick and hanging out with her three children Savanna, Grace, and Ian when they make time for her in their busy schedules. In her downtime, Melissa enjoys reading, boating, and spending time in the mountains.

Tessa comes to Catalyst Clinical Research with 30 years of experience across multiple therapeutic areas and all phases of trials. She brings an excellent technical background and wide-ranging familiarity with numerous therapeutic areas and all phases of global clinical research to the forefront of her work. She began her professional journey as a CRA for a Phase I CRO before moving on to AstraZeneca where she spent six years managing early phase trials and developing processes of Federal Technology Investment Management (FTiM) programs.

Tessa has additional experience with numerous patient support groups and medical research charities to facilitate the development of clinical trials in rare diseases and areas of unmet clinical need. Her most recent experience with Aptus Clinical includes leading the development of a risk management and quality function. In addition, she has consulted several biotech companies on setting up quality management systems and other process optimization projects here.

In her free time, Tessa enjoys spending time with her large family and their menagerie of pets, alongside supporting several cancer charities.

Allison, vice president of People & Culture at Catalyst Clinical Research, has worked in the clinical research industry for 15 years with stops at Novella (now IQVIA Biotech) and Premier Research. Allison is a Professional Certified Coach credential through the International Coaching Federation.

During her tenure at all three CROs, Allison has served as an internal coach providing executive, leadership, and team coaching to senior executives. Her additional responsibilities include designing and delivering leadership training programs, onboarding programs, and overseeing the clinical technology training teams.

At Catalyst, Allison is focused on designing and building an organizational culture with a competitive recruitment and retention advantage.

“The quickest way to become an old dog is to stop learning new tricks” is one of her favorite mantras that speak to her desire for continuous learning and desire to become a better coach.

When Allison is not leading, coaching, and training colleagues, she enjoys spending time with her home team: five children, ages 21 through29, and two grandchildren. Allison lives in Wilmington, N.C.

Keya brings 25 years of experience in drug development with both biopharma and clinical service providers. As Senior Vice President of Catalyst Oncology, Keya is responsible for the execution of the Oncology CRO Operations. Keya has built and provided oversight of multidisciplinary teams across clinical development operations inclusive of clinical operations, data sciences and trial support services previously. She also served as an executive in both operational and commercial roles and has been involved in several complex, global trials in various therapeutic areas and phases with a concentration on oncology and hematology programs. Keya prides herself on building and managing high-functioning teams that deliver excellence while ultimately bringing meaningful therapies to patients in need. Keya earned her degree from Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and also maintains her certification as a Project Management Professional.

Lisa is our chief medical officer (CMO) and leads medical and safety at Catalyst Clinical Research. Board-certified in internal medicine, Lisa was in private medical practice for seven years before joining the industry as a medical director at a major CRO. She advanced to managing the global medical monitoring group and subsequently led multiple business units including pharmacovigilance and medical, medical communications and early development. Lisa earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Texas A&M at Kingsville and a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. She completed an internal medicine residency at the University of Arizona.

Lisa enjoys paddleboarding, snowboarding, playing guitar, and working in the garden as she believes there is a farmer in each and every one of us.

As chief information and privacy officer, Deb leads all of Catalyst’s information technology (IT) and technology-adjacent functions. She began her career working in informatics for a biotech company. Soon after, a move to North Carolina allowed Deb to join the pharmaceutical industry with roles at GSK (and Glaxo Wellcome) in research and development and IT leadership over a 17-year tenure. Deb went on to switch from the client side to the provider side, working with several large public and small privately-owned CROs, including Rho, before joining Catalyst in fall 2022. Deb holds a bachelor of science (Hons) degree in chemistry from the University of Bath, UK, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Emory University. In addition, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University.

In her free time, Deb enjoys playing tennis and running marathons. She lives in Durham, N.C.

Kristin has over 17 years of experience in the life sciences industry across CROs and software, and has consistently led her teams in surpassing annual sales goals and building a workplace environment that fosters teamwork, collaboration, and success. 

Before joining Catalyst, Kristin was the Chief Growth Officer of Emmes, where she led a global team of sales professionals, and helped drive growth in the private biotech sector. Prior to Emmes, Kristin was the head of CRO and EDC sales at Veeva Systems, leading a global team responsible for more than 200 customers across CRO and biotech sectors. Prior to her position at Veeva, she worked for Labcorp Drug Development, leading a global sales team focused on building large pharmaceutical relationships. Kristin was also responsible for the expansion of one of Labcorp’s largest full-service partnerships.  

She began her career at PPD, gaining clinical operations and sales experience during her eight-year tenure. After creating the company’s first inside sales group, Kristin’s role expanded to sales for PPD’s full-service offerings to all industry segments. She managed one of the largest partnerships at the company and received numerous awards for her significant contributions to the company’s growth. Across all roles, Kristin has led inside sales, marketing, sales operations, and has been a key member in numerous acquisitions and integrations. 

Kristin lives in a beautiful coastal town in Rhode Island with her husband Eric and their 5 children. She is a massive Boston Red Sox fan, loves to cook, and spends lots of time doing CrossFit and snowboarding. 

Patti brings more than 24 years of finance experience, 20 of those in the clinical research industry. She has a diverse background in financial leadership and a passion for team engagement and talent management. Patti started her professional career as a tax consultant at Deloitte & Touche LLP, then moved into the healthcare field with a senior finance role at NES, an emergency room staffing and management company. She got her start in the clinical research industry in 2000 at PPD. During her tenure there she held a variety of roles, including tax, operations finance leadership and more recently ownership of the government business unit. While at PPD Patti played an important part in the significant growth of the company, both related to adding service offering and expanding internationally. She led the globalization of finances for the clinical development business unit and partnered with business unit leadership to optimize revenue and profitability.

When Patti isn’t crunching numbers at Catalyst, she enjoys being outside with family and friends — first choice is beach and traveling, followed closely by anything active — volleyball, walking, pool, and playing with her two yellow lab mutts. Go fetch!

Craig brings 25 years of experience in drug development with small and large CROs to his role with Catalyst. As Senior Vice President of Catalyst Flex, Craig is responsible for the global execution of functional services across multiple therapeutic areas.  In his previous roles Craig has overseen global operations across multiple functions including but not limited to data management, biostatistics, statistical programming, medical writing, quality, analytics, systems and communications.  This has included global expansion across multiple regions and his leadership experience spans activities across various delivery models, including FSP, full-service, and hybrid models. He earned a B.S. (Hons) degree in statistics from the University of Glasgow, U.K. and an M.S. in applied statistics from Napier University, Edinburgh, U.K. He is a chartered statistician (Cstat) with the Royal Statistical Society and was previously a director of the Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI).

Svetlana brings to Catalyst Flex over 15 years of experience in clinical project management and leadership covering all facets of clinical development. Her professional journey began in 2000 at an NIH/NINDS research group. After scientific research, in 2003, Svetlana transitioned into clinical research at Immune Tolerance Network. In 2008, with a newly acquired passion for clinical research, she joined BioTelemetry (formerly Cardiocore), a cardiac safety core lab. While at BioTelemetry, Svetlana led project management, biometrics, and customer support functions. Using her leadership experience and strong project management skills, Svetlana joined Nanobiotix with a single goal of ground-up creation of an in-house project management operation for an ongoing portfolio of projects in the European Union and the US.

For the last ten years, Svetlana has been a part of the clinical research industry. She has been privileged to work with some of the brightest minds in the biotech and pharma industries, helping them bring life-changing treatments and products to patients. In 2020, she joined Catalyst Clinical Research and has been successfully building effective clinical research teams and leading Catalyst Flex clinical development operations.

Svetlana currently resides in Florida with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

Andrew has focused exclusively on oncology for over 20 years and serves as the vice president, Oncology Drug Development for Catalyst. He leads Catalyst’s full-service oncology solution, supporting study optimization, delivery oversight, training, and new initiatives across the commercial and operational teams to keep Catalyst at the forefront of industry trends and cutting-edge oncology therapies.

Andrew is a cell and molecular biologist with a Ph.D. from Columbia University and a B.S. from MIT. He brings a broad base of oncology experience to Catalyst. Andrew began his professional career at Prologue Research, a niche oncology CRO, which was founded out of what became the James Cancer Center at The Ohio State University and acquired in 2010 by Novella Clinical.After the acquisition of Novella by Quintiles, Andrew spent nearly seven years working within the standalone CRO subsequently rebranded to IQVIA Biotech in 2019.

Andrew enjoys a wide range of extracurricular activities with his son and daughter. Andrew lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his amazing wife Brooke and their two kids, where they enjoy family time, travel, and any game they can get their hands on.