Biography
Dr. Omar Perez has over 17 years designing, deploying, and leading high-visibility oncology initiatives supporting global companion diagnostic developments, strategic partnerships and commercialization opportunities. Before joining AstraZeneca, he oversaw the global CDx developments for the GSK oncology portfolio, leading to diagnostic products for niraparib and dostarlimab. During his time at Pfizer, he led global CDx activities supporting the drug approvals of crizotinib, lorlatinib, dacomitinib talazoparib and inotuzomab. Notably, he led the first FDA approved NGS product for multiple targeted agents and helped establish the Center for Precision Medicine in LATAM to support Pfizer oncology products. Dr. Perez’s background includes roles in biotech and diagnostic companies, including co-founding Nodality, a diagnostic company focused on hematological malignancies. He is an inventor of the multiparametric phospho-proteomic flow technologies and an author of 37 publications and 35 patents.

Biography
Jenn Higgins is responsible for leading and directing the overall government affairs, patient advocacy, public policy, and corporate communications functions for Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH). As a veteran of Washington DC, Jenn serves as the company’s point of contact with Congress and the Administration, actively working with key health care stakeholders to help shape public debate around issues that matter to Guardant Health. Jenn has spent the past twenty years using her tenacity and policy knowledge to help corporate executives navigate a constantly changing legislative and regulatory landscape. As a lobbyist, Jenn has represented a wide variety of Fortune 500 health care companies before Congress and the Administration, serving as Partner with two prominent lobbying firms. She also worked as an analyst and Special Assistant at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, with an emphasis on Medicare policy. Jenn attended Davidson College where she received a B.A. in Medical Economics and Ethics.

Biography
Nikki focuses on accelerating access to precision medicine, especially biomarker testing, for lung cancer patients. Nikki came into patient advocacy from multiple roles at pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies including Genentech, Novartis, and Grifols where she collaborated with patient advocacy groups across different cancer types and other diseases in the US and around the world. This has given her a great vantage point to see the true value of patient advocacy-led multi-stakeholder efforts for jump-starting conversations. She believes that patient advocacy organizations play an essential role in convening different players from government to providers, payers, and industry and leading or contributing to critical work that has long lasting impact on patient care.

Biography
Kat Kwiatkowski, PhD, is an Epidemiologist and currently the SVP Clinical Development at Strata Oncology overseeing the functions of Clinical Development & Operations, Medical Affairs, Translational Medicine, and Regulatory. Strata is a precision oncology company committed to accelerating the impact of precision medicine for patients with cancer. Kat led the design and build of two of the largest prospective cohort studies in the world including the Strata Trial (NGS) and the Sentinel Trial (ctDNA recurrence & treatment monitoring). These studies inform the newly designed StrataPATH study, an interventional therapeutic study to advance biomarker hypotheses. Prior to Strata, Kat worked in various Clinical Development roles in both diagnostics and pharma including Affymetrix where she and team were the first to receive FDA clearance for the first whole genome microarray in cytogenetics. Kat is passionate about helping cancer patients get the best personalized care.

Biography
Dr. Laura van ‘t Veer is a world-renowned molecular biologist whose research focuses on precision medicine to advance patient management. She is co-leader of the Breast Oncology Program at UCSF and co-founder of Agendia Inc. As inventor of MammaPrint she has made a seminal impact on “rightsizing” the treatment of breast cancer. A recent publication on the MINDACT trial shows that 46% of breast cancer patients who are clinically high risk and considered for chemotherapy, can safely forgo this treatment based on a Low Risk MammaPrint result. Dr. van ‘t Veer is co-PI of the multicenter adaptive clinical trial I-SPY2 overseeing FDA-IDE ‘Response-Predictive-Subtyping’ companion diagnostics. She has over 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles and is co-inventor of 9 patents. Dr. van 't Veer received the prestigious European Union Women Innovator Award, 2nd prize in 2014, the 2015 European Patent Office Inventor Award, and is a 2020 PMWC Luminary award recipient.