About the Pistoia Alliance

About Us

Achieving more together

The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit members organization. We were incorporated in 2008 by representatives from AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer, with a shared vision that we can achieve more together.

Today, we have more than 200 members companies representing the biopharmaceutical industry, including 17 of the top 20 pharma companies by R&D expenditure, CROs, technology and service providers, academic and research institutions as well as patient groups.

Using the Pistoia Alliance’s robust legal framework, our members work together pooling expertise and R&D resources to develop solutions that solve shared pre-competitive challenges. These solutions provide the foundations to advance science and create value for the industry, without yielding competitive advantage for individual organizations or requiring competitive data to be shared.

Collaboration under the Pistoia Alliance framework delivers:

  • More brain power on shared problems
  • Distributed risk and shared R&D costs
  • Opportunities to build new skills and your personal network
  • Best practices and industry standards to support new regulations
  • Acceleration of innovation and ultimately faster drug development
Our Members

We achieve this through:

Our educational events and training

  • Annual European and US member conferences
  • European and USA Informatics Forums
  • Educational webinar program
  • Practical technical training

Our rich and evolving portfolio

  • 20 active projects and expert communities
  • 20 active new ideas
  • Over 1,000 people engaged in our portfolio from across the industry
Our Executive Team

Executive Team

Becky Upton

President

Errol Sandler

Secretary

Steve Hollinshead

Treasurer

Christian Baber

Chief Portfolio Officer

The Pistoia Alliance uniquely brings together thought-leaders and change makers from right across the biopharmaceutical ecosystem. Our experienced operations team and consultants are guided and supported by our board of directors and strategic priority portfolio steering committees which reflect the diversity, viewpoints and ambitions of our membership.

Our Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Lars Greiffenberg

Director R&D IT and Translational Informatics, Abbvie

Kailash Swarna

Managing Director & Global Leader, Clinical Development, Accenture

Joe Donahue

Chief Business Officer, Aitia

Sheila Elz

Master Data Manager, Bayer

Lauren Shields

Head of Solution and Value Delivery, Benchling

Richard Jones

CEO, ChemAxon

Jane Lomax

Head of Ontologies, Elsevier

Chris Waller

Vice President , Chief Scientist, EPAM Systems

Mara Peccianti, Grunenthal

Mara Peccianti

Business Partner for R&D – Global IT, Grunenthal

Shuba Chaudhari

Head of Clinical Technology Solutions, GSK

Anthony Rowe

Vice President, Head of Technology - Research Systems, J & J

Ralph Haffner

Head of Information Products and Data Sciences, Novartis

Anna Craig

Global Head of Strategy and Governance, Roche

Paul Denny-Gouldson, Zifo

Paul Denny-Gouldson

Chief Scientific Officer, Zifo

The benefits of pre-competitive collaboration can be seen clearly across our initiatives

Learn more about how collaboration delivers success in our latest

Annual Report
Our flagship IDMP-Ontology project which is developing a digital, machine readable standard to support new regulations.
Our In Vitro Pharmacology working group established with the FDA to develop data standards to accelerate regulatory submissions.
Our Controlled Substance Compliance & Shipping expert community which communicates with regulators and has spun out two separate commercial entities.