Doug Locke 
Adam Schwartz
Kim Kushner
Adriana Valenciano
Amit Patel, PharmD
Benit Maru, MB ChB, MSc (Neuroscience), MSc (Health Economics), PhD
Delphine Moreau, MD
Hootan Khatami
Meet the Team
Leadership Team
We are proven innovators from the management consulting and pharmaceutical industries. Our collective expertise in medical affairs, regulatory, clinical development and operations, pharmacovigilance, clinical and academic practice paired with change, project, and organizational management drives strategic thought partnership to execution with our clients
Doug Locke
SSI CEO & Medical Model Transformation Expert
Doug is a consultant and relationship manager with over twenty-five years of domestic and international management experience and is currently serving a dual role of CEO of SSI Strategy and President at Acquis Consulting. Together, these organizations prove that there is an unmet need for program management and scientific support services in Medical Affairs, Clinical, PV, and Regulatory disciplines among other functions in the CMO’s purview.
He works with client leaders to tackle the challenges of the Medical Office within small and mid-sized organizations – often focusing on companies with unique modalities or first to market concepts. He is also adroit in USMA and GMA reengineering efforts for larger client partners. Doug is responsible for some of the company’s longest lasting client partnerships. In collaboration with the many incredible Medical Team and Consultant Team colleagues, he strives to create agile and lasting models for our client partners.
Doug is responsible for oversight of all SSI activities spanning the company’s five offices and maintains over P&L responsibility. He is also working with client leaders on domestic and international projects.
DOUG LOCKE
Chief Executive Officer
Adam Schwartz, PMP
President
Adam is a management consultant with over 15 years of consulting experience across a diverse group of clients. He has spent most of his career working with Life Science industry clients to devise and execute their business strategies. Adam’s consulting experience ranges from Program and Project Management to Business Process Reengineering, Systems Implementation, and Change Management.
Adam began working with SSI Strategy in 2012 in an effort to further his consulting work in the Life Science industry. At SSI Strategy, Adam focuses on developing and delivering new solutions for clients as well as acting as a member of the executive team.
Adam is currently supporting a team of consultants in developing new methodologies for prioritizing Medical Affairs activities and measuring the function’s impact. At another client organization, he is leading a team in the development of new policies and procedures to support a growing Medical Affairs team.
Adam is a hands-on manager and an expert at leveraging his system’s knowledge and business acumen in order to ensure that the solutions delivered by his project team meet the critical needs of the business.
He is the Treasurer of the NY / NJ Chapter of PDMA (Product Development and Management Association). Adam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems from Miami University and is a PMI (Project Management Institute) certified PMP (Project Management Professional).
ADAM SCHWARTZ
President
Kim Kushner
Chief Business Officer
Kim is a strategist with over a decade of experience across the healthcare industry. She has spent the last eight years in a consulting capacity, assisting senior leaders in devising strategies that demonstrate value to their organizations in new ways. Kim has industry experience across pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics, payers, providers, government, nonprofits, and has worked across some of the industry’s most innovative modalities (including gene therapy and digital therapies). She has functional experience in operational strategy, value realization, organizational design, data analytics, and program management. Kim thrives in new challenges and problem solving.
Over the last four years, Kim has focused on designing and executing innovative strategies across medical affairs, clinical affairs/development, and safety. In her role, she works closely with C-Suite leadership, and other client leaders, to drive innovation in the medical space and execute sustainable, realistic, customized solutions. She has led multiple initiatives to demonstrate the value case for investments in the Medical Office.
Prior to joining SSI Strategy, Kim was a manager in Accenture’s health strategy practice where her primary area of expertise was the design and mobilization of data and analytics strategies for healthcare payers and providers. During her tenure, she developed the foundational business case framework to demonstrate the quantitative and qualitative value of investments in enterprise and patient-level analytics.
Preceding these experiences Kim worked in development/non-profit management, government, and patient advocacy/lobbying. Her non-profit and government experiences have taught her to creatively do much more with less.
Outside of her responsibilities at SSI, Kim teaches a course on consulting in the healthcare industry at the Yale School of Public Health. She also serves as the Chair of the Junior Board of Advisors for the American Cancer Society in New York City.
KIM KUSHNER
Chief Business Officer
Craig Ungaro
Chief Financial Officer
Craig Ungaro is the Chief Financial Officer for SSI Strategy. Craig has over 20 years of diverse experience across Investment Banking and Corporate Finance for both public and private companies. Prior to joining SSI, he was the North American finance leader for Gartner Consulting where he helped scale the Consulting business. Additionally, Craig has deep experience in the Healthcare and Life Sciences industries. As a member of the finance team at IMS Health (now IQVIA), he supported revenue and profitability expansion and ultimately taking the company public through an IPO. Prior to IMS, he worked at Thomson Healthcare (now part of IBM Watson Health) where he was focused on Mergers & Acquisitions. Craig is passionate about helping companies achieve their strategic and financial growth objectives and increasing operational effectiveness.
Craig holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Duke University and a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Finance from the University of Virginia. Craig resides in Connecticut with his wife and two children.
CRAIG UNGARO
Chief Financial Officer
Delphine Moreau,MD
Senior Vice President, Medical
Delphine is a senior pharma medical executive with broad European, US and global experience in the field of Medical Affairs, with a predominant focus on Oncology.
After practicing in academic hospitals in Paris, France, Delphine spent the last 15 years in roles of increasing responsibility at Roche, Genentech, Bristol-Myers Squibb and prior to joining SSI, at AstraZeneca, where she was the Medical Affairs SVP for the Oncology business unit. Through her different tenures, Delphine has led global and local medical functions with broad accountability from overall medical and non registrational evidence plans, to field teams, early access programs, Real World Evidence, Health Economics and Outcomes Research, publications, clinical operations, as well as external partnerships and alliances. She has accumulated considerable experience in organizational build and redesign, developing organizations with strong strategic and executional skills with the ability to directly and indirectly contribute to their company’s portfolio success, while driving demonstrable improvement in patients care and outcomes.
In her 25 years or hospital and pharma career, Delphine has accumulated deep knowledge and understanding of the various aspects of drug development & commercialization (including in territories such as Japan & China), of what is needed for successful interactions with health & reimbursement authorities, for co-development and commercialization partnerships and for scientific partnerships with private and public entities.
Delphine received her Medical degree from the Cochin School of Medicine in Paris, France, with a dual board certification in Hematology and Medical intensive care, as well as a Master degree and DEA in Immunology from the Rene Diderot University in Paris, France. She practiced at the Saint Louis Hospital and Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute in Paris, before starting her Pharma career at Roche.
DELPHINE MOREAU, MD
Senior Vice President, Medical
Jen Seda, MD
Practice Lead & SVP, Medical
Jen Seda, MD excels in developing business-aligned medical strategies and translating these into proven tactical execution via strategic R&D, payer evidence generation, KOL relationships, influential publications, behavior changing education and medical messaging, with budgets ranging from less than $50k to over $20 million. She brings this expertise to SSI strategy, building custom medical landscape-based solutions with clients of all sizes and stages of development.
Dr. Jen Seda most recently served as Vice President of Market Access, Government and Medical Affairs at TerumoBCT, a global device company with products in hematology, neurology, critical care, orthopedics and stem cell technologies. Previously, she led the Global Medical Affairs team at Baxter Healthcare, Biologics division through launches in rare disease in pulmonology and neurology. She has helped build strong and effective medical affairs and medical information teams from scratch at Coviden, Respiratory and Monitoring division and has led both medical affairs and marketing teams at Talecris Biotherapeutics to market leadership in orphan disease.
Dr. Seda received her medical degree and training in neuroimmunology at the Mayo Clinic and undergraduate from U.C. Irvine, with additional experience running bench science and basic research experience at the clinic and at Amgen, allowing her insight to strategic and practical planning from bench to bedside in pharma, device and wellness.
JEN SEDA, MD
Practice Lead & Senior Vice President, Medical
Madhav Gurijala
Senior Vice President
In his 18+ year career as a consultant, Madhav has extensive experience in strategy, design, and implementation, working with all levels: operational resources to executive leadership teams. Projects have ranged from operational risk assessments, organizational/functional buildouts, and product launches, to IT implementations and financial operations optimization. They have spanned all aspects of the project lifecycle, from requirements gathering workshops to project planning to testing and deployment. His experience ensures he will add near- and long-term value, from the start, to any project varying in industry focus, scale, complexity, company size and culture.
At the corporate level, Madhav has applied his efforts on projects such has building a complex financial shared services operational model from scratch as part of a post-merger integration effort, as well as supporting a start-up media company raise funds, develop industry partnerships, build out their technology, and market the technology to other businesses as well as consumers.
In the past several years, Madhav has focused the above skills, knowledge, and experience helping life sciences companies of varying size and complexity in their strategic growth and operational efficiencies with a core focus on the Chief Medical Officer’s function. This experience has spanned various stages of the product lifecycle – from clinical development to product launch; across functions – from clinical to manufacturing to regulatory to commercial; at all levels – from the operational resources up to the companies’ CEOs.
His team was instrumental in helping one such company become one of the top performing IPOs in a down market and a top performing company overall before its purchase by a larger firm. His attention is currently directed towards working creatively with pre- and post-IPO emerging biotechs, with novel therapies addressing rare diseases.
Madhav has earned both a B.A. in Math and Econ and an M.S. in Operations Research from Columbia University.
MADHAV GURIJALA
Senior Vice President
Kerby Houff
Senior Vice President
Kerby is a Senior Vice President at SSI Strategy. He is a management consultant executive and PMP-certified program manager with more than 15 years’ experience helping clients solve big problems. He has significant experience supporting life science companies with organizational transformation efforts with a focus on supporting the Chief Medical Officer and everything under the Medical Office’s purview, from Clinical Development to Global Medical Affairs to Pharmacovigilance.
He is a frequent contributor to SSI thought leadership, authoring the white paper, Preparing for Leadership Transition: Strategic Planning for Broadened Responsibilities. Outside of his responsibilities at SSI, he is an Adjunct Professor of Management at Virginia Tech, teaching courses on management consulting and driving value in professional services organizations.
Prior to joining SSI in 2012, Kerby was a Managing Director at DRT Strategies, a boutique management consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He managed DRT’s Law Enforcement and Homeland Security Sector, and was responsible for all projects with the US Department of Justice, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the US Department of Treasury.
Kerby holds a Master in Business Administration from Georgetown University and Bachelors of Science degrees in Finance and Marketing Management from Virginia Tech. He lives in Arlington, VA with his wife Meredith and their four children, Emerson, Yardley, Hampton, and Poppy.
KERBY HOUFF
Senior Vice President
Hootan Khatami
Senior Vice President,Medical
Hootan Khatami, MD serves as Global Medical Lead at SSI Strategy. In Dr. Khatami’s role at SSI Strategy, he focuses on providing a medical and scientific perspective to in Medical Affairs strategy, pre-launch and launch planning, and clinical development/lifecycle strategy. He plays a key role in SSI’s bespoke advisory services and medical leadership service offerings.
Most recently, Dr. Khatami was Vice President and Head of Global Medical Affairs at Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, later acquired by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, focusing on launch planning and medical organizational leadership for the Sucampo pipeline in rare neurologic and GI diseases. Prior to joining Sucampo, Dr. Khatami served as Chief Executive Officer and interim Chief Medical Officer at Escala Therapeutics, focused on clinical development and regulatory leadership of the company’s early clinical-stage pipeline in rare neuromuscular and nephrologic disorders, as well as leading the overall corporate management and pipeline growth strategy.
Dr. Khatami’s other professional experiences include nearly 20 years of academic and industry clinical and translational R&D in cardiovascular/metabolic disorders and rare diseases in positions of increasing responsibility, spanning the full lifecycle of drug development at Merck, Roche-Genentech, Sanofi-Genzyme, and Daiichi-Sankyo. His key experiences included US, Global and Regional medical affairs team leadership; product launches (Kynamro at Genzyme; Toujeo at Sanofi); medical affairs lead and pre-launch planning for Global, US and Latin America for Taspoglutide; clinical development and phase 4 strategy of sitagliptin/Januvia; as well lifecycle and portfolio strategy and organizational management. Other roles have involved early to late stage clinical development; as well as business development, licensing evaluations, and alliance management.
Dr. Khatami earned his Doctor of Medicine degree at Albany Medical College; and completed Endocrinology fellowship at University of California, San Francisco, where he led the conduct of a proof of concept study of leptin for the treatment of HIV-associated Lipodystrophy. He completed internal medicine residency at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, CA, and Dual Bachelors of Arts in Integrative Biology and French Literature at University of California, Berkeley.
He is proficient in French, Spanish and Farsi.
HOOTAN KHATAMI, MD
Senior Vice President, Medical
Kate Goldstein
Senior Vice President
Kate is passionate about applying innovative approaches to solve the greatest challenges in life sciences. Since joining SSI in 2011, she has worked with industry leaders to address some of the highest areas of unmet need for patients, including advancing novel modalities (gene therapy, digital diagnostics) focused in rare disease.
Kate has over 13 years of experience providing strategic and operational solutions across the Medical Office, with functional experience in Medical Affairs, Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, HEOR & Real World Evidence, Safety, Quality, and Corporate Program Management. She specializes in helping business leaders define and operationalize their corporate, clinical, medical, and organizational strategies to drive value for client organizations, investors, and ultimately, for patients.
A sampling of Kate’s work includes:
- Medical Office Design & Build: working with the Executive team to scale a gene therapy company’s Medical organization to support the transition from lab to clinic
- GMA Strategy & Plan: defining a global oncology company’s Medical strategic roadmap to build the infrastructure necessary to support near-term launch activities and long-term corporate objectives
- Gene therapy CDP: establishing the Clinical Development Plan for the first curative gene therapy, setting the industry precedent for GT clinical pathways
- Digital Diagnostic Launch: defining, building, and managing the cross-functional launch infrastructure to enable commercialization of a novel digital diagnostic tool
Kate also supports various SSI corporate initiatives, including SSI’s investment fund. Prior to SSI, Kate was a member of Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations practice, where she delivered M&A/ integration, financial management, and human capital solutions. She received her B.A. from Penn State University.
KATE GOLDSTEIN
Senior Vice President
Adriana Valenciano
Vice-President
Adriana approaches each client engagement with a sense of curiosity, eager to discover the unique aspects of the situation and apply her experience to develop and implement tailored solutions.
During her tenure Adriana has supported Life Science companies at various stages of their lifecycle from early stage to launch. Her focus has been in Rare Disease companies, supporting functions within the Medical Office. In her roles she has supported stand-up of various functions, including Pharmacovigilance, Medical Affairs, and Clinical Operations. More holistically she has supported companies through launch activities – providing cross-functional program management across PV, Medical, Clinical, Regulatory and Quality. She has provided strategic guidance and support for various initiatives aimed at accelerating performance and driving greater value to the business – whether it be through improved efficiencies through process improvement, or more medical insight to drive strategy.
Adriana truly enjoys the client-focused nature of consulting and prides herself on establishing partnerships with her clients, enabling them to advance together and become champions of change within the organization. Prior to joining SSI, Adriana worked at Booz Allen Hamilton. She holds a Master of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in International Relations and Affairs from the George Washington University.
ADRIANA VALENCIANO
Senior Vice President
Victoria Benech
Vice President
Victoria is a Vice President with SSI Strategy, and brings over 10 years of consulting experience focused on the healthcare and life sciences industries. Victoria has advised organizations on operational performance improvements, organizational design strategies, business process designs, and customer engagement strategies.
Examples of Victoria’s recent work include:
- Leading the organizational restructuring of the Global Medical Affairs function of a large pharmaceutical company
- Designing and driving a multinational patient-centric program for a leading Oncology pharmaceutical company
- Advising a large pharmaceutical company on key opinion leader (KOL) engagement strategy
- Designing a strategic roadmap for the Chief Medical Officer of a gene and cell therapy company
Prior to joining SSI in 2015, Victoria was a part of KPMG’s Life Sciences Advisory practice. She holds a Bachelors of Business Administration from the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary, and currently lives in Washington, D.C.
VICTORIA BENECH
Senior Vice President
AMIT PATEL, PHARMD
Senior Vice President, Medical
Medical and Consulting Leads
Our Medical and Consulting Leads guide the critical interface with our client partners. They provide the perfect balance of expertise and integration to each engagement with passion, custom insights, and transferable leadership skills.
Jen Seda, MD
Kate Goldstein
Madhav Gurijala
Ramin Farhood PharmD, MBA
Victoria Benech
Kerby Houff
Vivian Lee
Berthold Greifenberg, MD
Robert Honigberg MD, MBA
Elizabeth Squiers MD, FACS, RAC
Erik Neu
Harold Wright PhD
Heather Paden
Jacqui Levine
Jessica Pry
Leah Damesek
Len Walt MD
Linet Bolar MD
Max Craig
Maria Basco, MD, MPH
Nino Devidze, PhD
Parul Houston, PhD
Ramesh Arjunji PhD
Robert Bwire MD
Anshul Jain, PhD
Rishi Thukral
Delivery Team
Our Delivery Team is the key to driving Medical Office progress each and every day in our client settings. Custom team arrays drive operational efficiencies, advance client capabilities, and help clients deliver patient-centered outcomes.
Alexandra Kinnally
Ameen Ghannam
Brendan Slagle
Dani Thomas
Drew S. Jones
Hannah Cooke
James Hughes-Hallett
Jason Lo
Joseph Massey
Noa Jeremias
Michelle Purdom, PhD, RN
Rachel Kilian, MMBT, PhD
Rajesh B. Shukla
Victoria Oswald
Anthony Pisciotta
Divya Kathuria
Vivian Carlson
Aaron Krieger
Allyson Morton, Ph.D.
Andres Ramirez
Anne Pullman
Caroline Heldring
Emma White
Falak Koreshi
Jordan Price
Kimberly Croft, PhD, MBA
Minna Montgomery
Natalie Japlon
Sophia Stoychev
Samar Chakar, Pharm D
Tom McMonagle
Yogi Medepalli
Catherine Zhou, MD, MPH
Ella Mokrushin, PharmD, MBA
Fritz Thompson
Jonell Hussain
Katie Sciandra
Malu Foley
Niha Mathur
Sean Gallagher
Tina Moraleda
Beth Mastin
Coleen Barbiere
Denise Friebely
Donna Lawrence
Gabe Miller
Jesse Alexander
Laura Prout
Megan Cavallo
Neil Murphy
Olivia Hanlon
Therapeutic and Functional Experts
Our Therapeutic and Functional Experts provide the added value at just the right inflection point based on client need. Their specialty and functional knowledge provide the edge of proven performance that make each project a success.
Tami Smith, MD
Oscar Segurado, MD, PhD
Nova Silver
Betsy Quackenbush
Linda Wase, MD
Channel Leads and Advisors
Simon Kennedy
Gred Fiore, MD
Channel Partners
Our curated Channel Partners offer unique tools or insight engines for our clients: from value determination to patient engagement platforms to patient identification. We have specialized training and integration plans to provide breakthrough value to existing client teams or as part of an integrated offering with our Delivery Team.
Doug Locke
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