Kenneth J. Sylvester

Kenneth J. Sylvester serves as Senior Advisor to the Avara Board of Directors and the Executive Team. He is a pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain executive with extensive, broad-range knowledge of the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. Dr. Sylvester has demonstrated an outstanding record in managing diverse organizations and achieving tangible results in areas of OSD, medical device/drug combinations, and parenteral plant operations management. His industry experience includes technology transfer, validation, regulatory compliance, supply chain management, employee empowerment, continuous improvement, business development, due diligence, start-up strategy and execution.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Sylvester has held overall P&L responsibility for an operating budget to support $2 billion in product sales for the North American External Manufacturing operation of Sanofi, a global pharmaceutical company involved in the production of finished product at third-party pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. He served as Vice President of Operations at Schein/Watson Pharmaceuticals and as Senior Director Worldwide Supply Operations at GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Sylvester also established a consulting company that provided services in operations management, executive mentoring, continuous improvement, supply chain management, validation, and engineering to pharmaceutical and medical device clients. He also managed a project to deliver a formulation and fill vaccine production facility to support influenza and meningitis products at a major pharmaceutical site.

In addition, Dr. Sylvester managed the global commercial supply chain and developed the commercial product manufacturing launch plans for an integrated biopharmaceutical company; spearheaded a start-up pharmaceutical company’s product development, supply chain sourcing, procurement and distribution initiatives from multi-source global contract manufacturers for API and finished product; directed the overall operation of two major parenteral and OSD manufacturing sites and associated support facilities for a vertically integrated generic company that produced penicillin, cephalosporin and general pharmaceutical products; and managed the design, construction, validation and start-up of one of the first U.S. Regional Compounding Center (RCC) facilities supplying compounded products to major hospital networks which reduced hospital drug costs by 25% using a patented filling process and bulk containers.

He holds U.S. patents on method and apparatus for automatically transferring liquids between containers and automatically producing a plurality of sterile liquid filled delivery and is a registered Pharmacist in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Dr. Sylvester holds a BSc in Pharmacy from Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science, an MBA from LaSalle University and a PhD in Pharmacy-Health Policy from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.