Erica Whittaker

Erica is Head of UCB Ventures, a strategic corporate venture fund. She also serves on the Boards of StrideBio (Durham, North Carolina) and Ally Therapeutics (Cambridge, Massachusetts). She joined UCB in 2010 as VP Strategy & Partnering, New Medicines (discovery to clinical proof of concept), developing and leading the UCB-Harvard Research Alliance. In 2012, she joined the internal strategy team shaping UCB’s current Patient Value Strategy. As Head of Market Access EMEA 2013-2017, Erica was instrumental in developing regional patient access and pricing strategies and was Chair of the Healthcare Systems Working Group of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Association (EFPIA). Prior to UCB, Erica spent 10 years as a top-ranked biotechnology equity analyst for Merrill Lynch in London, where she conducted analyses for publicly listed European biotechnology and mid-cap pharmaceutical companies. Erica attended Brown University (Rhode Island, USA) receiving BA degrees in Biology and Comparative Literature. She moved to the UK on a Marshall Scholarship obtaining a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University Business School in Edinburgh.