Nikki Bromwich
I am an experienced and respected professional with a clinical background, and over a decade of leadership in business support and economic growth across the Oxford and London life sciences ecosystems. My career has been defined by collaborative innovation, strategic leadership and a deep commitment to strengthening the UK’s life science sector.
I have successfully led a portfolio of collaborative programmes involving industry, universities, NHS and investors. My previous roles have included working with Pfizer, Bayer, and AbbVie, and as Head of Commercial Development at Oxford HIN I led a strategic partnership with Janssen. In 2016, I convened stakeholders including Bucks New University, NHS, LEP, Janssen and GE Healthcare, to secure a £4.1 million collaborative bid to deliver a Life Sciences Innovation Centre and Accelerator programme.
As COO at MedCity I led a Research England programme to enhance collaboration between life science clusters across the UK, which included a post-pandemic investor summit at The Crick. I also worked closely with MSD and Roche on several of programmes including the Collaborate to Innovate programme. More recently I proposed the commissioning of the TechBio Boost programme led by BIA & KQ labs, and I also created and delivered a UK launchpad for Japanese data driven SMEs.
In my current role I lead on business growth and investment and I am working closely with the BIA team to deliver London Life Sciences Week 2025.
My governance experience includes serving on the board of the innovation catalyst The Hill and regularly reporting to the MedCity Board. These roles reflect my consistent engagement with a broad spectrum of organisations across the UK as well as with industry and investors, researchers and founders.
If I am elected to the BIA Board as an Associate Member, I will bring a collaborative leadership style, a strategic ecosystem-wide perspective and a proven ability to convene stakeholders, as well as my commitment to advancing the BIA’s mission and contributing to the growth and resilience of the UK life science sector.
Colin Hairley
As a longstanding adviser to biotech companies and the former Chair of the Finance and Tax Committee of the BIA, I know the frustrations and excitement of life in biotech. I am a passionate advocate for the sector and would love the opportunity to join the BIA Board.
As chair of FTAC over 15 years, I ensured that meetings were energised and informative, with all voices across the sector able to be heard to tackle key issues and assist the BIA executive.
I enjoyed providing an informed view to HM Treasury, HMRC, Innovate UK and the House of Lords to maximise benefits and minimise threats in the tax system for the sector, including R&D tax credits, patent box, employee share schemes and EIS/VCT reliefs. I was instrumental in sounding the alarm on the danger of the collapse of Silicon Valley bank, as well as tax changes such as the removal of the original PAYE cap on R&D tax credits, and the exemption to the cap when it was reintroduced, and the concept of enhanced EIS/VCT reliefs for knowledge intensive companies.
My enthusiasm for the biotech sector led to me founding Confluence Tax in 2010, which became the leading tax advisory firm for biotech companies throughout the UK. I now provide tax advice in my new firm, Lumiere Tax.
I have worked on numerous fundraisings, collaborations, M&A transactions and IPOs, almost exclusively in the sector. I have deep knowledge of the issues faced by early-stage spin outs, mature biotechs, investors, management teams and employees. I have also run a Biotech Employee Equity Survey to provide benchmarks for the UK sector.
I know how the industry works and how the BIA works. I would love the opportunity to help make the BIA even more successful, particularly through more member outreach, improved data gathering and greater communication between the Board, executive, committees and members.
Christopher Hayes
Skills & Suitability
With a unique combination of scientific, legal, and governance expertise, I bring a holistic perspective to BIA Board leadership. As Chief Intellectual Property Officer & Head of Legal at Pangea Botanica, and Non-Executive Director to the UK Cannabinoid R&D Strategy Group, I have guided strategic decision-making at the intersection of biotechnology innovation, regulatory affairs, and commercial excellence. My academic grounding in genetics and molecular biology, alongside professional legal qualifications, enables me to understand both scientific innovation and the regulatory frameworks that guide our sector.
Relevant Experience
My career spans the pharmaceutical industry, UK legal practice, and academic fellowships at the Medical Research Council and University of Oxford. I have led IP and legal teams on complex cross-border R&D portfolios, helped shape regulatory exclusivity strategy, and forged partnerships across the life sciences sector. I understand the strategic challenges and opportunities faced by SMEs, start-ups, and established corporates in the UK ecosystem.
Motivation and Alignment with BIA
As the UK’s bioindustry continues its rapid evolution, strong, informed governance is essential. I am passionate about representing the diverse voices of the industry and ensuring the BIA maintains its leading role in advocacy, policy, and innovation support. My track record in science, law, and cross-sector leadership equips me to champion members’ interests—especially in IP strategy, R&D policy, and expanding industry-geography representation.
Value Addition
I will contribute balanced, forward-thinking governance, foster collaboration between science and business, and ensure the BIA remains responsive to member needs across regions and industry stages.
Harriet Holme
Leadership and Governance
Clinician-scientist and senior life sciences strategist with 20 years’ experience in paediatric oncology, translational research, early-stage development and non-profit leadership. Founder and Executive Chair of PCD Research - a global charity advocating to improve patient outcomes, funding research, and promoting global collaboration through a scientific advisory board of 30 international experts.
My leadership is rooted in patient impact and professional understanding of life science delivery. I hold direct responsibility for strategy, policy development and financial stewardship. Within a year, I secured full AMRC membership by embedding rigorous governance and peer review, demonstrating that a small, patient-led organisation can deliver to the highest national standards, and my ability to bring trusted, board-level credibility at pace.
Coalition Building & System Change
Building on the UK’s unique position, I architected a national operating model for rare disease, secured senior engagement across DHSC, OLS and DSIT, to align stakeholders behind reforms that reduce development friction and improve patient access. With international support, I am a proven coalition builder uniting SMEs, pharma, academia, the NHS and government behind pragmatic, patient-centred, delivery-focused solutions - using rare disease as a scalable proof-of-concept for more personalised medicine.
Commercial Insight
Alongside charity leadership, I bring hands-on clinical development experience, leading value-inflection and investor-readiness work in biotech and mid-cap pharma. I translate robust science into credible development pathways, ensuring innovation is investable and focused on patient benefit.
What I’ll Bring to the BIA Board
I will represent charities and patient-led organisations, ensuring their voices sit alongside those of investors and industry. I am motivated by a combination of personal perspective and professional expertise to drive patient impact. I will help the BIA continue to unlock the UK’s potential as a global leader in life sciences, driving sustainable growth for members and delivering transformative outcomes for patients.
Anne Horgan
I am a Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), leading early-stage investments within the Life Sciences team. With over 20 years of experience across drug discovery, technology transfer, venture capital, and company creation, I bring a broad, international perspective to the biotech and investment ecosystem. I believe this would be valuable to BIA’s policy and advocacy work— particularly its efforts to represent UK biotech internationally—and to its ecosystem-building activities in which I’ve consistently participated.
My career began as a medicinal chemist at Cambridge Biotechnology Ltd, contributing to small molecule drug discovery. I then moved into technology transfer at Cancer Research Technology (now Cancer Research Horizons), gaining deep insight into academic innovation and translation into products. I built my investment career in France, at Sofinnova Partners and AdBio Partners, before joining CIC.
I serve on several private biotech boards and the BIA Women in Biotech advisory board. I value consensus-building, strong governance, and asking the right questions while providing support. Passionate about inclusive leadership, I’ve championed diversity across biotech, investment, and board governance, have been a WiB mentor over the last 2 years and worked closely with the BIA team on its March 2025 Women in Biotech Leadership report.
Educated in France and the UK, with postdoctoral research in the US at Yale University, I hold a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Bristol and a diplôme d’ingénieur (equivalent to MSc) from INSA Rouen.
I am committed to fostering a thriving, inclusive, and globally connected UK life sciences sector. My diverse background enables me to represent the full spectrum of BIA members—from academic founders to scale-ups and investors—and I would relish the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the Association’s outstanding impact and continued success.
Matthew Neal
Why I Am Standing
The UK life sciences sector is a force for good. It delivers life-changing treatments for patients and drives economic growth through skilled jobs and world-leading companies. Yet the sector faces challenges: securing capital to scale, ensuring adoption of innovation, and attracting inward investment.
That is why I have taken action. In the past year, I hosted events on how pension fund money could be channelled to growth capital and on technology’s potential to transform the NHS. I coordinated a letter from sell-side analysts that informed Office for Life Sciences planning. I am now focusing efforts to support the Life Sciences Strategy, targeting inward investment. My aim is to convene investors, industry, and government to find common ground and generate solutions to funding, commercial, and regulatory issues.
What I Bring
If elected, I will bring energy, passion, and a proven ability to convene diverse voices to tackle members’ challenges. I will use my communications expertise and networks to amplify the sector’s story and champion its interests as the UK delivers the Life Sciences Strategy.
I specialise in communications that unlock growth: financial PR, investor relations, strategic communications, M&A, crisis management, government relations, and marketing. I have advised companies raising capital from Series A to IPO and exit, helping management teams create compelling investment cases. I have also worked international trade associations BIO and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. What unites those I have supported is the ambition to strengthen a UK ecosystem that delivers new medicines and technologies while creating jobs at home and impact globally.
Who am I
I am Partner and Head of Health & Life Sciences at 5654 & Company with 20 years of corporate affairs experience and the majority focused on life sciences and investment. Previously, I was a Partner at ICR Health.
Toby Reid
I am a Founding and Exec Director of Pioneer Group the UK’s largest life sciences real
estate operator and venture builder. Prior to that I was CEO of BioCity Group. Pioneer
Group’s purpose (and that of BioCity before) is very similar to that of the BIA. We also
‘enable companies to start, grow and deliver world-changing innovation’ but through the
integrated provision of mission critical real estate, venture building support and venture
capital.
We operate innovation campuses, venture building programmes and venture capital
funds across the UK. We are home to several hundred life science companies from large
multinational corporate to start-ups, at every stage of the commercialisation journey
from R&D to manufacture, tackling human and planetary health challenges. And every
year we support a similar number with our early-stage ventures team in partnership with
both large pharma and UK funding bodies such as Innovate UK.
As a business we support life science companies of all types across the United
Kingdom as well as the emerging technologies and entrepreneurs that are forming the
companies of the future. We also work with large pharma, UK funding bodies, real
estate investors, university tech transfer oices, local and national government and
other venture capitalists. As a leader of the business, I have spent a lot of time
considering challenges in the UK life sciences sector such as commercialisation of
university science, access to long term capital, talent and the funding and timely
delivery of future proofed life science real estate.
It is my hope that this knowledge and insight will be valuable to the BIA, in its role as the
voice of industry, and supportive, of the BIA, in our shared mission to help companies
start, grow and deliver world-changing innovations.
Malcolm Silander
Malcolm is the Co-founder of Precision BioSearch and has dedicated almost 20 years of his career to supporting pioneering talent and leadership within the life sciences sector. He has been responsible for scaling three recruitment organisations across the EU and North America, supporting hundreds of drug discovery and development companies.
He is a former STEM Ambassador, a Mentor for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, and a current Advisor to the University of Westminster School of Life Sciences. He is an elected District Councillor for Sevenoaks, Kent, where he serves on the Finance & Investment Advisory Committee. Malcolm holds a Joint Honours MA degree in Sociology & Politics from the University of Edinburgh.
A voice for innovation and growth
Malcolm is deeply engaged with the BIA’s mission to support emerging biotech. Through his work in executive search, he engages with hundreds of biotech C-suite leaders and investors, speaks on panels, delivers seminars to accelerator programmes, and is a vocal advocate of the BIA’s inclusion initiatives.
Malcolm is motivated to join the BIA Board to represent the crucial and diverse perspectives of his broad biotech network. His expertise in biotech leadership recruitment and talent strategy for start-up and scale-up biotech companies across the UK, EU, and US equips him to strengthen the BIA’s work in Skills & Talent, Growing the Sector, and Diversity & Inclusion. He is a well-respected figure among executives and investors across the biotech ecosystem, with his finger on the pulse of the daily challenges faced by companies establishing and expanding in the UK. Possessing an innate interest in both science and politics, as demonstrated throughout his career, he is committed to helping shape the direction of the BIA and influencing government policy to ensure the UK advances its position as a global leader in life sciences innovation.
Hakim Yadi
Experience: I bring 18+ years of experience at the intersection of life sciences, health, technology and policy. Awarded an OBE for services to healthcare technology and the economy. I have founded and scaled organisations that translate innovation into patient impact. As Co-Founder and CEO of Closed Loop Medicine (CLM), a BIA corporate member, I led a team that built a TechBio business developing regulatory-cleared drug–software products for drug dosing. This provided experience securing venture capital investment, building strategic BioPharma partnerships and developing innovative products.
BIA Engagement: For over a decade, I have engaged with the BIA through several companies. At CLM, I supported BIA's TechBio workstream, actively contributed to the Data Access Subgroup, and supported the BIA PULSE programme developing our next generation of entrepreneurs. As founding CEO of the Northern Health Science Alliance (Other Member) - I strengthened BIA's regional engagement in the North of England. Currently as Chairman of Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland (HIRANI) (Other Member) I support BIA engagement in Northern Ireland.
Policy & Government: Previously, as COO of the UK Government's DIT Life Sciences Organisation, I helped deliver the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy. I worked with the BIA to embed industry priorities in government policy, providing valuable perspective on policy-industry interfaces affecting BIA members.
Value & Motivation: As Chairman of HIRANI, and with networks spanning venture capital, BioPharma, TechBio, health and government, I bring perspectives across the full spectrum of BIA membership. Having led both start-ups and national alliances, I understand the operational challenges of building companies, raising capital, and navigating regulation.
I am motivated to ensure BIA represents the whole sector amplifying SME and regional voices and keeping advocacy grounded in delivery. My goal is maintaining the BIA’s position as the essential bridge between innovators, investors, and government, ensuring UK life sciences remains globally competitive.