Raphaël G. OGNAR

CEO & Co-founder

Raphaël G. Ognar, born in France and raised across the world (especially Australia & Africa), has been in the pharmaceutical industry for over 24 years. During these years, Raphaël built a very strong strategy, commercial & corporate expertise throughout numerous leadership roles in Biotech and Pharmaceutical companies.
His diverse scientific and commercial backgrounds were shaped through Masters & D.E.A. of Physiology & Neurosciences from University of Bordeaux I&II, and an MBA in Strategic Marketing & Enterprise Management from I.A.E of Tours University.
His career allowed him to build a solid commercial expertise through various marketing positions from operational marketing (in France) to global marketing roles (in the US), across multiple leading Medical Devices companies (such as Coloplast) or Pharma/Biotechs (i.e. Hoechst-Marion-Roussel, Novartis Oncology, Celgene & Bristol-Myers Squibb).
This recognized strategic & commercial expertise has been expanded to a very deep understanding of the complex drug lifecycle (discovery, development, market access, approval, commercialization & LCM) through a decade of work in various key leadership roles. Of particular interest, while at Novartis Oncology as a Global New Products Strategic Director, he led large Global multidisciplinary matrix teams involved in portfolio strategy, clinical development & new products strategy and oversaw multiple pipeline programs across several cancer diseases. This role allowed him to critically contribute to the filing & approval of drugs in Hematologic Malignancies & Lung Cancer.
As a next chapter in Pharma/Biotech industry, for over 5 years, Raphaël continued to grow his scope of expertise by integrating Corporate Strategy roles, giving him incremental skills & great understanding of complex problematics, such as Portfolio Management, Strategic Planning, Strategic Finance, Corporate Governance & company transformation, also learning how to manage, lead, influence & support decision making process at executive level (C-Suite & Board of Directors). He also intensified is focus on integrating Digital Health and Real-World Evidence in the strategic & operational mix of Pharma/Biotech business.
For the past 5 years, Raphaël led his executive consulting company, ANIM8 LLC, to increase his Entrepreneurship skills by embracing leadership consulting roles in early-stage Oncology, Cell Therapy biotechs and Digital Health/RWE startups. One of his recent roles as acting CEO of an early cancer cell therapy startup gave him the opportunity to cut his teeth in building strategy, lab and operations from ground-up. Thanks to these multiple experiences, he crafted with his co-founders the idea around NKILT Therapeutics that was registered in Summer 2021. His focus today is to continue to dedicate his life to the fight against cancer, bringing his expertise to help pushing forward innovation.
Besides his professional passion, Raphaël prioritizes his time with his wife, his 2 college sons and his close friends, enjoys playing music with his family rock band, pushes himself doing rock climbing (indoors and outdoors) and various sports, and travels around the world with his family to discover new territories and continuously explore the beauty and secrets of nature and mankind civilizations.