As Covance changes up its leadership amid a major change at the top of its parent company, one of its former execs has jumped ship to midsize rival CRO Pharm-Olam.
First up, let’s look at what happened at its rival: John Ratliff said this month he is leaving his former post as CEO of Covance and moving up to lead LabCorp Diagnostics amid a change at the very top of the CRO’s parent company.
This has led Paul Kirchgraber, currently senior vice president and head of Covance’s clinical trial testing solutions, to step up to become its new chief; both roles are effective Nov. 1 this year.
And all these moves come as Adam Schechter becomes president and CEO of LabCorp, also at the start of next month.
Amid these changes, Robert Davie, Ph.D., most recently vice president and general manager of global clinical development at Covance, has left the CRO to become chief at Houston-based Pharm-Olam, which provides clinical development services for biopharmas in oncology-hematology, infectious disease, vaccines and rare diseases.
Davie succeeds David Grange, who has served as Pharm-Olam’s CEO since April 2017. Grange will, however, remain a director and vice chairman of the company’s board and “will continue to support the organization and its work in U.S. government-funded research, which is an expanding area of Pharm-Olam’s business,” it said in a statement.
“Rob Davie is a respected leader who has worked within the CRO industry for over 25 years. We look forward to his leadership and knowledge supporting the continued growth of Pharm-Olam,” said Zev Munk. M.D., founder and chairman of the board.
“We also extend our sincere thanks to David Grange for his leadership over the past two-and-a-half years, having transformed Pharm-Olam’s therapeutic focus while achieving record sales for 2018.”
“Pharm-Olam presents a unique opportunity with an organization already positioned for continued expansion, and where I can leverage my expertise in scaling a CRO to achieve its accelerated growth strategy,” Davie added.