BIA regional focus: Stevenage

Steve Bates OBE

Chief Executive Officer

What does your role at BIA involve?

Steve Bates is the CEO of the UK Bioindustry Association, the UK’s Trade Association for innovative life science companies with over 550 members. Steve is the visible face of the vibrant UK life sciences industry to government and media. He serves on the UK Government’s Life Sciences Council and the UK Biosecurity Leadership Council. Steve was a founder member of the UK Government’s Vaccine Taskforce in the Covid crisis, sitting on its steering Board alongside Kate Bingham. He is active member and former chair the International Council of Biotech Associations and has been a board member of EuropaBio since 2015.

Previous experience & achievements

Steve has championed, with government, effective industrial incentives like the Biomedical Catalyst, which have crowded in private sector investment into UK SMEs. He is a driving force behind the scale up agenda, spearheading policy agenda to unlock UK pension fund capital into productive UK growth in life sciences. He has forged several links for the sector across the USA, Europe and in China. In his time at the BIA, Steve has developed new member groups focused on cell and gene therapy, genomics and engineered biology. A strong advocate of partnership working, Steve champions sector collaboration with research charities and academia. Proud to lead an organisation with a diverse Board with over 40% female representation, Steve is committed to next generation talent and developing the skills needed for the sector to flourish. Before joining the BIA in 2012, Steve worked for Genzyme and was advisor to the UK Government of Tony Blair working on NHS reform and the Northern Ireland peace process. He was made OBE for services to innovation in 2017 and became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science in 2020.

Dr Sally Ann Forsyth OBE

CEO, Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst

Sally Ann is responsible for the development of the SBC Campus to its full potential as a world-class science, innovation and business cluster. Prior to this, Sally Ann was the first Director for Harwell Oxford, where she was responsible for the establishment of the Harwell Enterprise Zone, the European Space Agency and the establishment of the UK Space Satellite Catapult Centre. She was also Director of Colworth Science Park, a leading location for open innovation developed under a joint venture between Unilever and Goodman International property group. Before coming to SBC, Sally Ann was CEO of Norwich Research Park, a life science cluster of world leading academics, researchers and clinicians. Sally Ann began her career with Unilever as a management trainee and went on to hold a range of roles across venture capital, technology licensing and strategic alliance management. She has a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge and is a qualified Chartered Global Management Accountant.

Irene Graham OBE

CEO, ScaleUp Institute

Irene is the founding CEO and a board director of the ScaleUp Institute, a private sector, not-for-profit company focused on making the UK the best place in the world to scale up a business. She is a former senior banker at Standard Chartered where she held both European and global managing director roles. She set up, ran and scaled several of the bank’s key client and product businesses across its corporate and institutional bank and led several global M&A activities. During that time at the height of the financial crisis was seconded to work across the banking industry where she lead the Business Finance Taskforce and Better Business Finance which was responsible for, amongst other initiatives, the founding of the Business Growth Fund, SME Finance Monitor, and leading on developments in Open Banking, and the Small Business Act. She is a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University and holds a variety of non executive director and advisory roles across the creative, business and finance communities.

Dr Uday Phadke

Chief Executive Officer, Cartezia and Triple Chasm

Dr Phadke has focused over the last three decades on how science and technology enabled innovation can be translated to deliver commercial impact. This work spans three inter-related areas: academic research and teaching in technology, innovation, and business; the design and promotion of national and international innovation initiatives; and working closely with commercial businesses to create new products, services, and business models. Dr Phadke is the originator of the Triple Chasm Approach, which challenges many of the commonly held perceptions about how innovations are transformed to create commercial, social, and environmental impact. He is the author of two books: ‘Camels, Tigers & Unicorns: Rethinking science and technology-enabled Innovation’ and ‘The Scale-up Manual: Handbook for Innovators, Entrepreneurs, Teams, and Firms’, which has become the basis for many global programmes on science and technology commercialisation. He is currently Chief Executive of Cartezia and is also Chief Executive of the Triple Chasm Company He was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Judge Business School at Cambridge University from 2011-2016, and currently serves on the Boards of the UK R&D Society and the Stevenage Bio-Catalyst. He was elected a Fellow of the RSA in 2018.

Dr Kate Rowley

Chief Business Officer, Deepmatter

Over 25 years’ experience in the life sciences technology sector spanning company formation, business development and investment. Previous investor roles at Bioscience Managers PTY and IP Group plc and business development roles at Abcodia and Quotient Sciences, a clinical drug development CRO. PhD, Molecular Virology, BSc (Hons) First Class, Microbiology and Biotechnology and MBA with distinction.