Betty is a Partner in Kearney’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice. She has nearly 20 years of experience as a management consultant, working in portfolio strategy, growth strategy, corporate strategy, commercial development, and pricing and market access. Her work focuses on the intersection of scientific innovation, healthcare policy, and patient access.

Prior to consulting, Betty spent 7 years in nuclear medicine clinical research at the UCLA Medical Center. She holds a BS in Molecular, Cell, and Development Biology from UCLA and an MS in Regulatory Science from the USC School of Pharmacy.

Johanna DeYoung is a distinguished leader who spearheads the strategy and go-to-market direction for Slalom Life Sciences. With 20 years of dedicated experience, she has consistently demonstrated a customer-obsessed approach and partners with some of the world’s leading Life Sciences companies to create compassionate patient experiences, drive top-line growth, and maximize the value of data, technology, and innovation.

Johanna’s strategic acumen is instrumental in supporting the needs of Life Sciences customers across the value chain, delivering transformative value from molecule to market. Her expertise spans commercial strategy, M&A, customer experience, transformation, launch strategies, data strategies, market access, and field force enablement. Johanna’s strong executive-level relationships and ability to stay ahead of industry and therapeutic trends solidify her reputation as a thought leader and an international industry speaker.

At Slalom, where more than 1,700 Life Sciences practitioners partner with 335 customers—accounting for about 15% of Slalom's $3 billion business —Johanna empowers high-performing teams to deliver life-changing care and results for customers and the global community. She personally led Slalom’s largest Life Sciences customer globally and pioneered industry verticalization for Slalom’s evolving go-to-market approach, growing the active customer base 9% just last year. Johanna consistently delivers high-quality, pragmatic solutions across Slalom’s comprehensive suite of capabilities, positioning the business to be recognized in 2023 by Forbes as America’s Best Management Consulting firm for Healthcare & Life Sciences.

Johanna DeYoung’s exceptional leadership and impactful contributions to the Life Sciences industry make her a deserving recipient of this prestigious award.

Katherine Norris is a Senior Managing Director at Ankura, specializing in compliance investigations, enforcement actions, and advisory matters. Ankura Consulting Group, LLC is an independent global expert services and advisory firm that delivers services and end-to-end solutions to help clients at critical inflection points related to change, risk, disputes, finance, performance, distress, and transformation.

With over 20 years of experience as a life sciences industry compliance officer and advisor, Norris regularly performs analysis for boards of directors, chief compliance officers, and their counsel in complex, high-profile healthcare fraud and abuse matters, including those involving the prosecution of corporate executives. Norris also works with companies and their counsel on a broad range of compliance program evaluation, development, and enhancement initiatives and serves as an Independent Review Organization monitor.

Previously, Norris was a Managing Director at Epsilon Life Sciences and before that a Director of Life Sciences, Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance at Guidehouse. Earlier in her career she worked with King Pharmaceuticals as a paralegal in legal affairs. Norris graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with an MPA in public policy and law and from the University of Alabama with an undergraduate degree in telecommunications and film.

Mark Freitas is a Managing Director and Life Sciences Market Lead with Alvarez and Marsal Healthcare’s industry group in Boston. With over two decades of expertise, Freitas specializes in helping businesses reach their full potential by developing successful strategies that maximize growth while avoiding operational challenges. His expertise spans corporate finance and operations, strategic planning, board governance, mergers and acquisitions activity, risk management, and compliance.

Prior to joining A&M, Freitas served as the Global Lead of Growth and Corporate Strategy in Life Sciences for Accenture. He was also the Co-Founder of a boutique strategy consulting firm, Axia Ltd., which Accenture acquired in 2015. After the acquisition, Freitas joined Accenture Strategy and helped build the world’s fourth largest strategy consulting practice. Before that, Earlier in his career, Freitas worked as a microbiologist, a food and drug lawyer, and Head of Corporate Strategy for ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, now part of Takeda. Freitas holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and a JD from Tulane University.

Paula Bellostas Muguerza is a partner and global lead for Kearney’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice. She works with leading global biopharmaceutical companies on commercial strategy and transformation and has a passion for exploring the opportunity to improve patient outcomes at the intersection of medicine and technology.

She came to consulting after several years as an industrial engineer, which set her on the path to a career in problem solving. Despite a background in a field driven by numbers, her approach to her consulting work is completely centered on people. “Bringing empathy, compassion, and humanity to this job is not only necessary to make our teams and clients succeed, it’s what makes this often-misunderstood profession special and so rewarding.”

With her life motto of “Work hard, be kind, and good things will happen,” combined with the DNA from a family of serial entrepreneurs, Paula is always looking for new ways of making an impact––in and outside the firm. Recently, together with a passionate “village” of women and allies, she founded and leads [w]Health, a global platform of 200+ companies with the mission of advancing women’s health worldwide.

Outside of work, Paula spends her time running after her very active young daughter and trying whatever the next big thing is on the “quantified self,” with the aim of living a long, healthy, happy life.

Petra Jantzer leads Accenture’s Life Sciences Business globally and is the Account CEO for a large global Pharma client. Previously, she led Accenture Life Sciences Europe, R&D Europe, and Life Sciences DACH. Before joining Accenture, Jantzer was a tenured Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she led the R&D practice globally and the Pharmaceuticals & Health practice in Switzerland. On top of that, Jantzer currently serves on the Boards of Directors for both Accenture AG Switzerland and Accenture Services Switzerland.

Jantzer has profound industry and R&D knowledge, deep business process understanding, and two decades of C-level counseling experience to help clients (digitally) transform their businesses. A respected figure in life sciences, she is committed to transforming the industry by harnessing the power of intelligent technologies, such as generative AI, automation and robotics, to drive reinvention at scale. Through these innovative solutions, Jantzer helps life sciences companies unlock breakthroughs in drug discovery, enable faster drug development, personalize patient care, and eliminate costly inefficiencies. Jantzer’s professional roots are in basic science. She holds a PhD in Immuno-Oncology and a master’s in molecular biology.