Sandor Schoichet, Director
Amit Bhatia, Principal Consultant
Nina Grove, Principal Consultant
Ming Wu, Consultant
Ian See, Advising Director

Sandor Schoichet, Director 

Sandor brings a wealth of hands-on management, operations, and project leadership experience to his clients. He is adept at articulating complex business and system requirements from multiple stakeholder perspectives, driving strategic consensus, and building effective management and technical teams that deliver results. Sandor’s recent work has focused on life science and clean tech, where he has helped clients successfully meet challenges ranging from business and operations planning, alliance management, and clinical operations, to regulatory compliance and quality systems, through web services and international systems implementation.

Sandor earned EE and SM degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT, where he studied artificial intelligence, office automation, and business process reengineering. He also completed a joint program in Management of Innovation at the Sloan and Harvard business schools. He holds undergraduate degrees in Information Sciences and Philosophy from UC Santa Cruz.

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Amit Bhatia, MBA, Principal Consultant 

Amit is a results-oriented biopharma strategy and operations professional with demonstrated results in the areas of strategy development and planning, building financial and tactical plans, leading large-scale initiatives, and improving operational performance. Before Meridian, Amit was at Merck & Co. as a Director of Finance Operations with financial and operational responsibilities that included managing ten departments, a $240MM operating budget, and supporting over 500 employees across six global research sites. Amit initially joined Merck as Director of Portfolio Management for the Neurosciences and Opthamology Franchise where he had a leadership role in the Merck/Schering-Plough integration.

Prior to joining Merck, Amit spent several years at the operational strategy consulting firm PRTM in their Life Sciences practice. Before becoming a consultant he worked for several biotech companies, including Genentech, Genencor (now part of DuPont), Codexis, and PDL BioPharma, in a variety of areas such as commercial operations, business planning, project management, and research.

Amit earned an MBA from the University of Southern California, and a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis.

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Nina Grove, MA, MPH, Principal Consultant  

Nina's consulting work focuses on providing biopharmaceutical and global health expertise, along with complex alliance and partnership contracting services, to both public and private sector clients. She has over 25 years of biopharmaceutical product development experience in all aspects of drug development. Before Meridian, Nina was VP of Commercial Planning and Strategy at the Institute for OneWorld Health, where she focused on strategic collaborations, access and delivery strategies for developing markets, and leadership of product development partnerships, including the semi-synthetic artemisinin malaria treatment program funded by the Gates Foundation.

Previously Nina spent nearly 20 years at Genentech in a series of positions including Quality Control, Product Operations, and Product Development, ending as Director of Commercial Regulatory Affairs with responsibility for launching new products in asthma, cancer, and psoriasis. She held team leadership and project management roles for international drug and vaccine development, as well as IT system implementations. Nina established a program management office for the Operations Division, and also helped set up programs for diversity, team performance, and operations excellence.

Prior to joining Genentech, Nina performed laboratory research both at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Stanford University. Nina earned her BA in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Masters degrees in Medical Microbiology and Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Ming Wu, PhD, MBA, Consultant  

Ming has 12 years of management consulting and life science industry experience related to research tools, diagnostics, and biopharmaceuticals. His recent experience has focused on advising biopharmaceutical and diagnostic clients in the areas of operational strategy and planning, project management, business development, contract manufacturing management, and research process improvement. Previously, as a consultant at Mattson Jack Group, Ming led oncology market research on treatment modality, systemic regimens, treatment trends, and epidemiology of 26 tumor types across Japan, the US, and Europe. Before becoming a consultant, Ming worked to develop and commercialize multiple genetic testing assay systems for research and diagnostic applications, where his roles included cross-functional R&D management, project management, business development, strategic planning, and product marketing.

Ming received a BS in chemistry from Peking University, an MBA in finance from UC Berkeley, a PhD in biophysical chemistry from the University of Rochester, and has passed Level I of the Chartered Financial Analyst exam. As a scientific contributor, Ming has delivered 3 international conference presentations, published 16 technical articles, and authored 6 patents.

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Ian See, MBA, Advising Director 

Ian has over 20 years of engineering and management experience in product development, capital asset management, strategic facilities planning, and business process transformation.  For the last 10 years, Ian’s work has focused on the medical device and biopharmaceutical industries, implementing a wide variety of strategy and process improvement projects for Strategic Facilities Planning and Corporate Engineering clients.  Ian has also played instrumental roles in establishing effective Capital Asset Management and Capital Governance capabilities that have saved his clients tens of millions of dollars.  In addition to his role as an Advisor to Meridian, Ian is also the Senior Director for Operations Excellence at MedImmune.

Ian is a graduate of Stanford University with a BS Degree in Mechanical Engineering.  He also received an MS Degree in Nuclear Engineering from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.  Ian is a Six Sigma Black Belt trained at GE, and is also certified in Product Development by the PDMA and Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) by APICS.

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