Senior Management
Pharmaxis' senior management team has decades of combined experience in drug discovery and development, clinical trial design and management, intellectual property protection and management, commercialisation, manufacturing and business.
Use the fast links below to jump straight to a team member's biography.
- Alan D Robertson BSc PhD Chief Executive Officer
- David McGarvey BA CA Chief Financial Officer
- Brett Charlton MBBS PhD Medical Director
- Gary Phillips BPharm MBA Commercial Director
- John Crapper BSc MBA Chief Operations Officer
- Ian McDonald BSc PhD Chief Scientific Officer
Regional Directors
Brett Charlton MBBS PhD - Medical Director
Brett is a medical researcher and specialist in autoimmune disease and diabetes, and has over 15 years' experience in clinical trial design and management. Brett co-founded Pharmaxis with Bill Cowden in 1998 and was instrumental in negotiating licence and research arrangements and attracting funding. He has been medical director since 1998.
Brett has written more than 60 scientific papers, attracted significant research grants and served on prefessional society committees. He has been a consultant to the pharmaceutical, medical and biotech industry since 1985. Brett was founding Medical Director of the National Health Sciences Centre and established its Clinical Trial Unit.
Prior to joining Pharmaxis, he held positions with the Australian National University, Stanford University, the Baxter Centre for Medical Research, Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Brett has an MBBS with Honours from the University of New South Wales and completed his PhD at the Centre for Biomedical Engineering in 1985.
John F Crapper BSc MBA - Chief Operations Officer
John has 32 years of manufacturing and operations experience, 17 years of which has been in the pharmaceutical industry. He is formerly Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Memcor International and Managing Director Memcor Australia Pty Ltd. Formerly a subsidiary of Memtec Ltd, is a world leader in the design and manufacture of microfiltration membranes and systems.
During his 15 years at Memcor, John managed the scale up manufacturing equipment and processes from the company's research and development group, created full scale production operations and managed the establishment of the Quality Assurance and Enterprise Planning Resource systems.
Prior to this John was Technical Director at Syntex Pharmaceutical's Animal Health division and start-up veterinary pharmaceutical company, VR Laboratories.
Gary Phillips BPharm MBA - Commercial Director
Gary has broad operational experience across the pharmaceutical industry value chain after spending the last 22 years in the healthcare industry in Europe, Asia and Australia. He joined Pharmaxis in December, 2003.
Gary has an extensive track record in marketing and sales, including new product launches, brand repositioning, process improvement and customer targeting programs. He was previously CEO of Novartis Australia where he successfully launched breakthrough oncology and ophthalmology products and relaunched newly acquired primary care products. His previous roles include Area Director, Asia, for Novartis and CEO of Ciba Geigy in Hungary.
He has an honours degree in Pharmacy from Nottingham University, UK and an MBA from Henley Management College.
Ian A McDonald BSc PhD - Chief Scientific Officer
Dr Ian McDonald has 25 years' international experience in managing drug discovery and design teams in Europe and USA. He was most recently Vice President of Drug Discovery at Structural GenomiX, USA. His prior experience includes a similar position at Structural Bioinformatics, Vice President of Chemistry with responsibilities for medicinal and bio-chemistry at SIBIA Neuroscience (now part of Merck Research Laboratories) and Merrell Dow (now part of Sanofi-Aventis). Under his leadership, six compounds have been developed and evaluated in clinical trials.
Ian was awarded his BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from the University of Western Australia. He has co-authored over 74 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters, and is an inventor on 38 issued US patents.
Mark Sanders - European Regional Director
Mark Sanders has worked in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry since 1978 in a variety of sales, training, marketing, licensing and management positions throughout the world.
In 2005 he completed an MBA and joined Pharmaxis in 2006 to establish its European operations. Much of his career has been focussed on respiratory medicine and he has several granted patents in this area. Mark is an authority on the history of inhalation, with a large collection of antique inhalers.
Stephen Beckman - North American Regional Director
Stephen Beckman has more than 18 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in the U.S. and globally in the areas of sales, marketing, business development, partnership management, and strategic planning.
Prior to Pharmaxis he was president of a specialty company in the respiratory market, and corporate vice president of global franchise management at Altana with over $2 billion in sales. Stephen also held progressively responsible positions with GlaxoSmithKline where he was worldwide director of pulmonary marketing, AstraZeneca, Fisons Pharmaceutical Corporation and Marion Merrell Dow.
Philip Gregory - Asian Pacific Regional Director
Philip has almost 25 years' experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry having worked for major multi-nationals such as Fisons, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer and Yamanouchi.
He has specialised knowledge in the respiratory and allergy therapeutic fields and has worked in marketing, product development, business development and strategic planning.
Philip has held senior level positions in Holland, Japan. USA and Asia Pacific and led regional marketing groups in Europe. Philip joined Pharmaxis in 2004 to support the worldwide commercialisation of Aridol and Bronchitol. He relocated to Shanghai in January 2007 to develop Pharmaxis' Asia Pacific business.
