Darren Carroll, senior vice-president of corporate business development at US-based pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly, retired last week after 22 years with the company that included the development of its US and Asia-focused corporate venturing units.
Heather Wasserman has been promoted to vice-president of corporate business development at Eli Lilly, with responsibility for business development transactions, emerging technologies and innovation, and venture capital.
Wasserman had spent the past year as senior director for external innovation, emerging technology and innovation, and six years with Lilly in total, having previously been a senior scientist at biopharmaceutical company Human Genome Sciences before its acquisition by GlaxoSmithKline in 2013.
Carroll, a serial member of the GCV Powerlist, founded Eli Lilly’s global corporate venturing program in 2005.
Lilly Ventures and Asia-focused peer Lilly Asian Ventures developed out of Carroll’s earlier work on the open innovation market in physical sciences through spinning open innovation and crowdsourcing specialist InnoCentive out from the company.
Carroll was promoted to senior vice-president in 2015, having been made vice-president of corporate business development in 2010 after originally joining Eli Lilly as an attorney in 1996.
In addition to corporate venturing, Carroll had covered mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, business collaborations, private equity investments and out-partnering at the corporation. Phil Johnson, senior vice-president and treasurer, will now assume additional duties overseeing M&A.
