Heather Davis

Dr. Davis has more than 30 years of leadership experience in pharmaceutical drug development, mostly for prevention or treatment of infectious diseases in humans as well as animals.

Dr. Davis’s career started in academia, with positions held at McGill University (Montreal) and the University of Ottawa. She holds a PhD (cum laude) from the University of Western Ontario (London) and undertook post-doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and sabbatical work at the Pasteur Institute (Paris).

Her first pharma experience was with Coley Pharmaceutical Group, which she co-founded. As SVP of Pharmacology, she led all preclinical and clinical R&D activities at the Canadian R&D site in Ottawa. Under her leadership, the first clinical trials (Phase 1 and 2) with Coley’s TLR9 agonist were undertaken in Canada.

When Coley was acquired by Pfizer in 2007, she joined Pfizer’s Therapeutic Vaccine division and continued leadership of the Ottawa site which pivoted to supported Pfizer projects. She also led two compound development teams taking novel therapeutic vaccines from pre-clinical through Phase 1.

Following the closure of Pfizer’s Ottawa site in 2015, Dr. Davis joined Seqirus (Maidenhead UK), a CSL company. There, she served as Executive Director of R&D Portfolio and Program Management for the development of influenza vaccines (several in Ph3).

In 2019, Dr. Davis moved to Belgium to join Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson company, where she undertook the global role of Vice President, R&D Disease Area Stronghold (DAS) Leader for Hepatitis and was responsible for shaping the strategy and execution of R&D efforts (from Discovery through Ph2b clinical studies) to develop curative treatments for chronic hepatitis B and D.

Retired from J&J in 2024, Dr. Davis now shares her extensive experience through consultation with non-profits and pharma companies.