Edgardo Hernandez (he/him/his) is executive vice president at Eli Lilly and Company and president of manufacturing operations.

Ed served as senior vice president of global parenteral drug product, delivery devices and regional manufacturing from 2018 until 2021. In this role, he was responsible for global parenteral manufacturing, emerging markets manufacturing, drug-product contract manufacturing, packaging, and distribution operations. Ed provided oversight for manufacturing sites in 12 countries across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia; that manufacture the final parenteral product (non-oral) formulations of Lilly medicines.

Previously, Ed was vice president of Fegersheim Operations for Lilly’s manufacturing site located in France. Before that, he served as site head for two other Lilly manufacturing sites: Indianapolis Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient manufacturing from 2014 until 2016, and PR06 in Puerto Rico from 2012 until 2014. Ed joined Lilly in 2005 as an engineering services leader for Lilly del Caribe in Puerto Rico, after working for several years in positions for Pfizer and Pharmacia.

Ed is a native of Puerto Rico and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico and North Carolina State University, respectively.

Laura Alquist joined Kite in 2016 and currently serves as Vice President and Global Head of Technical Operations.

She has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of technical operations including manufacturing, supply chain, quality and information systems. Laura served as Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Kite before being named Global Head of Manufacturing in 2023. Under her leadership, Kite’s manufacturing team has improved its industry-leading track record for reliability and speed. Additionally, Laura successfully led the team in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with zero supply disruptions to the patients and providers who rely on Kite’s therapies. Before joining Kite, Laura spent 20 years at Amgen in a range of global and operational roles of increasing responsibility across supply chain, manufacturing, quality and IT.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from California Lutheran University and is APICS certified in supply chain operations.

Dr. Advant has served as Savara’s Executive Vice President, Global Technical Operations since March 2024. With approximately three decades of experience in the biopharmaceutical sector, he has considerable expertise in drug substance, drug product, and analytical development with early- and late-stage clinical and commercially approved biologics. Dr. Advant also has extensive expertise in technology transfer, scale-up and cGMP manufacturing (both internal and external) in a highly regulated environment. To date, Dr. Advant has helped launch multiple biologic assets across several therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Savara, he was VP, Manufacturing Operations at GSK, where he was responsible for multi-site drug substance and drug product operations. Previously he held roles of increasing responsibility at Celgene Corporation (acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb), Kemwell BioPharma, ImClone/Lilly, and Diosynth Biotechnology (now FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnolgy), among others. Dr. Advant holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from the University of Connecticut.