Women in Pharma: The philosophy of pharmaceutical leadership

In this latest instalment of our Women in Pharma series, we sit down with Clarissa Sowemimo-Coker, Chief Strategy Officer at Ambrose Healthcare and CPHI Middle East Advisory Board Member.

1. Can you take us through your unique career path—from philosophy and literature at Warwick, to residential construction project management, then retraining as a solicitor, and ultimately becoming a leader in rare disease therapeutics? What drove these pivotal transitions?

My undergraduate degree, Philosophy and Literature at Warwick University, taught me to interrogate an argument before I trusted it and that’s a habit that's never left me – you can check that with my husband! Working in residential construction – and a family business – taught me something different: how to hold a complex, multi-party delivery together under real commercial pressure, where the cost of a wrong call is obvious for all to see and your stakeholders have direct access to you throughout the process. I loved the hands-on nature of that work, and the feeling of creating something real. Retraining as a solicitor gave me an intellectual challenge and taught me how to structure risk, not just manage it. I was a commercial litigator and enjoyed shaping an argument as well the strategic thinking it takes to be successful in that world. I came to biotech via law, starting as General Counsel and worked my way up through COO and eventually to CEO of a UK-listed biotech. When I reflect on the journey so far, it’s fair to say that each career move looked like a departure at the time, but the through-line was always the same: I enjoy solving important problems in difficult situations. I now wear several hats – with a common thread – I get involved when strategy, risk and commercials combine. My role at Ambrose Healthcare is that – we're solving problems for patients who've been told no options exist.

2. As Chief Strategy Officer at Ambrose Healthcare, you're focused on addressing the 95% of rare diseases that currently have no approved drug therapy. Can you share what excites you most about this mission and the specific challenges you face in developing therapeutics for such underserved patient populations?

The number that drives everything at Ambrose is stark: 95% of rare diseases have no approved therapy. What's brilliant about that number is the scale of the opportunity. Rare disease has an execution problem, not just a science problem, and execution is exactly where a portfolio-built, capital-disciplined approach can move faster than a traditional pipeline. It's a pattern I recognise from other boards and businesses I work with too: the constraint is rarely the idea, it's whether the organisation around it can execute against a tight runway. The specific challenge in rare disease is always the same trade-off: small, dispersed patient populations mean trial design, regulatory strategy and capital efficiency have to work in lockstep from day one, or the programme doesn't survive to approval.

3. What were the key lessons you learned about building capital-efficient biotech companies, and how are you applying those insights at Ambrose?

The lesson that's shaped how I operate at Ambrose and everywhere else I work is that capital efficiency is about sequencing spend against the questions that actually de-risk the business, rather than just spending less. I see this constantly across the boards and businesses I work with, inside biotech and out. The other thing that's worth mentioning is that people really matter: you have to put the right team in early, probably earlier than you think. Whether it's a biotech proving a mechanism or an early-stage company proving a market, the founders and executives who win are the ones who've built the right teams and are ruthless about which data points unlock the next funding conversation, and which are just nice to have.

4. What opportunities do you see for increasing female representation at the executive level in biotech?

The evidence isn't really in dispute anymore. McKinsey's most recent research across 1,265 companies in 23 countries found gender-diverse executive teams are 39% more likely to financially outperform their peers, and that gap has widened, not narrowed, since they first measured it. On the founder side, BCG found female-founded companies generate more than double the revenue per pound invested. So this is a performance argument, not a fairness argument, and I'd rather make the performance one, because it's the one that actually moves boards. Where I'd add my own view, from having sat as GC, COO and CEO: the outperformance isn't magic, it's what happens when the people setting strategy have actually lived the constraints they're solving for. Where women get filtered out isn't usually at entry, it's at the transitions: technical expert to commercial leader, operator to fundraiser. Sponsorship into those specific pivot points does more than any generic mentorship scheme, and it's part of why I coach founders and executives through exactly those transitions now. It also means boards need to be willing to take a bet on someone whose CV doesn't look like the last five CEOs they hired, rather than defaulting to the safest-looking match.

5. As a CPHI advisory board member, you've been actively involved in discussions about biotech development, particularly in emerging markets like the Middle East. What role do you see regional hubs playing in advancing rare disease therapeutics globally?

Through the CPHI & BIO Middle East advisory board, I've watched the region move from “emerging” to genuinely competitive fast, with regulatory harmonisation, sovereign capital, and a real appetite to host clinical and manufacturing capability rather than just import it. It's a shift I recognise from work outside pharma too, where capital and expertise are following the same trajectory into new geographies. For rare disease specifically, regional hubs matter because they can build patient registries and trial infrastructure for populations historically excluded from global datasets. That's not a nice-to-have, it fundamentally changes what's scientifically possible.

6. Looking ahead, what emerging trends or technologies in rare disease therapeutics are you most excited about, and where do you see the greatest potential for impact over the next 5-10 years?

I'm most excited about capital-efficiency trends converging with the science: platform technologies that let one infrastructure investment serve multiple rare disease programmes instead of each starting from zero. That's the piece that actually moves the needle on the 95% figure, because it changes the economics, not just the biology. It's a pattern I recognise from other boards and businesses I work with too: the operators who'll win the next decade are the ones building for that kind of reusability from day one. I'd also flag regional hubs, the Middle East work through CPHI, as underrated: new patient populations, new registries, new capital entering a field that's been capacity-constrained for a long time. That kind of investment can only be a force for good. Finally, it's the people in biotech who amaze and inspire me every day. They are optimistic, risk-forward problem solvers, and they make me feel very grateful to be a “woman in pharma”.

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