Gillian Cannon PhD

Dr. Gillian Cannon has been the Chief Operating Officer for Alyvant, a Roivant subsidiary, since 2018, and Head of Commercial Innovations at Roivant since April 2020. Dr. Cannon has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and has been in leadership roles at multiple prominent global pharmaceutical companies. Most recently, she served as President of North American Operations for UCB Inc, a Belgium based bio-pharmaceutical company, where she was responsible for providing leadership and strategic direction to all aspects of the organization’s operations in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Prior to joining UCB, Dr. Cannon was Senior Vice President of Customer Strategy and Analytics at Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Cannon previously had a 27-year career at Merck and Co. Inc., where she held a variety of positions including Global Vice President for Commercial Operations for Merck’s start-up biosimilar business (Merck Bioventures), Business Unit Head for the Specialty Products Franchise, and Global Commercial Head for the Neuroscience franchise. Across each of these roles, Dr. Cannon focused on the use of Big Data to improve the efficiency of commercial operations. Dr. Cannon currently serves as a board director for Affibody AB, a Swedish Biotechnology company, Corcept Therapeutics Inc, a US Biotechnology company and Edinburgh Innovations, the commercial arm of Edinburgh University. She also sits on the Advisory Circle for Newcastle University, UK.

Dr. Cannon holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and a PhD in Health Administration from the Temple University School of Business, USA. Dr. Cannon is a lecturer in the Drug Discovery Master’s program at Drexel University, PA., and is a therapeutic riding instructor providing instruction to children with disabilities.