Meet the Team

Jonny has previously held the positions of board director at Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising Ltd, Managing Director of Griffin Bacal Advertising, Chairman of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Society, main board director of Soho House Ltd, and founder of UK distribution company One Squared Ltd.

He also founded the UK-registered charity The Reconstruction Project.

Jonny founded Touchlight in 2007.

Karen began her role as Chief Executive Officer of Touchlight in November 2020.

In her most recent role prior to joining Touchlight, Karen served as President, Business Unit Head, Mammalian and Microbial Development and Manufacturing for Lonza Pharma & Biotech. This business unit enabled Lonza’s customers to successfully develop and supply new biotherapeutics for patients by employing innovation in custom development and manufacturing across multiple technologies and throughout the drug life cycle.

Karen has worked in the CDMO area of the Life Sciences Industry for 31 years holding various roles at Celltech and Lonza leading Business Units, global Sales / Business Development, Licensing teams and Operational Quality.

Karen has a BSc (Hons) in Applied Biology.

Antonio joined Touchlight in January 2020 to lead the CDMO operations.

Prior to Touchlight, he had senior operational and commercial management positions in medical devices and in vitro diagnostics focused on endocrinology, followed by a move to the service provision industry as Managing Director for a large molecule bioanalysis CRO, within the clinical trials space for upcoming biological therapeutics.

Antonio received a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Cologne, Germany.

Tommy has a background in molecular biology, having first received a BA in Biological Sciences, followed by a D.Phil from the University of Oxford in cell and molecular biology. He subsequently worked at Global Consulting firm L.E.K., focused on client engagements within the biopharma industry. Tommy joined Touchlight in 2015.

Bradley is the General Counsel and Chief of Staff for the Touchlight group of companies, alongside serving on the Board of Directors.

A solicitor qualified in England and Wales with a long-standing affiliation and expertise in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields, Bradley has more than 20 years’ experience of structuring, negotiating and executing M&A, licensing and corporate fundraising transactions.

Bradley began his career with Linklaters, before practising for over 10 years with the market leading biotechnology and life science practices of US firms, Morrison & Foerster and Arnold & Porter.

In 2011, Bradley left multinational practice to found the highly regarded boutique transactional life science, biotechnology and pharmaceutical practice, Theobald Associates.

Jill has worked for Touchlight since 2012, driving the transformation of the dbDNA technology from discovery into a robust and scalable DNA manufacturing platform, into GMP production and now supplying customers from two European sites.

In her current role, she oversees a group whose focus is to continually improve our manufacturing offering (transferring these improvements into our CDMO) and expanding the utility of dbDNA, building on our strong IP portfolio.  Jill also provides development oversight to products arising from our product discovery team and heading towards clinic.

Prior to Touchlight, Jill worked in senior R&D roles, and as a consultant, in the biotech/vaccine industry, including positions at Emergent BioSolutions, Celltech-Medeva and a number of start-ups.

Jill holds a PhD in influenza research.

Alistair joined Touchlight in May 2021 as Chief Financial Officer. 

In his most recent role prior to joining Touchlight, Alistair served as VP of Finance for the Movianto division of Owens & Minor, a global healthcare logistics and medical supplies provider. In this role Alistair was responsible for all aspects of finance and played a lead role in the sale of the business to Walden Group in 2020.

In previous roles, Alistair held various positions of increasing responsibility at Kimberly-Clark in the UK, the Netherlands and the US. He also led Business Analysis for Halyard Health, a global manufacturer of medical supplies and devices and a spin-off of Kimberly-Clark. During that role, he was the finance leader on the management team in the successful sale of Halyard’s $1 billion Surgical & Infection Prevention business to Owens & Minor.

Alistair has a MA(Cantab) in Natural Sciences and Management Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Verna joined Touchlight in September 2023 as SVP, Global Head of Sales

In her most recent role prior to joining Touchlight Verna served as VP, Global Head of Sales, Advanced Therapies for the BioProcess division of Sartorius. In this role Verna was responsible for establishing & growing market presence in this rapidly growing field.

Prior to this Verna spent 8 years with Sartorius in a variety of Commercial leadership roles across the portfolio, latterly with a particular focus on newly acquired businesses for Upstream workflows. Verna also held commercial leadership roles in a number of innovative companies, including BioOutsource and Sistemic Ltd.

Verna holds a PhD in Gene Directed Enzyme Prodrug Therapies for Cancer Applications.

Leopoldo received a BA in Business Administration from Bocconi Univesity in Milan. For 20 years he worked in Investment Banking having headed the Healthcare Investment Banking teams of JPMorgan and Credit Suisse in Europe. He is now an independent corporate finance advisor in healthcare. He currently sits on the boards of Philogen, Avanzanite, Adler Ortho, BactoBio Ltd., and Nogra Pharma

John spent more than 20 years as a partner at PwC UK.

He led the Global Deals Business (US 5 Billion Turnover) and sat on the Executive Board as Head of Deals with responsibility for the TS, Restructuring, Corporate Finance and Forensics businesses.

Since leaving PwC in 2017, John has engaged as a non-exec /chair of a number of Private Equity portfolio companies and has been involved as a shareholder and director in the successful sale of Pigsback.com to Secret Escapes in 2019.

He is Chairman of both C&N Sporting Risk, a tech based sports business, and Irish middle-market PE firm Renatus. John was an early investor in Touchlight and in genetics company Synpromics.

Thomas Harding is a partner at Bridford Group. He previously worked on TMT investments at Access Industries, after joining from Weil, Gotshal and Manges’ private equity department. He has an MA from the University of Cambridge and subsequently studied at City University (law) and London Business School (finance). He is currently a director of LenioBio GmbH, Grabyo Limited, Solar Foods Oy and Penfold Technology Limited and has previously been a director of Westwing Group AG, Ice Group ASA, Perform Group/DAZN, Channel 10 TV, an officer of Access Industries, Inc. and a trustee of The Blavatnik School of Government Foundation at the University of Oxford

David spent 15 years as a broker in London Insurance before he joined an international firm of strategic corporate advisors assisting companies with mainly energy-related contracts in emerging markets.

In 2001 he joined the UK corporate finance firm Axis International Limited as a partner and director. In 2005 David sold his share of Axis to concentrate on consultancy work as well as investing in exciting start-up companies mainly in the medical and biotech sectors.

David was also a founding trustee and served as a trustee for nine years for The Childhood Trust, which is a large charitable trust addressing the problems of child poverty in London.

Ingo Eschweiler is a Principal at Novator, with extensive experience in private equity and investment banking. Prior to joining Novator, he worked at Morgan Stanley in Frankfurt, Sydney, and London, focusing on M&A and IPO transactions across various sectors. Ingo holds an MSc in Management from London Business School.