Speakers

Victoria Hayes is currently Director, Public Affairs for the Northern Cluster (UK, Ireland, Nordics and Baltics) at Kyowa Kirin, a Japan-based global specialty pharmaceutical company. She covers all things government affairs, policy, patient advocacy and external communications. In the last 18 months, she has built a Public Affairs function at cluster-level that spans government affairs, policy, patient advocacy and external communications. This has included working with patient organisations on disease awareness, access policy and patient engagement projects as well as leading on corporate affairs initiatives. Prior to joining Kyowa Kirin, Vicky headed up the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry’s Office of the Chief Scientific Officer, with a focus on a science and innovation policy. She has over fifteen years’ experience in public relations at large, including government affairs, advocacy and external communications. Franco-British, Vicky has worked both in agency setting and in-house on cross-functional, multi-stakeholder programmes both in and outside of the healthcare sector. She began her career working for PR agencies, advising international organisations on their public affairs strategies. Vicky then joined GSK France where she led on government affairs, public policy, patient advocacy and corporate responsibility strategies, spending time in the UK with the global team to coordinate the European patient engagement activities. From 2016 to 2019, Vicky was responsible for Sanofi UK’s primary care and biosimilars public affairs strategy. Vicky read Public Policy & Administration at LSE, European Studies at La Sorbonne-Nouvelle and Communication and Journalism at Le Celsa (Sorbonne). She is a Trustee of Fertility Network UK and a Freeman of the Company of Communicators.