Gisela Paulsen is a global life sciences senior executive with operational and P&L experience. She combines a science background with strategy, commercialization, and clinical development experience to build, transform, and grow resilient businesses from start-ups to large companies. Gisela was named the 100 Most Inspiring People in the Life- Sciences Industry by PharmaVOICE in 2019.
She leads large-scale global change management to drive commercial and development innovation. Gisela achieves agile portfolio management by leading strategic vision and scaling for growth to create sustainable, long-term value for shareholders and other stakeholders. She is known for leading solutions for complex organizational and market challenges on aggressive timelines, and is able to communicate difficult strategies to a diverse audience.
Gisela leverages her scientific and commercial background and strategic, scaling, growth, and operational experience to support management teams in the life sciences, and ensures the enterprise provides the most positive impact possible on patient health. She is a member of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, and was a previous board member of CuriOdyssey where she was the chair of nominating, strategy, and digital transformation committees. She served as a Genentech Foundation Board Director and was the former Co-Chair for Genentech Women Professionals. She completed the Executive Women in Bio Boardroom Ready development platform and the How Women Lead Board Readiness workshop.
As the Former President and Chief Operating Officer at Oncocyte Corporation (Nasdaq: OCX), she led the operational activities across three sites and multiple functions including laboratories (CA, TN and Germany), regulatory, quality, portfolio & project management, procurement, supply chain, legal, informatics, and facilities. Oncocyte is a precision diagnostics company with a mission to improve patient outcomes by providing personalized insights that inform critical decisions throughout the patient care journey. DetermaRxTM identifies early-stage lung cancer patients who are at high risk for cancer recurrence and who may benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy. DetermaIOTM, a gene expression test, assesses the tumor microenvironment to predict response to immunotherapies. The pipeline of tests includes DetermaTxTM, which will assess mutational status of a tumor, blood-based monitoring test, DetermaCNITM, and long-term recurrence monitoring test DetermaMxTM.
As General Manager of the Precision Oncology business unit for $1B+ cancer screening and diagnostic test leader Exact Sciences (Nasdaq: EXAS), Gisela led the legacy Genomic Health (Nasdaq: GDHX), renamed Precision Oncology. She drove growth of the existing OncotypeDX© franchise and relaunched therapy selection assay, OncotypeMAPTM Pan-Cancer Tissue, as well as business development and pipeline strategy for future assays and technologies in next generation sequencing, liquid, and Minimal Residual Disease. Gisela managed the integration of Genomic Health and Paradigm, acquired by Exact Science in 2019 and 2020, respectively, and led ~1,000 people supporting the business unit, with a P&L of ~$500 million.
As Senior Vice President & Global Head of Product Development and Clinical Operations for Roche/Genentech, Gisela led a 3,000- member global clinical operations team charged with planning and conducting over 400 late-stage and post-approval evidence generation clinical trials in 60+ countries and nearly 100,000 patients enrolled. Throughout her 15 years with Genentech and Genentech/Roche, Gisela held a variety of executive leadership roles including establishing a cross-functional oncology integration team during Roche’ Genentech acquisition. As Vice President, Access Solutions she led a patient services hub to support patient access to health-critical therapies across all therapeutic areas. Through finance and business partnering, she enabled a robust portfolio of molecules for Roche/Genentech in Oncology, Immunology, Infectious Disease, Ophthalmology and Central Nervous System that drove financial trade-offs, investment strategies and valuation, effective portfolio management and innovation.
In 2021, Gisela became an Entrepreneur In Residence for DigitalDX, an impact VC fund focused on early-stage diagnostic and artificial intelligence (AI) companies. She supports their portfolio companies with her wide-ranging expertise in building successful life-science business models and operations.
Gisela holds a Master of Science in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, and a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy, from Uppsala University in Sweden. She is fluent in English and Swedish and has working knowledge of Danish and German.