GCV Powerlist 2018: Lana Ghanem

Lana Ghanem has been managing director of Hikma Ventures since August 2015 having officially joined the Lebanon-based generic drugs company three years earlier within the office of the CEO covering corporate strategy and development. She was a summer associate in 2011 while completing her MBA from Harvard and she said as part of the GCV diversity challenge: “I am pleased to tell you that we are hiring two interns this summer one of them is a woman from MIT”.

Going from that to “establishing Hikma Ventures has been an eye-opening experience with a steep learning curve”, she said for last year’s Powerlist award.

“It enabled various Hikma teams, including sales and marketing, business development, legal and operations, to gain exposure to emerging innovative technologies that will change healthcare. Digital health is becoming more of a necessity than a nice-to-have.”

She said her highlights from the past year included building the Hikma Ventures team and investing in four digital health ventures including Pillo Health, which in February raised $4m in consortium also including Stanley Ventures (the corporate venture capital unit of Stanley Black & Decker); Lemonaid Health, which raised $11m in May last year; Biolinq’s $10m round; and Prognos’ $20.5m C round in December. In addition, she mentioned that Hikma Ventures is helping create an innovative culture within the company that is changing employees mindsets to think of solutions beyond the pill.

She is a board member at Lemonaid Health and Biolinq and she is a board observer at Chrono Therapeutics, Propeller Health, Pillo Health and Prognos. One of her objectives is to create partnerships between Hikma Pharmaceuticals and some of Hikma Ventures’ portfolio companies.