2025 INAUGURAL SYMPOSIUM
Health ∙ Security ∙ Preparedness
Thursday, 4 December, 14:00 – 18:00
Health
Security
Preparedness
Medical Adviser, European Union Military Staff (EUMS), European External Action Service (EEAS)
Commander (DEU Navy)
Eloise Todd, Executive Director & Founder, rani (Resilience Action Network International)
Laura Batchelor, Managing Partner, FIPRA Public Affairs
Dr Heidy Rombouts, Director General, Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Belgium
Major General (rtd) Professor TJ Hodgetts, CB CBE OStJ DL DSc DUniv PhD MMEd MBA, Former Chair of NATO Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services COMEDS – Chair of the Advisory Board, Brussels Resilience Forum
Assessing readiness for the future – R&I, Dual-use, crisis preparedness & health system resilience
Keynote address: Sandra Gallina, Director-General of DG SANTE, European Commission
Panel discussion moderated by Laura Batchelor
• Brigadier General Petter Iversen, Chair NATO Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services COMEDS
• Veli-Mikko Niemi, Permanent Secretary Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health
• Ask Eirik Storsve, Head of International Government Affairs, Emergent BioSolutions
• Eloise Todd, Executive Director & Founder, Pandemic Action Network
Followed by audience Q&A
The value of financing innovations for health, security and preparedness
Panel discussion moderated by Eloise Todd
• Commander (DEU Navy) Christian Haggenmiller, MD, Medical Adviser, European Union Military Staff (EUMS), European External Action Service (EEAS), European Union
• Dr Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director-General, DG HERA, European Commission
• Felicitas Riedl, Director of Innovation and Competitiveness, European Investment Bank
• Dr Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director, Policy & Partnerships, Wellcome Trust
• Jo Taylor, Vice President Corporate Affairs, Shionogi Europe
Followed by audience Q&A
Managing Partner, FIPRA Public Affairs
Laura Batchelor is a partner at FIPRA International and leads its healthcare practice. She has over 20 years of experience in government affairs with a focus on life sciences. Laura advises companies, NGOs, and associations on EU legislation and policy, helping them develop outcome-oriented engagement strategies. She also works on patient access policies, financing for innovative medicines, and healthcare reform. Laura is a founder and board member of W@Lifesciences and active in the European Network of Women in Leadership. She graduated from Oxford University in Modern Languages.
Executive Director & Founder, rani (Resilience Action Network International)
Eloise Todd is the Executive Director and Founder of rani, which coordinates advocacy to build societal resilience to shifts, change, and crisis. An advocacy, policy, campaigns, and strategy specialist, Eloise has over 20 years’ experience working to change policies, legislation and budgets to improve lives. Primarily, she has worked in international development and global health, including as a political adviser within the EU institutions and as Global Policy Director of the ONE Campaign. Eloise campaigned against the U.K.’s Brexit deal, building one of the largest pro-European organizations into a national campaign force. Eloise co-founded Pandemic Action Network with three colleagues in April 2020 and took on the Executive Director role in August 2022. In 2023, Eloise helped launch Resilience Action Network Africa (RANA).
Director General, Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Belgium
Heidy Rombouts is a legal scholar and social scientist with over 20 years of experience in international cooperation and human rights. She has worked with governments, multilateral institutions, and civil society across multiple regions. She began her career as a researcher at the University of Antwerp, focusing on fragile contexts and fieldwork in Rwanda, before taking operational and leadership roles at Belgian and German development agencies (BTC/Enabel and GIZ) in Central Africa, Mali, and Kenya. She has also held positions in multilateral settings, including as project coordinator for a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and as a board official at the World Bank Group. Prior to her appointment in October 2021 as Belgium’s Director General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, she served as Managing Director of Plan International Belgium. Heidy holds a PhD in social and political sciences from the University of Antwerp and master’s degrees in law and sociology from KU Leuven, with numerous international publications and consultancy contributions in human rights and international relations.
Former Chair of NATO Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services COMEDS – Chair of the Advisory Board, Brussels Resilience Forum
Major General (rtd) Professor Timothy John Hodgetts is a former Surgeon General of the UK Armed Forces. Commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1983, he specialised in emergency medicine and held senior clinical and command roles across Defence, NATO, and the Army Medical Services. He served on operations in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Oman, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait, including as Medical Director at the multinational hospital in Afghanistan. He led Defence trauma governance for over a decade, developed major incident and combat casualty care systems, and held key roles such as Defence Consultant Adviser in Emergency Medicine, Head of the Army Medical Services, and Chair of NATO’s COMEDS. An honorary professor of emergency medicine, he has published extensively, co-authored Defence medical doctrine, and co-founded the citizenAID® charity. He has been awarded the CB, CBE, Danish Defence Medal, and served as Honorary Physician and Surgeon to the Monarch. He is also a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands.
Director General, Directorate-General for Health & Food Safety (DG SANTE), EU Commission
Sandra Gallina has been a member of the European Commission since 1988 and currently serves as Director-General of the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE). In this role, she oversees policies and initiatives aimed at safeguarding public health and ensuring the safety of the EU’s food chain. Before taking the helm at DG SANTE, Ms. Gallina served as Deputy Director-General for DG TRADE from 2018 to 2020. From 2014 to 2018, she was Director of DG TRADE’s Directorate D, responsible for Sustainable Development; Economic Partnership Agreements with the African, Caribbean, and Pacific regions; and Agri-food and Fisheries. During this period, she also acted as the EU Chief Negotiator for the EU-MERCOSUR Free Trade Agreement. Earlier in her career, between 2001 and 2009, Ms. Gallina was the EU Lead Negotiator for Non-Agricultural Market Access in the WTO Doha Round, where she formulated and represented EU policy on the Doha Development Agenda’s non-agricultural market access negotiations. Prior to joining DG TRADE, she contributed to the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) in the late 1990s. Ms. Gallina’s extensive experience reflects a deep expertise in trade, international negotiations, and EU policy-making, now applied to advancing health and food safety across the European Union.
Chair NATO Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services COMEDS
Brigadier General (BG) Petter Iversen, MD, has served as the Norwegian Surgeon General and commanding officer of the Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Medical Services since June 2022. After completing the Junior NCO Course and serving as an instructor at the Norwegian Winter Warfare School, he earned his medical degree from the University of Oslo. He trained in orthopedic and general surgery, serving as a trauma team leader and later as senior consultant in orthopedic trauma, focusing on reconstructive surgery and polytrauma. Within the Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Medical Services, he held multiple clinical and leadership roles, including Deputy Surgeon General and Chief of Staff, alongside deployments on military and civilian missions. BG Iversen has completed advanced military education, is a certified orthopedic and military surgeon, and a resident in community medicine and public health. He chairs NATO’s Committee of Chiefs of Military Medical Services and is deputy chair of the Norwegian Health Emergency Council.
Permanent Secretary Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health
Dr. Veli-Mikko Niemi has been Permanent Secretary at Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health since 2022. He previously served as Director General of several departments, such as Communities and Functional Capacities (2020–2022) and Promotion of Welfare and Health (2014–2017), overseeing services for children, youth, families, people with disabilities, and the elderly, as well as rehabilitation and health promotion. From 2007–2014, he was Director of Food Safety at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and earlier served as a national expert at the European Commission. Dr. Niemi graduated from the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Helsinki, in 1987 and holds a specialized degree in Food and Environmental Hygiene.
Director-General, DG HERA, European Commission
Dr. Florika Fink-Hooijer leads the DG HERA in the European Commission. DG HERA’s primary mission is to counter vulnerabilities and strategic dependencies within the EU in relation to threat analysis, development, production, procurement, stockpiling and distribution of medical countermeasures, irrespective of the cause of the health emergency. Florika combines strong leadership skills with in-depth experience in EU policy making and international negotiations. A lawyer by training, she holds extensive expertise in foreign and security policy, humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction, including civil-military cooperation as well as environmental policies.
Medical Adviser, European Union Military Staff (EUMS), European External Action Service (EEAS)
Dr. Christian Haggenmiller is a Health Security Researcher at the German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies (GIDS) in Hamburg and a Lecturer at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College. He leads the “Comprehensive Medical Support in Complex Emergencies” course at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana, and serves on the World Health Organization’s roster of experts in public health emergencies. Previously, he was a Research Coordinator on Health Security at GIDS, an analyst at NATO’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre, and worked in the intensive care unit of the German Heart Center in Berlin. Dr. Haggenmiller earned his MD from Humboldt University in Berlin and has contributed extensively to advancing health security and emergency preparedness at national and international levels.
Director of Innovation and Competitiveness, European Investment Bank
Felicitas is Director of the Innovation and Competitiveness Department at the EIB’s Projects Directorate since February 2022, overseeing technical and economic due diligence for R&D-intensive projects across sectors such as CRM, automotive, pharmaceuticals, telecom, education, health, and digital infrastructure. She previously led the Life Science and Health Division, joining EIB in 2007, where she strengthened partnerships with WHO, the Gates Foundation, and Wellcome Trust, notably during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before EIB, she worked at the European Investment Fund on technology transfer and as a strategy consultant at L.E.K. Consulting in Munich and Los Angeles. Felicitas holds an MSc in human genetics and molecular biology from Philipps University of Marburg, was a visiting researcher at Stanford, and completed Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.
Executive Director, Policy & Partnerships, Wellcome
Dr Beth Thompson is Wellcome’s Executive Director of Policy & Partnerships, responsible for the work of the policy and government relations and strategic partnerships teams. Beth joined Wellcome in 2009, where her previous roles have included leading Wellcome’s global policy work in mental health, infectious disease and climate and health, and science policy and advocacy activities in the UK and EU. In 2017 Beth was awarded an MBE for successfully advocating against amendments to the EU GDPR that would have been severely damaging for research. Beth holds a PhD from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
Sr. Director, Head of International Government Affairs, Emergent BioSolutions
Ask Eirik started his career with Emergent in 2011, eventually rising to his current position as senior director and head of international government affairs, leading Emergent’s engagement with governments and international organisations outside of North America. Ask Eirik spent over two years as Emergent’s European market lead, collaborating extensively to support international government procurement opportunities. In this capacity, he worked to help provide access to medical countermeasures in the Nordic countries, Central and Eastern Europe, Salties, Balkans, and the Netherlands, fostering national and regional preparedness efforts. He has years of national and parliamentary policy development experience, including serving as an advisor in the European Parliament, providing expertise to a Norwegian political party on policy issues. He also worked in the Norwegian Parliament, advising four members sitting on three different standing committees over two parliamentary terms on justice, home affairs, health, and constitutional issues. Additionally, he worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan and Pakistan in several roles, such as asa head of office.
VP Corporate & Government Affairs, Shionogi
Jo Taylor is Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Shionogi Europe, where she has worked for the last three years, having set up the function when she joined the company. She is responsible for infectious disease policy – antimicrobial resistance and health security in addition to corporate and brand communications, patient advocacy, internal communications and sustainability in Region Europe and nationally in the affiliate countries.
Jo is a highly accomplished Corporate Affairs professional having worked for GSK, Lilly, Novartis, Daiichi-Sankyo, Astellas, CSL Seqirus and Shionogi in her 33-year career.
Jo also spent a short time leading Public Affairs at the communications agency Cello as well as working on secondment for HMG Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Department as part of the Vaccines Taskforce during the Covid Pandemic in 2020.
She has been an active member of the Healthcare Communications Association throughout her career and led the Foresight Committee for two years.
