Barbara Weber

Barbara has been focused on making a difference for patients for as long as she can remember – starting with childhood books about people whose lives were changed by medical advances and the exceptional people behind them. In medical school, surgery was her specialty of choice, until a rotation at a renowned trauma center made it clear that her aversion to getting up early would be career-limiting. With the recent discovery of oncogenes, oncology merged her passion for genetics and patients.

Barbara served as Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and Associate and then Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania. She contributed to the identification of the breast cancer susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 and is internationally recognized for her contributions to understanding their function, genetic epidemiology, and clinical management.

In 2005, Barbara joined GlaxoSmithKline as Vice President of Oncology Discovery and Translational Medicine with the goal of making a difference to cancer patients as genetically-targeted therapies were being developed. She subsequently served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Oncology Translational Medicine at Novartis, with a single-minded focus on shortening drug development timelines, increasing success rates, and implementing patient selection in phase I clinical studies. The highlight of this work was the FDA approval of the ALK inhibitor ceritinib based on the phase I study, three years after the first patient was dosed.