Howard is passionate about improving patients’ lives by innovating at the intersection of science, medicine, and economics. With over 20 years of experience in the life sciences, he has a proven track record of value creation through accelerating growth, optimizing spend, and building capabilities.
Howard joined Vir Biotechnology in March 2017 as one of its first employees and has overseen its rapid transition from a small start-up to a public company with ~400 employees and multiple ongoing late-stage clinical trials for infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Howard’s leadership in seizing strategic licensing, M&A, and collaboration opportunities was critical to rapidly building out Vir’s pipeline and capabilities.
Before joining Vir, Howard was Vice President, Business Planning at Biogen Inc., where he led Biogen’s financial planning and analysis (FP&A) processes across all functions and regions. Prior to this position, he was Vice President, Strategic Corporate Finance at Biogen where he led the company’s corporate capital allocation processes. Howard previously held positions of increasing responsibility as a consultant in the Pharmaceutical and Medical Products Practice at McKinsey & Company and was an equity research analyst in the Life Sciences group at UBS Group AG. He received his B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Howard is married to Heidi Werner, a pediatric emergency room physician at the University of California San Francisco, and has a 13-year-old son Archer and a 10-year-old daughter Ella.