Zahbea Saund

Zahbea is a seasoned professional with extensive expertise in CMC program leadership and CDMO management. Her career spans over 30 years in biopharma and she has a proven track record in leading cross-functional teams, managing the complexities of drug development, scenario planning and aligning teams to achieve program and corporate goals. 

Zahbea’s experience spans the entire product development lifecycle across biologics, cell and gene therapy, biosimilars and vaccines.  She is a highly collaborative strategic thinker with a focus on execution and driving results.  She excels at building relationships with and amongst team members and is passionate about bringing teams together to define and align on a path forward to meet program goals and deliverables.  As an innate problem solver and holistic thinker, she drives teams to assess multiple scenarios and incorporate contingencies and mitigations into a program plan.  Zahbea strives for and drives success by maintaining positive team dynamics and ensuring the infrastructure/ business practices support the aligned upon plan for successful product development.

Zahbea has worked at Amgen, Lyell Immunopharma, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Novavax.  She holds a B.S. in Biology from UCLA, and certifications in clinical trials, mediation, decision making and coaching from UW.