ASAP Summit NYC

Building Strong Alliances from the Start – We’ll begin this morning diving into the foundational strategies that set partnerships up for long‑term success—due diligence, strategic alignment, and effective negotiation. Confirmed so far:

• Alliance Due Diligence - Lessons Learned from Transactions, Rod Herrell, PhD, JD, Executive Director, Transactions and Alliances, Kyowa Kirin
  Hear from a former alliance leader (and lawyer!) turned dealmaker about what alliance managers need to know before the deal is done.   This talk demonstrates how to align incentives, clarify decision rights, and test assumptions before the deal begins.  Attendees will learn how to spot threats early, think through transaction design, and position Alliance Management as a strategic risk-management function and driver of success rather than a post-signing governance support and implementation function.  Hear best practices for how alliance managers can optimally support a deal leader's efforts and influence a collaboration's entire trajectory--from the deal room itself.  
• Incorporating How AI Is Impacting Inventorship and Contract Terms, Caleb Bates, PhD, JD, Head of IP, Isomorphic Labs
  In 2026, AI is no longer a tool; it is a generative collaborator that can complicate alliance management. The shift toward AI-driven discovery creates critical friction points in governance and IP entitlement. This session provides a tactical roadmap for managing inventorship risks under the latest patent office mandates. We will discuss how to evaluate workflows for patent-readiness, consider human attribution warranties, and structure data-rights clauses that protect critical training data and negative know-how, all in collaboration with your legal team. Attendees will learn to safeguard their organization's "secret sauce" while maintaining the trust and transparency essential for high-value, AI-enabled partnerships.

• Perfecting an Innovation Mindset, Mike Pell, Envisioneer, The Microsoft Garage NYC
  There’s nothing better than a corporate team who can quickly bring their ideas to life – but nothing worse than doing that as “Innovation Theater” versus real impact. Our companies are all being pressed by management to develop AI-based solutions to increase sales and streamline expenses, but few can do that in a truly breakthrough manner. This session will dig into why cultural transformation is the key to true innovation, and what you can do to better prepare yourself to design and create true breakthroughs – not just shiny POCs or brittle prototypes. It all starts with your mindset, not technology.  

  
  Managing Intellectual Property in Multi-Partner Ecosystems 
  Moderator: Adam Kornetsky, Partner, Vantage Partners, Christoph Huwe, CSAP, CA-AM, PhD, Senior Director, Strategic Alliance Management, Bayer, Jeremy Ahouse, CSAP, CA-AM, PhD, Alliance Executive & Advisor; Venkata Garimella, PhD, Vice President & Head-Intellectual Property, Innovation, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Lynn Richard, CSAP, CA-AM, Vice President, Global and Strategic Alliances, GE Healthcare
  Multi-partner alliances are often viewed as complex and risky, yet they can deliver significant strategic advantages, including broader capability coverage, faster development timelines, and the potential for breakthrough innovation. Successfully realizing these benefits requires careful management of competing partner objectives, increased governance complexity, and thoughtful exit planning. In R&D collaborations, traditional approaches to intellectual property ownership, licensing, confidentiality, and termination provisions often need to be reconsidered and adapted for multi-party environments. This session brings together experienced practitioners to share lessons learned and practical approaches for structuring and managing multi-partner alliances, with key insights and best practices captured and shared with the broader conference community. 

   

  From Zero to Strategic: How to Build GSI Partnerships When You're the First Alliance Leader, Rainie Spiva, Director, GSI Partnerships & Alliances, Radiant Logic
  

  Building Global System Integrator partnerships from scratch—with no playbook, precedent, or existing program—is uniquely challenging yet rarely documented. This candid session shares real-world lessons from launching a GSI alliance motion at a cybersecurity company. Learn how to: design a foundational operating model covering partner selection, executive alignment, and role definition; establish credibility with GSIs before revenue proves the model; operationalize enablement, engagement cadences, and success metrics that build momentum early; secure and maintain internal stakeholder buy-in throughout ambiguous early stages; and avoid common pitfalls that derail first-time alliance leaders. Leave with a repeatable blueprint for transforming uncertainty into strategic, scalable GSI partnerships applicable across industries and company sizes.
  
  

• When Strategy Misaligns: A Leadership Playbook for Protecting Value in High Stakes Alliances,Jan Twombly, CSAP, CA-AM, President, The Rhythm of Business
  Strategic misalignment is becoming a defining challenge in long-lived alliances as companies reshape portfolios at increasing speed. Assets that once were prioritized can quickly diverge in importance, leaving alliance leaders managing partnerships where strategic objectives no longer align. The result is often investment disputes, stalled governance decisions, and operating teams caught in cycles of rework. This session provides a practical, industry-agnostic framework for turning strategic divergence into explicit trade-offs and preserve contractual rights while maintaining execution momentum. Participants will learn how to identify early signs of strategic drift, make differences visible, stabilize teams during uncertainty, and protect value and relationships while keeping alliance performance on track.
  
  
• Aligning Roles, Amplifying Results: Alliance and Project Management Collaboration, Brent Harvey, CA-AM Executive Director, Alliance Management, Eli Lilly
  In complex partnerships, blurred lines between Alliance Management, Project Management, and Program Management can quietly erode performance. When roles, decision rights, and escalation paths are unclear, teams duplicate work, miss risks, and struggle to maintain momentum. This session explores how clear role definition between alliance and project leaders establishes sharper expectations, stronger focus, and true ownership at every level of the collaboration. Participants will examine practical frameworks for clarifying accountability, aligning governance with execution, and preventing turf tension before it undermines results. The outcome is amplified impact: healthier partnerships, faster decisions, and operating teams that understand exactly who leads, who supports, and who is accountable for success.  
  
• Coalition Selling: Turning Multi-Partner Strategy Into Revenue Execution, Jody Schiavo, Business Owner, AllianceMind and Rajae Skrezyna, Coalition Selling Strategist, AllianceMind
  Enterprise buyers fund business outcomes, not isolated products. Coalition Selling gives alliance leaders a practical framework to align partners inside live deals, equip sellers with clear messaging, and simplify multi-partner execution. Grounded in scaling a $1B+ co-sell motion, this session turns ecosystem theory into revenue results.
  
  
  

Mastering Alliance Execution – This afternoon we will learn how leading organizations manage healthy, high‑performing alliances through financial awareness, governance, portfolio management, and conflict resolution. Some confirmed speakers:

• Mika Clark Tupy, JD, Managing Director, Alliances, United Airlines
  
  
• Exemplary Strategic Partnerships - Balancing Corporate and Business Unit Alliance Strategies, Philip Sailer, CSAP, CA-AM, Executive Director, Storage Solutions, IBM; Erika Nothnagel, Global Managing Director, IBM-Lenovo Strategic Partnership, IBM, Ian Kane, Director, Corporate Strategic Alliances, Lenovo
  

  In large technology companies, alliance activity often spans multiple layers of the organization. A centralized Corporate Alliances function may set enterprise-wide strategy, while Business Unit teams and Product leaders independently cultivate and manage their own relationships. Without clear alignment, overlap and internal friction can dilute value. With the right structure, however, these groups can operate as a coordinated ecosystem that accelerates growth. This session explores how to define roles, clarify decision rights, and establish governance that drives shared outcomes. Join us as we examine practical models that transform potential conflict into disciplined collaboration—ensuring alliances deliver measurable impact for the enterprise, business units, and product teams alike.
  
  

• The 10% Rule: How Small Cross-Functional Pilots Drive Scalable Partner Program Innovation, Neal Hagermoser, CA-AM, Vice President, Global Service and Technology Partner Strategy, PTC
  Alliance organizations struggle to improve partner programs when no single team owns end-to-end problems. This session shares PTC's proven approach: dedicating 10% of time from a cross-functional group to pilot targeted improvements, validate impact, and hand off successful solutions for scale. Rather than attempting large transformations, the team ran fast pilots addressing fragmented data, inconsistent governance, and lack of peer learning. Once value was proven, ownership transitioned to operational teams with clear playbooks and metrics. Learn how this lightweight model enables faster experimentation and durable improvements—without major reorganizations.  

  
  Presentation of the ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards
  David Thompson, Vice President, Global Head of Alliance Management, BeOne and ASAP Board of Directors Chair, Katherine Kendrick, CSAP, CA-AM, Executive Directors, Head of Alliances, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and ASAP Board of Directors Vice Chair

  
  
• Beyond the Balance Sheet: Why and How to Monitor Your Alliance Partner’s Financial Health,Kristin Van Such, CA-AM, Director, Alliance Management, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Steven Roy, Jazz Pharmaceuticals
  

  Financial stability underpins every successful alliance, yet it is rarely assessed with the rigor it deserves. In a volatile business environment, overlooking a partner’s financial health can expose organizations to unexpected risk, strained relationships, and performance breakdowns. This interactive session examines why continuous financial monitoring matters, how to implement it effectively, and how to respond when warning signs emerge. Participants will learn practical methods for evaluating financial health, identifying red flags in statements and public reporting, and interpreting reliable data sources. Through a hands-on case study, attendees will analyze risk factors and develop action plans to strengthen alliance resilience and safeguard long-term performance.
  
  

• Scaling Alliance Excellence: A Practical Checklist Framework for Consistent, Low-Risk Alliance Execution, Yoshihiko Sunamura, CA-AM, Alliances Director, Natsuki Yamaguchi, CA-AM Manager, NEC Corporation
  

  Large enterprises face a challenge: strategic alliances get expert attention, but numerous smaller partnerships are managed by practitioners with limited alliance experience, creating quality gaps and hidden risks. This session presents a field-tested checklist framework that standardizes alliance execution without requiring dedicated managers for every initiative. Learn how to: design minimum-viable checklists covering business planning, contract structuring, risk identification, and approval requirements; enable practitioners to prepare negotiations confidently and completely; standardize reviews and approvals while maintaining flexibility; improve risk identification, internal alignment, and auditability; and scale alliance governance across diverse partnership sizes and complexities. Leave with actionable tools to enhance execution quality, reduce variability, and empower your organization to manage alliance portfolios efficiently.
  
  

• Building Win-Win Partnerships That Lasts, Tomoko Hanadate, Head of R&D Alliances, Astellas Pharma
  

  Discover how to structure pharmaceutical partnerships that deliver sustained mutual value beyond the initial handshake. Learn proven frameworks for aligning partners through evolving science, markets, and priorities. You'll gain practical strategies for: establishing robust governance structures and early trust-building; integrating alliance managers into deal negotiations to ensure long-term viability; maintaining flexibility throughout the partnership life cycle; and maximizing collaboration value when business conditions shift. Through real-world success examples, understand how strategic alliance leadership transforms transactions into enduring partnerships that benefit both organizations.
  
  

• Building Ecosystem Advantage: How Alliance Managers Drive Competitive Distinction Through Strategic Partnerships in an AI-Era,Nancy Ridge, CA-AM, Head of Partnerships, Lumin
  

  As AI reshapes industries, alliance leaders are increasingly expected to move beyond coordination and act as ecosystem architects who create durable competitive advantage. This session explores how alliance managers can enable partners to deliver superior outcomes while building network effects that strengthen both relationships and revenue. Drawing on real-world examples from AI-powered drug discovery, diagnostics, and digital signature platforms, participants will learn practical approaches for identifying transformational partners, re-framing conversations from risk to opportunity, and using case-based learning to drive adoption and measure success.

• From Co-Creation to Co-Evolution - How Platform Alliances Enable Ecosystem-Wide Innovation, Swati Prasad, CSAP, CA-AM, Director, Alliance Management, Alloy Therapeutics
  

  Discover why traditional bilateral alliances struggle to scale in today's data-intensive biotech landscape—and how platform-driven models solve this challenge. Using antibody discovery ecosystems as examples, learn to: diagnose scaling inflection points before they create governance friction; design multi-party platform alliances that grow without proportional complexity or cost increases; apply AI-driven metrics beyond milestones to measure learning velocity and ecosystem health; stabilize asset-centric partnerships using platform governance principles; and operationalize adaptive alliance strategies across the full life cycle. Through case studies and interactive exercises, gain practical frameworks for transforming transactional agreements into compounding innovation engines that accelerate discovery while preserving partner autonomy.
  
  

• Performance Metrics and Evaluation,Louis Rinfret, Founder, allianceboard
  

  Many alliance teams struggle to define performance metrics that meaningfully guide decisions rather than simply report activity. This session takes a practical approach to alliance measurement across different stages of the alliance lifecycle, focusing on aligning metrics with stakeholder needs, governance expectations, and evolving partnership objectives. Participants will explore how to distinguish between operational indicators and strategic measures, avoid metric overload, and translate performance insights into actionable decisions. The session introduces a focused framework for selecting, evolving, and communicating alliance metrics that support alignment, accountability, and continuous improvement, helping alliance professionals demonstrate value while enabling more effective management and stronger partnership outcomes over time.
  
  

• Rooftop Celebration Reception
  Sponsored by

Navigate the Full Partnership Lifecycle – On our second day, we will explore how to drive value as alliances grow, evolve, or face challenges—ensuring you remain a strategic force regardless of the partnership’s stage. Some confirmed speakers:

• CSAP Breakfast (CSAPs Only)
  
  

• From Handshakes to Ecosystems: 30 Years of Strategic Alliances, Kimberly King, Chief Partner Officer, PTC
  Strategic alliances have undergone a dramatic transformation over three decades—from distribution deals and standards bodies to today's AI-driven capability coalitions. This session traces five distinct eras of alliance evolution, revealing how the very purpose of partnerships has shifted from scaling distribution to building shared production systems around compute, data, and models. As AI accelerates co-opetition, invites regulatory scrutiny, and introduces new partner archetypes, leaders must rethink their alliance strategies entirely moving from transactional partnerships toward outcome-based ecosystem operating models built for the intelligence era.
  
  

• Living the Final Chapters of the Alliance Life Cycle - Termination, Transformation, Bankruptcy, Dissolution and other Challenges, Fern McSorley, Head of Alliance Management, Isomorphic Labs, Alex Waldron, Chief Executive Officer, Neutargeton Therapeutics
  
  
• The Alliance Exchange:  Choose Your Roundtable - Select a table and using the framing quesiton below, discuss what worked?  What failed? And What would you do differently.  Each table should capture the top 3 takeaways and return it to the front of the room.  We'll consolidate and share them back with all of you in the conference mobile app.
  
  

• Federated Collaboration in Practice: What Works (and What Doesn't) for Alliance Leaders, Kimberly Cline, CA-AM, Head of Cloud Partnerships, Rhino Federated Computing
  Federated collaboration - where data stays distributed, governance is shared, and competitors collaborate - is reshaping alliances across industries. Yet without effective data partnerships, without effective data collaboration, the transformative potential of alliances has a ceiling. Learn practical lessons from real-world multi-party initiatives in life sciences, healthcare, financial services, energy, and beyond. Gain actionable strategies for: converting independent goals into clear operating rules and enforceable terms; reducing participation friction across diverse governance structures and risk profiles; making trust measurable through shared rules and transparency mechanisms; governing distributed authority with clear accountability and decision rights; and adapting federated models as participants and objectives evolve. Leave with a practical checklist, common failure modes to avoid, and repeatable patterns for enabling secure, scalable collaboration without compromising privacy or IP.  
  
  

• Managing Change Between Companies, Tracy Blois, Head of Alliance Management and Julia Levinsky, Senior Manager, Business Development & Alliance Management, Amgen
  Most change models assume one organization. Alliances shatter that assumption—change happens between companies where no one fully controls the outcome, yet everyone feels the impact. Driven by geo-economic pressures, acquisitions, and leadership shifts, alliance leaders must orchestrate change across organizational boundaries without direct authority. This session explores how to identify early warning signs of partner misalignment and apply non-hierarchical influence strategies when traditional change management fails. Discover essential skills for navigating complexity by building alignment rather than issuing directives—critical capabilities when your success depends on partners you don't control.
  
  

• Diagnosing Internal Friction in High-Value Partnerships, Adam Kornetsky, Partner, Vantage Partners
  External partnerships are often judged by market outcomes, yet their success is strongly shaped by how effectively internal teams lead, align, and collaborate. While alliance professionals routinely assess external partnership health, far fewer apply the same rigor to evaluating how internal leadership dynamics influence results. This session explores the role Alliance Managers can play in diagnosing and strengthening internal conditions that enable external success. Participants will learn practical frameworks to assess leadership alignment, role clarity, communication norms, and cross-functional collaboration, and to address internal friction that undermines partnerships. Attendees will leave with actionable tools to improve organizational effectiveness and strengthen alliance performance from the inside out.
  
  

• When to Pivot, When to Pass - Navigating Alliance Inflection Points, Christina O'Halloran,CA-AM, Senior Manager, Alliance and Program Management, Pfizer
  External shifts in science, strategy, or market dynamics force critical decisions: adapt the partnership or exit? This interactive breakout explores how to navigate these inflection points strategically. Through small group discussions and real-world scenarios, you'll examine: recognizing early signals that demand partnership reassessment; evaluating whether your alliance foundation—trust, strategic alignment, and nimbleness—supports pivoting versus termination; managing the ambiguity of exploring new directions together; assessing both parties' capacity and willingness to adapt; and determining when cutting losses preserves more value than persisting. Share experiences with peers about successful pivots and well-timed exits, leaving with sharper instincts for these high-stakes decisions.
  
  
• The New Era of Alliances: AI Powered, Client Centric, Cross Platform, Natalya Kasatova, Managing Director, Ecosystem Go-to-Market Lead, Protiviti, Claudia Kuzma, CA-AM, Managing Director, Global Ecosystem Program, Protiviti
  AI is reshaping how partnerships create value, giving alliance leaders a unique opportunity to redefine ecosystem strategy. This session explores how organizations can lead by adopting an AI-first, client-centric approach that integrates AI into daily operations, partner engagement, and collaborative innovation. Through practical examples, participants will examine how internal AI adoption builds credibility, accelerates innovation, and strengthens partner relationships. The session also introduces emerging approaches to cross-platform, multi-agent orchestration, where connected capabilities unlock outcomes beyond individual technologies. Attendees will gain practical frameworks for positioning AI-driven alliances, enabling repeatable innovation, and creating scalable ecosystem value in an increasingly AI-powered environment.
  
  
• Preparing Stakeholders for High-Impact Interactions: A Multi-Industry Perspective, Danielle Martinez, PhD, CA-AM, Director, Alliance Management, Jazz Pharmaceuticals
  Alliance professionals play a critical role preparing stakeholders for high-stakes external engagements—from refining investor messaging to prepping executives for industry conferences and empowering teams for alliance leadership conversations. This cross-industry panel explores strategies for ensuring executives and alliance teams deliver aligned, confident, compelling messages that advance objectives and shape external perspectives. Panelists from pharma, tech, and other sectors share practical approaches to aligning stakeholders on key narratives, anticipating and mitigating sensitive topics, and socializing meeting outcomes to maintain organizational awareness and consistency. Learn how to transform preparation from administrative task to strategic advantage.
  
  
• Tracking What Matters: Milestones That Drive Alliance Performance, Julie Settipani, PhD, Lead Product Manager, Inpart
  This session examines the key milestones organizations should track across the alliance lifecycle—from strategic alignment and launch readiness through value realization and thoughtful closure. Drawing on practical experience, the panel will discuss how leading companies define measurable inflection points, establish joint accountability, and differentiate activity metrics from true performance outcomes. Participants will gain clarity on which indicators reliably signal partnership health, emerging risk, and sustained value creation. The conversation will also offer pragmatic frameworks, governance structures, and reporting disciplines that enable alliance leaders to implement rigorous, outcome-oriented milestone tracking without creating unnecessary administrative burden or complexity.

Communicating with Clarity and Impact – In our final session, we will examine how we can enhance our presence through better communication, stronger delivery, and more influential non‑verbal engagement. Confirmed so far:

• Optimizing Communication to the C-Suite
  
  
• Storytelling and the Alliance Management Heroes’ Journey, Marcus Kropf, CA-AM, Vice President of Alliances, EMD Serono
  Alliance leaders are often expected to influence without authority, align diverse stakeholders, and translate complexity into action. Yet even the strongest strategy can stall if the message lacks clarity and resonance. This interactive session introduces the AM Heroes’ Journey as a surprisingly simple storytelling framework to communicate with greater focus and impact. Participants will explore how to structure narratives that clarify purpose, surface obstacles, and position alliance teams as catalysts for progress. Through guided exercises and real-world scenarios, attendees will practice shaping messages that inspire alignment, drive decisions, and strengthen credibility across partners, governance forums, and executive audiences.
  
  
• Federated Collaboration in Practice: What Works (and What Doesn't) for Alliance Leaders, Kimberly Cline, CA-AM, Head of Cloud Partnerships, Rhino Federated Computing
  Federated collaboration - where data stays distributed, governance is shared, and competitors collaborate - is reshaping alliances across industries. Yet without effective data partnerships, without effective data collaboration, the transformative potential of alliances has a ceiling. Learn practical lessons from real-world multi-party initiatives in life sciences, healthcare, financial services, energy, and beyond. Gain actionable strategies for: converting independent goals into clear operating rules and enforceable terms; reducing participation friction across diverse governance structures and risk profiles; making trust measurable through shared rules and transparency mechanisms; governing distributed authority with clear accountability and decision rights; and adapting federated models as participants and objectives evolve. Leave with a practical checklist, common failure modes to avoid, and repeatable patterns for enabling secure, scalable collaboration without compromising privacy or IP.
    
  

• Ethical AI in Alliance Management: Principles, Risks, and Real-World Decisions
  As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in alliance operations, governance, and decision-making, leaders must confront its ethical implications. This session begins with a concise overview of ethics in a business context, establishing a practical framework for evaluating responsibility, transparency, bias, accountability, and data stewardship. Participants will then examine real-world case studies that surface common dilemmas in alliance management, from automated performance assessments to shared data governance and AI-enabled negotiation support. Through facilitated table discussions, attendees will analyze trade-offs, identify risks, and consider safeguards. The session equips alliance professionals to apply ethical reasoning to AI-driven tools and collaborative environments.
  
  

• From Fractured to Functional: Reimagining Trusted Allies, Susie Freda, Senior Director, Alliance Management, Teva Pharmaceuticals
  When strategic partnerships break down, can trust be rebuilt? This interactive session provides a practical framework for repairing damaged alliances. Through real-world scenarios and breakout workshops, you'll learn to: acknowledge and assess trust gaps objectively; recognize the business impact of relationship fractures; implement a systematic reset framework with clear steps; and establish metrics to track trust-rebuilding progress. Leave equipped with actionable tools to transform troubled partnerships into functional collaborations. Whether facing current challenges or preparing for future obstacles, gain the skills to navigate difficult conversations and restore mutual value in critical alliance relationships.
  
  

• Leveraging Adjacencies to Manage Complex Alliances, David Thompson, CSAP, CA-AM, Vice President, Global Head of Alliances, BeOne, Stephen Cho, PhD, Senior Vice President, Global Portfolio & Program Management, BeOne & Christina Neary, Vice President, Avanade
  
  
• Building Bridges for Better Futures, Ruben Garcia Santos, CSAP, CA-AM
  
  
• Dine Around Town  (included with registration)
  We’re trying something new and offering small group dinners in the Big Apple, giving participants the opportunity to connect with peers in a relaxed setting. Attendees will meet directly at their assigned restaurant, where reservations for groups of six have been arranged under ASAP. All restaurants are within walking distance of the conference venue in Midtown Manhattan, and the cost is included in conference registration. It’s a convenient and fun new way to continue conversations (what bridges will you build?), build new connections, and enjoy an informal evening with fellow attendees at some of the City’s best restaurants.