FTI Consulting appoints Ruxandra Draghia-Akli as Senior Advisor

FTI Consulting has brought former European Commission official Ruxandra Draghia-Akli on board as a Senior Advisor to its Healthcare & Life Sciences practice.

In her role at FTI Consulting, Draghia-Akli will advise global healthcare and life sciences organisations on scientific strategy, regulatory affairs, public policy and legislative developments. Her work will help clients assess and respond to changes affecting pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, vaccines, genomic medicine and advanced therapies.

She has more than two decades of international pharmaceutical experience spanning early discovery, clinical trials, regulatory approval, product launch and patient use. Her expertise includes infectious diseases, vaccines, genomic medicine and advanced therapies for rare diseases. She helped bring two Ebola vaccines through approval and deployment, supported the introduction of bedaquiline as a treatment for tuberculosis and helped deliver the first successful human clinical data for a small-molecule antiviral targeting dengue virus.

Draghia-Akli has held senior leadership roles in academia, biotechnology, global pharmaceutical companies, the public sector and consulting. Most recently, she served as Head of Research & Development at Novavax, where she led the company’s discovery, development and regulatory activities. Prior to this, she held senior global research and development roles at Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co.

As a senior official at the European Commission, Draghia-Akli served as Deputy Director-General in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. In that role, she oversaw a substantial portfolio of research and innovation funding across health, food and biotechnology, energy and transport.

“Ruxandra brings an exceptional combination of scientific, regulatory and public policy experience to FTI Consulting,” said Antoine Mialhe, who heads the Healthcare & Life Sciences practice across the EMEA region. “Having worked with her at the European Commission, I saw firsthand her ability to bring industry and government together, including through the launch of the world’s largest public-private partnership in the biopharma sector.”