The International Pharmaceutical Excipients Council Europe

Beam Suffolk

IPEC Europe Chair

Beam Suffolk is currently the European Regulatory Affairs Manager within Dow Europe GmbH.

She is responsible for managing all the regulatory aspects pertaining to pharmaceutical, food additive and feed additive products. She has 18 years experience from different multinational pharmaceutical companies and has held roles within Marketing and Sales, Product Management, Training, Project Management and Regulatory Affairs.

Beam Suffolk has a degree in Medical Technology and an MBA.

She was elected as a Board Member of IPEC Europe in January of 2007.

Michael Thompson   

IPEC Europe vice Chair

Mike Thompson is Supplier Quality Director at GlaxoSmithKline. Mike has 26 years experience working in pharmaceutical quality assurance, 17 of which have been associated with quality management and development of the pharmaceutical supply base.

Mike is a graduate Chemist and eligible as a Qualified Person. He is also trained as a Lean-Sigma expert.

Flavia Arce

IPEC Europe Secretary

Flavia Arce is a Quality Assurance Manager at Eli Lilly responsible for the Supplier Quality Management, Complaint Handling, Product Stability, Quality of Printed Packaging Material Development, GMP Training Qualification and GMP Records Retention at the Manufacturing Site in Madrid (Spain).

She joined Lilly in 1992 and has held roles within Product Development & Formulation and Process Validation.

Flavia has a degree and Ph.D. in Pharmacy from the University of Pharmacy in Madrid (Spain), a Post-Doctoral certificate in Industrial Pharmacy and is the Patent holder of two Pharmaceutical Formulation Patents..

Damien Kerloc'h

IPEC Europe Treasurer

Damien Kerloc'h is the Regulatory Affairs Manager within Roquette Frères. He is responsible for all regulatory matters pertaining to pharmaceuticals and cosmetics products.

Damien has a degree of biochemistry from the University of Scienc (Rennes-France). He worked for 6 years in the Regulatory department of the French food company "Diana Ingredients" before joining Roquette in 2002.

Damien is involved in the Experts Working Groups of the European Pharmacopoeia ans has been a member of the IPEC Europe Harmonstion and Regulatory Affairs Committees for several years.

Patricia Rafidison

Active in IPEC Europe since 1992, Patricia is a Pharmacist and Docteur d'etat es sciences pharmaceutiques from the University of Pharmacy (Paris XI-France). Patricia's current job is Life Sciences Risk manager for Dow Corning.

A past chair of the IPEC Europe's GMP committee, Patricia achieved harmonisation of GMP guidelines with IPEC Americas. In addition to this Patricia contributed as co-chair to the Safety committee in IPEC Europe to develop the IPEC Europea safety guidance for novel excipients. Part of the various expert networks for Quality and Regulatory standards, including WHO, especially in the field of good practices for excipients.

Steve Porter

Steve is QA Director in AstraZeneca's Global External Sourcing (GES) division, a post he has held since August 2007. GES manages the supply of drug products, drug substances and excipients to AstraZeneca Operations, Steve currently leads a team of quality professionals primarily supporting API suppliers but also some excipient suppliers. He has experience both as a user of excipients and an auditor of excipient manufacturers and has a global view of the issues affecting excipients.