Kathleen Onieal
Managing Partner—Helix Innovation Network
Kathleen Onieal is the managing partner of the Helix Innovation Network, an innovation consulting firm that works with all levels and functions to drive innovation in the life science industry. She works with healthcare start-ups to create winning growth strategies and broker connections to potential partners and customers.
Previously, Onieal was a senior advisor in marketing innovation at the Monitor Group, where she advised and consulted on business development with life science clients in marketing innovation. Prior she served as vice president, global leader of marketing innovations at Merck & Company, where she was responsible for leveraging new technologies and developing new marketing models to drive brand growth and build customer relationship management capabilities.
Prior to joining Merck, Onieal built and led the first New Marketing Channels Group at Novartis. In her role, she also developed internal capabilities to execute relationship-marketing programs for the company, which included major customer touch-point channels including the internet and call centers. In 2000, she pioneered the first e-marketing group at Pharmacia/Pfizer where she transformed e-marketing to become an integrated and measurable discipline as part of the marketing mix on major brands such as Celebrex and DetrolLA.
Prior to Novartis, Onieal spent many years in brand management at Merck and Johnson & Johnson. Among her accomplishments as director of consumer marketing at J&J was the launch of the first direct-to-consumer TV advertising for Ortho Tri-Cyclen brand. Onieal received her undergraduate degree in pre-medicine from the University of Washington and attended the Executive MBA Program at the Stern School of Business at NYU.