Our team

Leon Van Rompay has more than 40 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical market. During his professional career he served in several positions including country & area manager (covering major territories) and board member of the Zambon Group. He was founder and CEO of Docpharma, a Belgian based generics company that was listed on Euronext and served on different boards including Ecodis and Uteron Pharmaceuticals.

He was a founding member of BIGE/IBES (Belgian Institute for Health and Economics), the B.G.A. (Belgian Generic Association), BAPIE (Belgian Association of Parallel Import and Export) and was an executive committee member and board member of the Belgian Pharmaceutical Industry Association. He also was a member of the pharmaceutical deontological commission and responsible for this commission in the industry association executive committee.

Jean-Michel Foidart graduated in Gynecology from the University of Liège and also obtained a PhD in cell biology and biochemistry, before directing its Department of Gynecology-Obstetrics. He was also General Secretary of the European Society of Gynecology and member of multiple editorial boards of international peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of more than 1300 publications on women’s health and experimental oncology.

Professor Foidart holds the Francqui Chair, Doctor Honoris Causa of the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Paris and the Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse. He is Officer of the Order of Leopold II, Commander, then Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown, Professor Extraordinary, Honorary of the ULg and Perpetual Secretary of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. He is the co-founder of Mithra.

Mr Christophe Maréchal was Director, Group Treasury and Credit Risk Management, at Hamon Group (Euronext Brussels: HAMO), an engineering and contracting company. He has more than 20 years of international financial experience in the industrial, telecommunications, manufacturing and banking industries, including M&A, operational and financial strategy, and tactical initiatives to drive long-term business growth.

Before joining Hamon Group in 2006, Mr Maréchal held a number of positions at France Telecom Group in Paris, London and Brussels, including Deputy Group Treasurer. He holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Liège, Belgium, and studied econometrics at the Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Tilburg, Netherlands.

Dr Graham Dixon has a 27 year international career in the pharmaceutical industry, with a strong track record in R&D across many therapeutic areas. He also has solid leadership experience having worked across a number of R&D management positions at AstraZeneca plc and in C-level management positions in several biotech companies: Entomed SA; Galapagos NV (AMS:GLPG); Addex Therapeutics SA (SWX:ADXN); Sensorion SA (EPA:ALSEN) and Onxeo SA (EPA:ONXEO).

Dr Dixon has also held leadership roles in successful programmes spanning the whole continuum of R&D, including clinical proof-of-concepts and regulatory approvals. On the business side, he has held executive roles in two successful IPOs (Galapagos & Sensorion) and 10 clinical stage licensing deals. He has also held several non-executive director positions in the biotech sector and acted as an advisor to several venture capital organisations and their portfolio companies.

Dr Dixon obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Bradford, UK and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Swansea, UK.

Mr Fontaine has over 18 years of experience in the pharma industry in manufacturing, supply chain and commercial positions.

He started his career at Pfizer in supply chain and manufacturing where he ensured ERP implementation and integration of Pfizer’s Belgium manufacturing site. In 2001 he joined Lundbeck where he held various positions in sales & marketing in Belgium and France, notably for Cipralex® product. In 2010, Jean-Manuel joined UCB global marketing team as associate director developing global campaign for the brand and driving business alignment across EU regions.

In 2013, Jean-Manuel joined Mithra to lead successively business development and public relations.

Jean-Manuel holds a Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences and MBA from Cornell University.

Mr Renaat Baes has over twenty years of experience in pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Supply Chain Operations. He joins Mithra from Takeda, where he held different Project, Process and Production positions gaining a broad experience in different technologies (e.g. hormones, solid dosage, sterile manufacturing).

As Plant Director for 8 years in the Brussels Manufacturing site, Renaat led several strategic site divestments for Takeda. Most recently he was responsible for the Global Business Process Redesign Project from a manufacturing and supply chain perspective, involving change management in several production sites. Renaat holds a Master in Pharmacy including post-graduate degrees in Industrial Pharmacy from Gent University and Business Management from KUL, Belgium.

M. Brands holds a bachelor’s degree from the university of Liège ( Belgium) in Public Health with a major in Epidemiology and Health Economics and has over 10 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry. His area of expertise covers Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance and Supply Chain.

M. Brands started his career at Astra Zeneca in a commercial role and joined Mithra in 2009 to take growing responsibilities in the Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs department. After developing the Quality Assurance activity at Mithra as QA Manager he progressively transitioned to Supply Chain Manager to develop the whole Supply activities and manage the growing logistic and supply streams.

His deep knowledge of the logistical organisation within the company together with his sound experience in establishing and developing the Supply Chain activity allows M. Brands to take the role as Chief Supply Chain Officer at Mithra. In this position M. Brands will address the Mithra CDMO logistic and supply development , which is key to the company’s growth.

Cédric Darcis has 13 years of experience in various legal positions, predominantly oriented towards the healthcare sector.

Cédric initiated his career as a lawyer, where he developed a legal practice focused on commercial advisory towards private and institutional clients. He has joined Mithra in 2014 where he acted as senior counsel responsible for covering legal services in various matters.

Cédric holds a Master degree in law, A LL.M. in internal law form (University of Hull, UK).

Laurence Schyns has over thirty years of experience in Human Resources, coaching and personal development. Laurence Schyns is a psychotherapist by training and began her career at Hexcel before creating two companies specialized in HR and recruitment (Acta Interim and Acta Group).

Coach for various private companies, she worked for nearly ten years for the French aeronautics group Safran before joining Mithra in 2021 to deploy a Corporate culture strategy in phase with its ambitions.

Stijn Vlaminck has over 20 years experience in IT, of which 17 within the Pharmaceutical sector.

After working in several IT positions at Siemens, GSK and UCB, he became Head of IT of the Alter Pharma Group.
Here he was able to implement serialization and acquire an in depth knowledge of the supply chain processes within the Pharma sector.

His overall IT, Supply Chain and Computerized System Validation knowledge make him the suited person to help Mithra and CDMO stay on top of the market and guide them to the future.