CVP mentors

David Dahan is a strategic advisor, with a particular focus on investment management of real assets, business growth, transformational change and post-acquisition integration.  

His experience spans over 23 years in financial services. Earlier in his career, he held a variety of corporate and business strategy roles, in which David worked with global Boards and Executive teams. Most recently, David was Managing Director of Aviva Investors' activities in infrastructure and structured finance assets, as well as co-head of Alternative Income Solutions. He was previously part of the Aviva Investors real estate executive committee with a range of responsibilities during his tenure; he led strategic and corporate development, he created and grew a number of new businesses and has led real-asset based income strategies, private equity, listed real estate securities, infrastructure and structured finance investment businesses and teams.   

David has studied and worked in France, the US and the UK. He holds a BA in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School. He is also a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Jane has over 15 years' experience in business development gained from roles in both biotech and pharma. Since joining F-star in late 2011 Jane has led a series of significant and innovative transactions with BMS, AbbVie, Denali and Merck (EMD Serono) raising almost $200M in non-dilutive financing and advancing F-star’s drug pipeline. By establishing asset-centric-vehicles as well as more traditional licensing, F-star has been able to realise the value of its individual assets through flexible deal structuring. As well as business development, Jane is responsible for transactional legal matters, IP and Communications at F-star. Earlier this year she was identified by Labiotech as one of the 15 Women Leading in European Biotech. 

Prior to F-star, she held business development positions at Cellzome and Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT). At Cellzome she led two significant transactions with GSK; Cellzome was subsequently acquired by GSK in 2012. During her time at CAT she led negotiations on multiple significant transactions, subsequently continuing this work within AstraZeneca following the acquisition of CAT. 

She has a first class degree, a PhD and an MBA from the University of Cambridge and spent the first part of her career within the agrochemical industry. She is Vice-Chair of the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, a member of the University of Cambridge Careers Service Syndicate and an Honorary Associate of Newnham College.

Dr Ralph Ecclestone has worked extensively on the commercial and technical development of new technologies. He also has experience of managing early-stage venture capital funds, giving him insights from both sides of the financing divide. He has helped create numerous start-up businesses, and in addition to senior executive roles has also been a non-executive director on various private and public bodies. He was until recently the head of the Business Relations Office at the University of Cambridge.

John is an expert team coach and facilitator, co-founder of Curve, a company devoted to developing Creative Leaders, Cambridge Hack, an Innovation company and the CambridgeSpace co-working startup. He helps the world’s most ambitious organisations transform to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technology. John is passionate about developing creative leadership and enjoys building and mentoring brilliant teams to produce breakthrough ideas.

A member of the board of ActionAid UK, an international NGO building a movement of people working together to defeat poverty, John loves to change things for the better.

John has spoken at numerous private events for corporates, government bodies and civil society groups as well as public events such as the WebIT summit, Digital Shoreditch and the UN-sponsored Design for Social Innovation & Leadership program.

Jo Vertigan has worked in the digital and strategy space since 2001 initially designing the commercial framework for Sony's approach to the emerging Ecommerce sector. Subsequently he developed partnerships with companies such Lovefilm and Photobox, then went on to run Sony's direct to consumer business. In recent years he has worked across a wide range of sectors including sport, financial services and technology. Supporting the digital capability development at The Football Association, The Jockey Club and AXA Wealth as well as a number of early stage businesses. He is currently Group Head of Strategy for Marshall of Cambridge.