Wendy Erler is a dedicated and passionate leader in patient advocacy with a career defined by a deep commitment to connecting individuals and families, particularly those impacted by rare diseases—to the resources, services, and support they need. Working across the healthcare ecosystem to drive agile ways of working and advance innovation, she is adept at bringing people together and building collaboration. Wendy serves as the Senior Vice President of Patient Affairs at Sarepta Therapeutics, where she leads the patient engagement strategy and works to ensure the patient voice is central to all facets of the company’s work.

Before joining Sarepta, Wendy was Global Vice President of Patient Experience at Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease, where she built a robust engagement and insights framework to drive patient-centered drug development across the portfolio. She was responsible for leading the enterprise-wide strategy to embed patient insights throughout drug development and commercialization

Previously, Wendy was a member of the executive leadership team at Wave Life Sciences, where she led both Patient Advocacy and Commercial. She built both functions from the ground up, guiding the launch of multiple rare disease clinical trials and the development of Wave’s commercialization strategy.

Wendy spent more than a decade at Biogen Idec, where she began in field sales and held several commercial leadership roles before transitioning to lead patient advocacy for multiple rare disease programs. In these roles, she gained deep experience in newborn screening, public policy, health technology assessments (HTAs), and embedding patient perspectives across the development lifecycle.

Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree from Miami University and earned her MBA from St. Joseph’s University.

Dr. Geary is Chief Development Officer and Executive Vice President of Development at Ionis. He is responsible for preclinical development, global clinical development and regulatory, and manufacturing for Ionis’ drugs. Since joining Ionis in 1995, Dr. Geary has been involved in discovery and development including the regulatory submission of more than forty investigational new drug applications and seven successful antisense medicine late-stage development programs through approvals in multiple jurisdictions. 

Dr. Geary received his Ph.D. in Biopharmaceutics from the University of Texas, College of Pharmacy, Austin, Texas and his B.S. in Biology from Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. 

Dr. Scott Henry is the Senior Vice President on Nonclinical Development at Ionis Pharmaceuticals. Scott originally joined Isis Pharmaceuticals as a Senior Scientist in the department of toxicology in 1993. Along with a team of dedicated colleagues, he played a key role in the approval of numerous drugs ranging from anti-viral, to cardiovascular and neurology indications. In addition, he has participated in the development of approximately 8 different phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides and over 30 different 2’-MOE modified phosphorothioate oligonucleotides. Additional seminal contribution have included the characterization and study of the mechanisms of various toxicities that include the effects of oligonucleotide treatment on clotting time prolongation, alternative complement pathway activation, proinflammatory effects in rodents, platelet alterations and the effects related to the accumulation of oligonucleotide in kidney. He was also part of the team that pioneered the direct administration of ASO into the CNS via IT injection which leads to the development of Spinraza and Qalsody. This foundational work was essential for establishing the safety and pharmacokinetics of this class of drugs for treatment of a broad range of CNS disease. These efforts on multiple IND submissions and collaborating with FDA counterparts to do clinical trials for rare disease, was instrumental in establishing the Nonclinical Guidance for treatment of Individual Patients with ASOs.