Leadership Team

Instem’s international management team is a strong, effective and flexible group that understands and is committed to the values and vision of our business. Our team is entrepreneurial in spirit and possesses strong go-to-market skills providing leadership in Product Development, Marketing and Sales along with proven experience in Strategic Partnering and M&A activities. The team represents over 200 years of rich and relevant experience that has allowed us to become international leaders in all of our core markets.

Most of the team has been with Instem for more than a decade and have helped shape the markets we operate in from working side by side with clients, regulators and key industry trade groups.

Phil Reason
Chief Executive Officer

Phil has been leading Instem as CEO since 1995, working closely with the Instem Board, investors, management, clients, partners and staff to grow the business from a single product line with fifteen clients to serving hundreds of customers as the global market leader across a wide area of life sciences R&D.  Passionate about Instem’s ability to support clients in introducing transformational approaches for life changing therapies, Phil has been a vocal advocate of long-term partnerships, innovative organic growth, geographic expansion and the acquisitive consolidation of the fragmented IT supplier community. Under Phil’s leadership Instem has completed the strategic acquisition of 9 companies, has opened new offices in the US, UK, China, and India and has completed a UK-based IPO in 2010.

Gordon Baxter BSc, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer 

A pharmacologist, Gordon has held several senior discovery positions in major pharmaceutical companies and was a founding entrepreneur of the CRO, Pharmagene plc. and held positions of Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Operating Officer. He was also a founder of the UK-based healthcare intelligence company, BioWisdom Ltd which was acquired by Instem in 2011. He has a track record of innovation in drug discovery and has contributed to the development of several marketed drugs. He is an advocate of Translational Informatics; using data gathered from research, development and medical practice to generate new therapeutic insights. Gordon is on the Board of the R&D information technology group, the Pistoia Alliance. 

Eve Leconte
Chief People & Culture Officer

As Chief People & Culture Officer, Eve oversees all strategic and operational people-based activity across Instem’s global locations. Eve is responsible for driving organizational performance and business results by optimizing employee engagement and effectiveness, leadership development, performance management, employee development and talent acquisition. 
Eve has over 15 years’ Human Resources experience, predominantly in fast growing organizations in a variety of sectors including agrochemical, medical device and IT. She has extensive experience of helping organizations to achieve their corporate goals by delivering the strategic and operational visions of HR both nationally and internationally. Eve is well versed in Trade Union liaison, including successful negotiation of numerous complex agreements. Prior to joining Instem, Eve founded her own HR consultancy, helping start-up companies to create HR departments to support their growth aspirations.  

Mark Poggi PhD, MBA
Executive Vice President, Global Sales

Mark joined Instem in 2023 to lead our global sales group and is extensively trained in Solution & Diagnostic selling. Mark is adept at designing and executing sales strategies backed by his strong scientific background. Mark holds a PhD in analytical chemistry, an MBA and has a strong interest in data science and artificial intelligence. Well versed at building high performing teams, Mark is especially passionate about helping other leaders reach their fullest potential. Offering over 15 years of proven experience leading highly technical teams in consultative selling, Mark helps ensure that our solutions are meeting the rapidly expanding needs of our clients for better data-driven decision making.

John Leveille
Executive Vice President, Clinical Trial Analytics

John Leveille was formerly the Co-Founder and CEO of D-wise which was acquired by Instem. He now heads up the Clinical Trial Analytics business unit as Executive Vice President. John has over 20 years of experience in software design and development. As a lead developer at SAS, he was a pioneer in connecting SAS technology with emerging Internet business models, bringing the power of analytics to web applications across a wide variety of businesses. John was awarded two software patents for innovative solutions developed while at SAS. In the early 2000’s he embarked on a consulting career, helping clients to understand and apply technology to their businesses, eventually focusing on the Life Sciences arena. 

Gregor Grant
Executive Vice President, Study Management Solutions

Gregor is an experienced leader with a proven track record of success in developing customer relationships and delivering IT solutions for the Life Sciences Industry. Gregor is passionate about ensuring the exceptional client experience and his team provides development, deployment and support services to Instem’s Preclinical Solutions clients around the world, including products from the acquisition of Perceptive Instruments in 2013. Gregor joined Instem through an acquisition of Apoloco in 1996, a smaller competitor specializing in pathology solutions.  For over 20 years Gregor has been instrumental in helping create both a successful software product, and building a reputation for high quality and service within a passionate and demanding user community.   

Mike Harwood
Chief Product Officer

Mike joined Instem in 1999 through the acquisition of Fraser Williams Data Systems where he was a Director overseeing Client Services.  While most of Mike’s more recent experience has been in the deployment of regulatory preclinical solutions, since 1977 he has worked on applications across the R&D continuum from early stage chemical databases to late stage clinical trials systems. Mike joined the SEND standard development team back in 2003 providing key input and was pivotal in bringing the first commercial SEND software solution to market in 2005. Mike now leads a team of industry experts supporting the most comprehensive and widely deployed set of tools and services for SEND in today’s global marketplace.

Joel Hooper
Chief Operating Officer

As Chief Operating Officer, Joel is accountable for the effectiveness of Instem’s core value streams encompassing product and services design, development, delivery and support, and how these come together in delivering exceptional experiences and value for our clients. Joel is a customer- and commercially-oriented COO, who is seasoned in aligning operations processes and practices around innovation in service of customer and business value creation.
Joel has held numerous operations leadership roles in the life sciences sector as well as in cross-sector product and services companies. Joel was formerly COO of the regenerative services and software company JET Group, Operations Director at Faculty AI, and worked for 9 years at IQVIA in global operations and services delivery roles. Joel is a founding member of the regenerative collective, North Sea Thriving and holds a PhD in molecular and cellular biology from the University of London.