Bio
Craig A. Serra, MS, MBA, PMP, CCDM
Craig Serra is Senior Director and Business Process Owner of Clinical Data Management in Worldwide Research and Development at Pfizer, Inc. In this role, he is the single point of accountability for oversight of the clinical data management conduct and closeout process area applied across the portfolio of 400+ Pfizer clinical trials, executed by over 10,000 clinical research colleagues, impacting tens of thousands of patients.
Craig rejoined Pfizer in 2013 as Senior Director after serving as Director of Data Management and Director of Clinical and Strategic Operations with DSP Clinical Research. At DSP, Craig led biometrics services and oversight of clinical systems and quickly was promoted to additionally drive their business development and revenue generating activities. His previous experience includes project, program, portfolio, and business leadership roles at Pfizer, Roche, Eisai, and Schering Plough.
Craig has an extensive and diverse educational background, earning a BA in Psychology from Rutgers University and both an MBA in Management and an MS in Information Systems from Fordham University. Additionally, he will earn an MS in Pharmacology and Toxicology in May of 2016.
Craig is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Certified Clinical Data Manager (CCDM) from the Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM). He continually pursues entrepreneurial opportunities and has an active interest in medicine, technology, and innovation in order to improve the delivery of medicine to patients.
Statement
There are so many reasons why I am honored to be a committee member for the Cristian Rivera Foundation. At the core, it is the ability to join incredibly talented and giving people who are united by the common purpose to serve children and eradicate this terrible disease. DIPG is aggressive and unrelenting, which means achieving the cure is going to require an even more aggressive and unrelenting fight from all of us. More so, we need to fight – endlessly – for those who need us the most.
Coming from clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry, I have a unique perspective in seeing how drugs go from the lab to the medicine cabinet, in an increasingly difficult regulatory, financial, and operational environment. It can be very frustrating trying to bring together novel science with often, a stifling bureaucracy that can be very much at odds with families desperate for answers. Especially challenging is trying to find a cure for a rare disease such as DIPG. Many companies abandon research into rare diseases, knowing they are inherently difficult to treat and without the market to support the development. In working at Pfizer, we actively pursue the most difficult of diseases, including many forms of cancer, with both internal research capabilities and external academic collaborations. It is this mindset – rooting for the underdog and not taking the easy way out – that makes me so excited to support the Cristian Rivera Foundation and the patients it serves, as we continue on a path towards the same goal: a victory over DIPG.
