About 7RiverLabs

As the interim CEO of 7RiverLabs (7RL), Jude leads the team working closely with healthcare providers, corporate organisations and government agencies in Africa to embed 7RL as the preferred precision diagnostics provider in Nigeria and Africa.

He also doubles as the Chief Business Officer at 54gene – 7RL’s parent company, where leads the corporate development team that works closely with various business lines to identify, execute, and manage strategic choices designed to build a world class genomic health technology company.

In the past, Jude worked as a transaction and strategy adviser for over 20 years across life sciences and industrial markets; and his work involved advising clients on growth strategy and strategic shifts to modern healthcare ecosystem evolution. He has deep working experience across multiple continents with a variety of sovereign, regional government, philanthropic, and corporate clients. Jude has advised clients on identifying investment targets, building financial models and forecasts, negotiating licensing and co-development agreements, and conducting commercial due diligence in support of Mergers & Acquisition, and joint ventures activity.

Jude was a partner at ZS Associates in San Francisco, USA, providing transaction support to life sciences clients. He has also occupied senior roles in consulting, industry, and philanthropy across reputable establishments including IQVIA, EY-Parthenon, Bain & Company, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Overseas Shipholding Group, and Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte).

Jude presently serves on the Board of Directors of privately held African specialty food and snacks manufacturer- Bonita Foods, and a US-listed clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. He graduated from Swarthmore College, USA with a double honors Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science.

Dr. Philip Ikeme brings to 7RiverLabs, over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical sector working on cardio-metabolic, infectious diseases, oncology, rare diseases, cystic fibrosis and integrated care.

He was most recently the Medical Head & Country Medical Chair Nigeria-Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa in Sanofi. He has also worked as the Associate Director of Medical Affairs & Compliance Administrator at Merck-Sharpe & Dohme, and an European Union (EU) Medical Affairs Director in Pharmaxis.

Prior to these roles, Dr Philip spent over 12 years in medical practice where he worked as a Resident Cardiac Surgeon and an Honorary Physician, setting up and managing community-based anticoagulation programmes.

He holds a Medical degree from the University of Jos, Nigeria, and gained significant expertise in Copyrighting, ICH-GCP, MHRA up-dates, EU Clinical Trials Directive update, Medical Aspect of Adverse Drug reactions, Signal detection and risk assessment, Pharmacovigilance and Drug safety, Registry studies, and Risk Management.

He is passionate about bringing best-in-class healthcare services to Africa, and he continues to drive this ambition in 7RiverLabs.

Louis Ekome is an accomplished business strategist with expertise in Sales and Marketing Management Strategy for healthcare products and services across Africa. He has over 20 years experience in driving business growth and fundamental change in strategy, process and profitability.

Louis has broad leadership experience working with leading Fortune 500 companies and other global healthcare organizations including Sanofi, with responsibility spanning several countries across Africa.

He is a graduate of Pharmacy from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He also holds an MBA from Lagos State University, and has received a certificate in International Leadership & Organizational Behaviour from Bocconi University, Italy. Louis is a certified Lean Six Sigma Practitioner and Facilitator.

Michelle is a passionate and insightful commercial leader with strong competencies in Strategy, Sales and Marketing. She has over 30 years of hands-on experience in leading high performance teams to attain organizational objectives.

Michelle is also keen on driving organizational transformation, resulting in revenue growth and market share increase. She has utilized her vast experience in leading, building and executing Go-To-Market Strategies in Africa for a myriad of Blue-Chip companies namely Leica Biosystems, PerkinElmer, Sanlam and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc), Biochemistry, Physiology and Microbiology; and a Master of Business Leadership from the University of South Africa.

Oluwaseun is an astute expert in Supply Chain, Logistics and Business Operations Management. As the current Country Manager at 7RiverLabs and 54gene, he brings on board 17 years of cognate experience from respected multinational companies namely Nestle, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Suntory and Swiss Pharma.

As the Supply Chain Director at Swiss Pharma, his expertise was leveraged by the French multinational to revive the manufacturing plant and establish their logistics distribution across Nigeria. At GSK and Nestle, he oversaw and managed various supply chain complexities for the businesses.

He holds an MBA in Logistics Management from Coventry University, United Kingdom and a Diploma in Integrated Business Processes SAP ERP (TERP 10) University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Seun, as he is popularly referred to, is a core people-oriented manager interested in nurturing talents with clear focus on result delivery in alignment with established business objectives as the central focus in his work.

Oluwatosin has a wealth of experience in talent management, business partnerships and employee relations. She began her career as a consultant tasked with setting up Human Resources (HR) practices from scratch for budding organizations.

Afterwards, she joined Jumia Africa as one of the pioneer staff in Nigeria, where she spent almost 9 years executing strategic HR projects and managing a workforce of over 2000 staff. She received the Outstanding Leader Award for her years of brilliant and dedicated service, innovation, creativity and efficiency in the organization.

Oluwatosin has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and has a PHRi Certification from the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI). She is also an Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM).

Dr Ifeoma Taylor is an erudite scholar and an experienced financial expert with over 15 years of experience in performance management, project evaluation, business valuations and due diligence reviews, portfolio management and financial analysis, corporate restructuring, international business strategy, streamlining corporate financial operations, and international financial reporting and policy formulation.

Before joining 54Gene, she was the Financial Controller at Bell Oil and Gas Ltd, where she not only successfully led and closed out on a $10m Capital injection process, led an all-asset based revaluation exercise which boosted the valuation metrics and net assets of the business, but also introduced cost-cutting measures resulted in an increase in EBITDA by 46%.

She also worked at Netplusdotcom as the Financial controller and Head of Strategy, CHI Limited as the Senior Finance Manager, Index Petrolube Africa as the Finance and Business Development Manager, Lead Consultant at Analytics Secure Associates, and PricewaterhouseCoopers as an IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) Consultant.

Ifeoma is a Doctor of Finance (DBA) from the Swiss School of Business and Management, Switzerland. She holds 1st class honors degrees in Finance and Applied Accounting from the University of Lagos and Oxford Brookes University, UK respectively. She completed her master’s degree with a distinction in Financial Management from Edinburgh Business School.

She is also a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA), Associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, (ACFE), USA.

Stella is a corporate communications leader with an excellent record in strategic communications, public affairs, crisis management, and brand public relations. She has 22 years practical work experience providing strategic communications and crisis management counsel for multinational companies like Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and KPMG.

Stella excels in repeatedly demonstrating a refined ability to revitalise organisations by delivering impactful and effective public relations programs. As a tested-and-trusted professional, Stella adds value by protecting and enhancing the reputation of businesses. She is skilled at building robust value-adding relationships with C-Suite business leaders, employees and a wide range of stakeholders.

Her experience spans initiatives for companies and brands across the pharmaceutical, FMCG, airline, banking, telecommunications, media and business advisory sectors among others.

Stella holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya, and is a member of the Public Relations Society of Kenya (PRSK).

Ijeoma leads 7RL’s Pan-African Sales teams with focus on building mutually beneficial relationships with all the relevant stakeholders in Africa’s diagnostic market. Prior to this role, she significantly supported the formation and scaling of 7RL’s COVID-19 sales teams, customer care and ecosystem support in NIgeria.

Before joining 54gene, Ijeoma garnered extensive expertise across various industries such as life sciences, telecommunications, data services, entertainment and media. Her past employers include L5lab, One Africa Group, and Cliqmi Media, where she delivered uniquely curated offerings and solutions to their clients.

Ijeoma has a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Technology from University of Port Harcourt, and also has certifications in Organizational Effectiveness from Oxford University, Entrepreneurship Essentials from Harvard, and Marketing from CIM-UK.