Board of Directors

With experience across pharmaceutical operations, R&D, intellectual property, law and finance, our team is committed to excellence. Together, we are passionate about delivering breakthrough therapies for conditions with a significant unmet medical need.

  • Julie Pomeroy is an experienced finance director of quoted and private companies. Julie graduated with an honours degree in physics from Birmingham University and is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Director. She also holds tax and treasury qualifications.

    Julie is a Non Executive Director at Dillistone Group Plc, an AIM quoted software business, where until September 2021 she was the group finance director and company secretary having joined in 2010. She was finance director of AIM quoted Biofutures International plc until July 2010 having joined in 2006.

    Julie was group finance director of Carter & Carter Group plc until October 2005, having joined in 2002 to help grow and float the business. She was previously chief financial officer of Weston Medical Group plc and was instrumental in its flotation in 2000. Prior to this, Julie worked at East Midlands Electricity plc as director of corporate finance. She also spent over 12 years as a non-executive director of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

  • Clarissa joined the Group’s executive team in December 2018 as General Counsel and Company Secretary, with ultimate responsibility for all legal aspects of the business as well as compliance and regulation, diversity and inclusion, people, culture and communications. She was appointed to the Group’s Board in February 2021 as Chief Operating Officer, taking responsibility for the operational side of the Group in addition to inputting on the Company’s strategic goals. Clarissa was instrumental in the Group’s listing on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in May 2021. In December 2022 Clarissa was appointed as Chief Executive Officer on an interim basis, and is now responsible for the overall success of the Group.

    Clarissa worked for many years as a solicitor and commercial consultant to companies in the retail, telecoms, and pharmaceutical sectors. Following an early career with Penningtons Manches Cooper LLP in London, where she spent time seconded to a range of clients including London Underground Limited and All Saints Retail Limited, she held posts as senior in-house counsel in established corporations including Hutchison 3G UK Limited (Three) and Virgin Media Limited, a subsidiary of Liberty Global plc. She is a qualified solicitor in England and Wales and is a student member of ICSA, The Chartered Governance Institute where she is studying for an advanced certificate in corporate governance. Clarissa is also a management coach and has delivered compliance training and management coaching to blue chip clients including Google LLC, Biogen Inc. and McDonald’s Corporation across the EMEA and APAC regions.

    Clarissa holds a BA in philosophy and literature from Warwick University and PGDL and LPC from BPP Law School in London. After completing her undergraduate degree, Clarissa spent two years working as a project manager in the residential construction industry before retraining as a solicitor. She is a Legal Geek mentor and an elected member of the Parochial Church Council of St John the Evangelist, Notting Hill.

  • Paul joined the Company from Panthera Biopartners Ltd, a clinical trials management company where he was the Finance Director and Company Secretary overseeing financial and treasury management, as well as assisting with mergers and acquisitions.

    Paul is a CIMA qualified accountant, with more than 25 years' UK and international financial experience including strategic management capabilities gained across a wide range of market sectors, with expertise extending to IT, HR and procurement. He has worked in a variety of organisations, from SMEs to quoted companies including as Finance Director of JOST UK Ltd, which was a UK subsidiary of JOST Werke AG, a company quoted on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

    Paul holds a BA in Accounting and Finance from Lancaster University and is also a chartered global management accountant.

  • Cheryl Dhillon is a senior executive with extensive experience in a variety of sectors and demonstrable achievements in business strategy and profit and loss account optimisation in start-up, growth phase and major transformations. The last 29 years have been focused on pharmaceuticals in companies including Ares Serono Group, Elan Corporation Plc, Lorantis Ltd and a tenure of over 15 years with Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd; part of the Otsuka family of companies.

    Through her long career Cheryl has proven expertise in finance, procurement, IT, supply chain, quality, business development, corporate governance and alliance management; using these varied skills to maximise business value.

    Cheryl has a keen interest in the development of people and to this end has trained as an executive coach with the University of Strathclyde. Cheryl is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and holds an MBA from the University of Hertfordshire.

  • As Global Innovation Manager for Harsco Environmental (part of NYSE listed Harso Corporation), Bishrut Mukherjee leads the early-stage investment and technology partnering process within the Environmental Solutions category. Prior to joining Harsco, Bishrut was a Corporate Development Manager at FTSE 30 business Imperial Brands where he developed and executed its entry into the legal cannabis category. Previously, Bishrut was a Portfolio Manager at VAR Capital, a multi-family office with over £500M of AUM and trained as a Chartered Engineer at BP. He has also worked as a research scientist for Merck.

    Bishrut has a wide range of experience within operational delivery, M&A, corporate strategy and investment analysis, principally across regulated industries including those of manufacturing, energy, pharmaceuticals and FMCG.

    Bishrut hold a Master’s in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London, where he was awarded a BP scholarship and an MBA from the London Business School, where he was the recipient of a scholarship funded by the Gatsby Foundation. Bishrut is also a Sainsbury Management Fellow, a charity affiliated with the Royal Academy of Engineering that helps young engineers with leadership qualities to combine business and engineering education to improve the performance of the UK and global economy.

  • Neil Mahapatra is a Co-founder of OCT and serves as Non-Executive Director of the Company, having conceptualised the business and directly hired the other Executive Directors. Neil has nearly two decades of experience in business and the investment industry. He began his career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley International plc, in healthcare corporate finance and UK equity capital markets before becoming a private equity executive at J. Rothschild Capital Management Limited, where he led private investments for the family office of Lord Rothschild and RIT Capital Partners plc.

    In 2013, Neil founded London-based multi-family private investment firm Kingsley Capital Partners LLP, where he is Managing Partner. Neil currently is a non-executive director for a number of companies, including telecoms businesses Atlas Tower Group Limited and Spring Fibre Limited, and consumer businesses McQueens Flowers Limited and Equinox International Holdings Limited. When at J. Rothschild Capital Management Limited, Neil was a non-executive director of UK data centre company Infinity SDC Limited and a UK subsidiary of African telecom towers firm Helios Towers Plc, now listed on the Official List.

    Neil is a known and respected leader in the European cannabis industry. Through KCP, Neil sponsored and launched the End our Pain campaign, a prominent campaign that was instrumental in effecting the UK government reforms to medical cannabis legislation in 2018. Outside of business, Neil serves as Chair of the board of a leading global architecture and design non-profit firm, the MASS Design Group, where he also sits on the finance and governance committees. Neil is also a trustee of the Oxford Union Literary and Debating Trust.

    Neil holds a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Before starting his undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford, Neil spent a year performing genetic research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, where he was chosen by Professor James D Watson, Nobel Laureate for elucidating the structure of DNA.

  • Richard is Corporate Development Director at Imperial Brands plc, where he is responsible for leading corporate development and M&A activity as well as other strategic initiatives and projects across the business.

    Prior to joining Imperial, Richard was a partner at KPMG. He has considerable experience of auditing and advising public and private companies, and of transactions of all kinds, including financing and restructuring, across a wide range of sectors.

    He is a Fellow of the ICAEW and holds an MA in Mathematics from the University of Oxford.

    Richard has been on the Board of Logista, the logistics and distribution business listed in Madrid, since 2015, and a member of the Audit Committee since 2017.