Shannon Thyme Klinger Joins Moderna as Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary
Moderna Inc. (Nasdaq: MRNA) announced the appointment of Shannon Thyme Klinger as Chief Legal Officer, effective June 1, 2021. Klinger, previously at Novartis, brings extensive experience in the pharmaceutical sector. CEO Stéphane Bancel highlighted her skills in corporate governance and compliance, which are essential for Moderna's expanding international presence. Klinger emphasized her commitment to innovation and public health. This transition follows the planned retirement of the current General Counsel, Lori Henderson, later in 2021.
- Appointment of Shannon Thyme Klinger as Chief Legal Officer could enhance Moderna's legal and compliance frameworks.
- Klinger's extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry supports Moderna's growth strategy.
- Transitioning leadership may introduce temporary instability as the company adjusts to new management.
Moderna Inc., Moderna, Inc., (Nasdaq: MRNA) a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, today announced that Shannon Thyme Klinger will join the Company as Chief Legal Officer, effective June 1, 2021. She will serve on Moderna’s Executive Committee and as Corporate Secretary and report to Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel.
“Shannon’s deep global experience in the pharmaceutical industry in both the general counsel and ethics and compliance roles are critical to Moderna as we pivot to a broad international and commercial footprint,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. “Her combination of skills across corporate, life sciences, pharmaceutical technology, commercial and multi-national sectors, and her passion for ESG and public health will help Moderna advance our core technology platform, engage critical partners across the globe and help us expand and capitalize on our growing international presence.”
Ms. Klinger joins Moderna from Novartis (NYSE: NVS), where she has served as Chief Legal Officer and a member of the Novartis Executive Committee since 2018. Previously, she served as Chief Ethics, Risk & Compliance Officer. During her ten-year tenure at Novartis, she held other roles of increasing responsibility, including as Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer and Global Head of Litigation, General Counsel and Global Head of Legal at Sandoz, a Novartis division.
Across her career, Ms. Klinger’s work has focused on driving long-term business performance and building trust with society, including ensuring access to medicine, protecting innovation with intellectual property, championing the responsible use of data, and enabling excellence in product launches. She is also a committed advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion.
Ms. Klinger serves on the board of directors of SwissHoldings (the Swiss federation of industrial and service groups) in Switzerland. She previously served on the board of directors of the SIX Group in Switzerland from 2016 to 2020.
“It is an honor to join Moderna and its leadership team at such a remarkable moment in the transformation of the company,” said Ms. Klinger. “Moderna’s mission and values are consistent with those on which I have sought to build my career, including a relentless focus on turning innovation into impact, every day. I look forward with enthusiasm to joining Moderna and helping continue to build an organization that supports the long-term demands of our evolving business, science, development programs and efforts to bring mRNA medicines to patients.”
Ms. Klinger received her Juris Doctorate with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame. She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and the District of Columbia Bar.
Late in 2020, Moderna’s General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Lori Henderson, J.D., announced her decision to retire later in 2021, while remaining with the Company to ensure a smooth transition with Moderna’s next General Counsel.
“As Shannon prepares to join us, I would like to thank Lori once again for her significant contributions during her time at Moderna. She helped us build a world class legal team even as we transitioned from a private to public company,” said Mr. Bancel. “Lori has been a tireless champion for our people and advocate for our mission, and she has proven herself to be a wonderful partner to me and our leadership team. On behalf of our Executive Committee and our colleagues, I wish Lori all the best on her upcoming retirement.”
About Moderna
In 10 years since its inception, Moderna has transformed from a science research-stage company advancing programs in the promising-but-still-unproven field of messenger RNA (mRNA), to an enterprise with its first medicine having treated millions of people, a diverse clinical portfolio of vaccines and therapeutics across six modalities, a broad intellectual property portfolio in areas including mRNA and lipid nanoparticle formulation, and an integrated manufacturing plant that allows for both clinical and commercial production at scale and at unprecedented speed. Moderna maintains alliances with a broad range of domestic and overseas government and commercial collaborators, which has allowed for the pursuit of both groundbreaking science and rapid scaling of manufacturing. Most recently, Moderna’s capabilities have come together to allow the authorized use of one of the earliest and most-effective vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moderna’s mRNA platform builds on continuous advances in basic and applied mRNA science, delivery technology and manufacturing, and has allowed the development of therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases and auto-immune diseases. Today, 24 development programs are underway across these therapeutic areas, with 13 programs having entered the clinic. Moderna has been named a top biopharmaceutical employer by Science for the past six years. To learn more, visit www.modernatx.com.
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