Mark Keatley

Mark Keatley (1984-86) graduated from Cambridge and jumped at the chance to study an MBA at Stanford Business School, California, as a Harkness Fellow.  He then worked at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on projects in sub-Saharan Africa, visiting 28 countries to date.   His IFC work caught the eye of Ashanti Goldfields, the leading Ghanaian gold mining company, who recruited him as CFO to support their listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1994, and on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996 – the first by an African operating company.    A series of CFO positions followed in the pharmaceutical industry - in biotechnology, pharma manufacturing, generic medicine, and consumer health – including CFO of the Icelandic/Swiss company Actavis (later Teva) from 2005 to 2012, and CFO of the German company STADA AG from 2017 to 2020.   Both roles required travel throughout Europe, the USA, the Middle-East, and South-East Asia.  Currently, Mark works as a Board member of companies who develop and commercialise innovative medicines, and as a Senior Advisor to private equity firms who invest in the sector.   He keeps one foot in West Africa, where his fellow-Cambridge- and Stanford- educated Ghanaian wife Rosemary has been professionally active for the last 20 years, as CEO for 10 years of Ghana’s leading medical diagnostic services company, and as a founder member of the Ghana Healthcare Federation.   During the COVID pandemic, Mark and Rosemary co-led the funding and execution of a project to digitize Ghana’s public diagnostic labs to cope with COVID-19 and potential future pandemics.