About Us

Pascal Touchon President and Chief Executive Officer

With more than 30 years of global biopharmaceutical leadership experience, Pascal Touchon joined Atara Biotherapeutics as President, Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors in June 2019. Pascal has committed his career to transforming the lives of patients with serious medical conditions through pioneering science, teamwork, and a commitment to excellence.

Previously Global Head, Cell & Gene and member of the Oncology Executive Committee at Novartis Oncology, he oversaw the Oncology Cell & Gene unit and had responsibility for the unit’s financial performance and its activities, including the global launch of KYMRIAH® (tisagenlecleucel), securing regulatory approval and reimbursement in major markets, expanding global CAR T manufacturing and technical operations, overseeing multiple new clinical studies, and building a strong leadership team.

Prior to that, he served as Global Head, Strategy, Business Development, Oncology at Novartis, where he was responsible for early commercial strategy, portfolio management, therapeutic integrity and established medicines, disruptive technologies, diagnostics, business development and external collaborations, and served as a member of the Oncology Executive Committee. Pascal has also held key leadership roles in research, marketing, general management, and business development at companies including Servier, Glaxo-Wellcome and Glaxo, Sanofi. He has also been a board member of Genoptix and Navigate Biopharma Services (Novartis companies) and Cogen Therapeutics (a Flagship Pioneering company).

Pascal holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse, France), a Diplôme d’Etudes Superieures Specialisees (DESS) in management from Institut d’Administration des Entreprises (Toulouse, France) and an MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France).

Beyond his passion for science and business, Pascal enjoys traveling with his family around the world, wine tasting with friends, watching rugby, and reading.

Eric Hyllengren Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Eric Hyllengren has over 25 years of finance and biotechnology industry experience across a broad range of corporate finance and investor relations leadership roles. He serves as Atara’s Chief Financial Officer, overseeing Finance, Controllership, Information Technology, and Investor Relations, and serves as the Company’s Principal Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer. Eric joined Atara in 2018 as Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis where he established the company’s financial planning capabilities and processes. In 2020, his responsibilities expanded to include Head of Investor Relations and built Atara’s presence and relationships with the analyst and investor community.

Prior to his tenure at Atara, Eric spent 15 years at Amgen Inc. spanning multiple finance roles with increased breadth and responsibilities, including corporate finance and investor relations. He also served as the Executive Director of Business Development and Head of Alliance Management. Prior to Atara, Eric held finance roles at an entertainment startup, the Walt Disney Company, and AT&T.

Eric holds a B.B.A. in finance and Russian from the University of Notre Dame and an M.B.A. in finance from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is known for his strategic thinking, agility, and leadership abilities in finance, investor relations, business development, and alliance management.

Charlene Banard Chief Technical Officer

Charlene Banard serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Technical Officer at Atara Biotherapeutics. With diverse expertise in manufacturing, quality and technical operations across multiple technologies and advanced therapies, including CAR T, Charlene leads Atara’s talented Technical Operations team to advance our robust pipeline of T-cell immunotherapies.

Most recently, at Novartis, Charlene served as Global Head, Technical Operations, Cell & Gene Therapy (C&GT) Platform, where she led C&GT lifecycle management strategy and execution and established a Technical Operations strategy for the company’s cell therapy oncology pipeline. Prior to that, she served in multiple leadership roles at Shire across Technical Operations and Global Quality. In these roles, Charlene led the Global Quality function with a broad scope of 12 internal manufacturing sites and more than 70 contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) for 40 commercial and 40 pipeline rare disease and specialty products. While at Shire, Charlene advanced its pipeline by enabling internally developed products and integrating acquired products and teams, while securing multi-national product and facility approvals.

Earlier in her career, she held numerous roles of increasing responsibility at Gilead Sciences, Cell Genesys, and Chiron across Manufacturing and Development, Compliance, Quality Assurance, Quality Control, Quality Systems, and Validation.

Charlene holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis and a Masters in Trans-global Business from Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. Charlene was inducted into the International Women’s Forum (IWF) Fellows Program in 2018, a multinational organization featuring academic partnerships with Harvard Business School and INSEAD, and actively mentors and develops talent across the biopharmaceutical industry. She currently serves as independent board director at Applied Molecular Transport (AMT), a position she has held since 2022.

In her free time, Charlene enjoys spending time with family and friends.

AJ Joshi, M.D. Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer

Manher (AJ) Joshi was appointed to the role of Atara Biotherapeutics’ Chief Medical Officer in September 2018. He joined Atara in August 2016, initially serving as Senior Vice President, Global Medical Affairs. He brings more than 15 years of clinical, drug development, and commercialization experience in orphan and large markets to his role at Atara.

AJ has built and led medical organizations through several launches across a broad range of therapeutics areas, including neuromuscular disease, neurosciences, genetics, metabolic diseases, urology, and dermatology. His previous organizational leadership roles include U.S. Medical Affairs Therapeutic Area Head at Allergan, SVP Strategic Development and Medical Operations at Synageva, and Vice President Medical Affairs and Operations at Genzyme.

AJ received his M.D. from the Boston University School of Medicine, his B.A. from Boston University, and completed his internship and residency in medicine at Yale.

In his free time, AJ enjoys photography, traveling, and playing the guitar.

Cokey Nguyen, Ph.D. Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific & Technical Officer

Dr. Cokey Nguyen is a leader in the fields of cell therapy and oncology with significant experience in research and development of cell therapies as well as oncology drug discovery and development in biotech. Dr. Nguyen serves as Chief Scientific Officer at Atara, where he is focused on leading the development of next-generation allogeneic cell therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases. With his passion for delivering transformative therapies to patients, Dr. Nguyen is eager to both advance Atara’s existing programs and further expand the pipeline through pioneering science, teamwork, and a commitment to excellence.

Prior to joining Atara, Dr. Nguyen was at Fate Therapeutics, where, as Vice President, Innovation, Research and Development, he directed strategy for discovery and innovation efforts, and spearheaded the corporate collaboration program with ONO Pharma. Prior to that, he was leader of the targeted immunotherapy group on the Oncology R&D team at Pfizer, producing bispecific antibodies for solid tumors and hematological malignancies and bringing them into the clinic.

Dr. Nguyen’s bench science experience includes work in tumor metabolism, gene expression and molecular biology. He holds numerous patents for iPSC and immune effector cells and has been published in various peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Nguyen has also been active in successful business development activities, including, while at Janssen, evaluating Legend’s BCMA-directed CAR T program and supporting the Janssen/Legend partnership.

Dr. Nguyen received his undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Immunology from Washington University in St. Louis. He was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he focused on the identification and characterization of BRCT domains as novel phospho-binding domains in DNA damage pathways.

In his free time, Cokey is an avid reader, is a fan of motorsports and enjoys cycling.

Dan Maziasz Executive Vice President, Chief Business Officer

In his role, Dan is responsible for leading Atara’s corporate strategy, business development and alliance management activities including strategic partnerships, licensing transactions, research collaborations and academic partnerships.

Prior to joining Atara in 2018, Dan served as Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Gilead Sciences following its acquisition of Kite Pharma. In his role at Kite/Gilead, Dan led various strategy and business development initiatives focused on new product opportunities, enabling technologies, and was responsible for Kite’s Joint Venture in China and strategic partnership in Japan. Prior to joining Kite, he held roles of increasing responsibility at Amgen in the U.S., Europe, Asia and emerging market regions across Business Development, Corporate Strategy, Finance and Commercial. Dan began his career as a management consultant by advising large and small companies across healthcare, financial services and other industries.

Dan received a B.S. in Business Administration and Economics from Saint Mary’s College of California and a M.B.A. degree from Loyola Marymount University.

In his personal time, Dan enjoys international travel, music, basketball, skiing and spending time with his wife and three children.

Jill Henrich Executive Vice President, Global Head Regulatory Affairs & Quality

Jill utilizes her more than 20 years of experience in regulatory affairs, as well as her background in research to deliver transformative medicines to patients through her role at Atara.

Jill came to Atara from OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mereo BioPharma where she served as U.S. Site Head and Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs. Before the merger in 2019, she was Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs and Quality, providing oversight on all aspects of global Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance strategy, implementation and execution. In her most recent time at OncoMed, Jill successfully negotiated an accelerated approval pathway for a DLL4/VegF bispecific antibody for the treatment of ovarian cancer at an FDA EOP1 meeting and gained agreement from FDA at an EOP2 meeting on the design of a single pivotal pediatric Phase 3 study for patients with osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease affecting children. She has led numerous meetings with the EMA and other European regulatory bodies for the setrusumab program through PRIME Designation and Adaptive Pathways. In addition, she was responsible for successfully filing and executing 14 Investigational New Drug (IND) applications for 9 novel programs in oncology.

Prior to joining OncoMed, she served as Executive Director, Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance at PDL BioPharma, Inc. providing strategic management and oversight for all regulatory interactions, Regulatory Operations/Corporate Document Control, Medical Writing and QA/Compliance activities. Jill also held a similar role at Corixa Corporation (formerly Coulter Pharmaceutical, Inc.) where she was instrumental in the filing and approval of an iodine-131 radiolabeled anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody for the treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In addition, she has held various positions in Research (Cell Genetics/Molecular Biology) and Regulatory Affairs at Genentech, where she maintained global regulatory responsibility for two approved marketed products and multiple products in various phases of development.

Jill holds a B.S. in Biological Sciences/Microbiology from the University of Connecticut.

In her free time, Jill enjoys the outdoors and is an avid mountain and road biker and hiker. She has also recently taken up bread baking.

K. Amar Murugan Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer

Amar Murugan is Atara’s Chief Legal Officer, overseeing the Company’s Legal and People Teams. He joined Atara as General Counsel in April 2020 and employs his significant experience spanning two decades to deliver on Atara’s mission of transforming the lives of patients with serious medical conditions.

Prior to Atara, Amar served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Assertio Therapeutics, a commercial stage pharmaceutical company. During his time at Assertio, he managed all legal aspects of more than $1.5 billion of acquisitions and divestitures, nearly $1.0 billion of capital raising transactions and all SEC disclosure and governance matters. Amar also managed a broad array of litigation, including patent, securities, and antitrust litigation; handled numerous government inquiries and investigations; and had oversight of the compliance function. Amar has a track record of achieving outstanding legal outcomes, including the successful defense of a hostile takeover attempt, securing a multi-million-dollar settlement of an offensive patent litigation, and defeating a securities class action matter at the motion to dismiss stage.

Prior to Assertio, Amar was a partner in the global law firm of Baker Botts LLP, and prior to that, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, where he served as outside general counsel for public and private life science and technology companies and executed on numerous M&A transactions, venture capital financings, IPOs, public offerings, private placements, collaborations, and commercial arrangements. Amar began his legal career at Heller Ehrman LLP.

Amar holds a B.S. from Georgetown University and a J.D. from UCLA. Away from work, Amar enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, traveling abroad, visiting his native Wisconsin, and exploring the great outdoors.