Ciera is an experienced Industry Change Leader with a strong background in delivering engineering and computerized systems projects within the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. She currently specializes in guiding global companies through the challenges of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and digital transformation, focusing on aligning business processes with emerging manufacturing architectures.

With expertise spanning Packaging, Facilities, Engineering, Serialization, MES and Business Systems, Ciera excels at leading multi-disciplinary teams and facilitating meaningful discussions to solve complex industry problems.

Committed to advancing Pharma 4.0 principles, Ciera brings a passion for fostering collaboration and driving innovation in regulated environments. Her dedication to continuous learning ensures she remains at the forefront of MES solutions, enabling global organizations to achieve operational excellence.

Pop in Your Job: What drives me most in my work is the opportunity to create meaningful change through collaboration. I’ve always been motivated by the challenge of solving complex problems, understanding different perspectives, and building innovative solutions.

As a facilitator, I thrive on bringing people together—encouraging collaboration across teams and companies to navigate shared challenges. I find immense satisfaction in creating environments where individuals feel empowered to share ideas, learn from one another, and push boundaries.

What I love most about my role is the balance of creativity and impact. Designing engaging workshops, guiding discussions, and supporting teams to produce transformative results never feels like work—it’s my flow state. Knowing that my efforts help drive progress and innovation in such a vital industry is the ultimate reward.

Philip Hamm is the Global Director Manufacturing Systems at Merck Healthcare. He is responsible for the digital transformation of manufacturing at Merck while ensuring compliance to the relevant GxP and quality guidelines together with establishing a Centre of Expertise for efficiency and support of MES. Prior to his position with Merck he consulted in the area of Digital transformation and worked at various enterprises in global technology and innovation management roles. This blend of product and technology expertise coupled with a solid program management foundation gives him the unique ability to match underlying technologies with product requirements as well as executing the needed transformation to drive efficiency and innovation in the enterprise landscape.

BioPhorum’s mission is to create environments where the global biopharmaceutical and device industry can collaborate and accelerate its rate of progress, for the benefit of all. A business-to-business membership organization, BioPhorum consists of twelve phorums leading industry-changing initiatives with the help of thousands of active subject matter experts. Established in 2008, we bring leaders and subject matter experts together to collaborate on challenges in existing and emerging topics that affect the whole industry including change notification, cybersecurity, extractables and leachables, forecast and demand planning, knowledge management, single-use systems and sterile filtration. Many global companies collaborate with BioPhorum, such as license holders, manufacturers, and CDMOs. While academia and materials, equipment, IT, and engineering suppliers also send their best people to connect and collaborate.

Our passion for science and technology is what drives our more than 64,000 employees across 66 countries to find solutions to some of today’s toughest challenges and create more sustainable ways to live. We are here for people at every step, helping create, improve and prolong life. We deliver personalized treatments for serious diseases and enable people to achieve their dream of becoming parents. We empower the scientific community. Our tools, services, and digital platform make research simpler, more exact, and help to deliver breakthroughs more quickly. We provide progressive treatment solutions that help improve access to health thanks to the accuracy of our tests and the reliability of our medicine. As a company, we are at the forefront of digital living. Our science sits inside technologies that change the way we access, store, process, and display information. Our innovative technology drives human progress and opens new possibilities to transform life on Earth as we know it. Thanks to the constant curiosity of our employees, we are making discoveries that can change the landscape of entire industries. For more than 350 years, we’ve been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and we’ll continue to do so in the years to come.