Julien Willard

Background

Willard has spent 15 years advising life-sciences leadership. At the World Bank he served as a diplomat, running multilateral health programs and shaping pharmaceutical policy, and represented the United Kingdom at the UN General Assembly on pharmaceutical access. He later led corporate strategy at IBM Life Sciences as a partner, and ran corporate strategy for North America biotech at Accenture Strategy. Before that, he worked at Oxfam GB as an economist on global health programs.

He has advised on more than $35 billion in biopharma transactions, including buy-side and sell-side mandates, a $1 billion corporate restructuring, and capital-allocation review for boards weighing more than $10 billion in investment. He ran operations for a $130 million HIV vaccine program across governments, donors, and research institutions.

Education and credentials

Willard holds an MD from Russian State Medical University in Moscow. He earned an MPH at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Melinda Gates Scholar, focusing on health economics and pharmaceutical policy. He is a member of the American Economic Association and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research.

Recognition

Willard received the World Bank President’s Award for Excellence and the Melinda Gates Leadership Award.

Current work

Willard founded Arcstone Strategy Group LLC, an advisory practice that serves biopharma C-suites on strategy, transactions, and operations. He is a co-founder and Fractional Head of Research and Investments at BioPalace, an investor-profiling and analyst platform for the biopharma sector. He hosts Take as Directed, a podcast in which biopharma executives debate the industry’s hardest problems across AI, drug discovery, clinical trials, and regulation. From San Diego, he runs an executive AI coaching practice, teaching senior leaders the personal operating system he built for his own work.

Contact

Willard meets clients in San Diego and over Zoom.