Jan Geissler

Jan Geissler is founder and managing director of Patvocates, a think tank, consultancy and social enterprise on patient advocacy and patient engagement in research. From 2012-2017, he has been working for the European Patients' Forum as the Director of the 'European Patients Academy (EUPATI). In one of Europe's largest "Big Data" projects, the IMI-funded EU project HARMONY, he is co-leading the work package on stakeholder input from patient organizations, HTA bodies, regulators and other stakeholders. Jan studied at the University of Regensburg and Aston University, graduating with a university diploma in business. Jan then worked for the media company Bertelsmann and co-founded Bertelsmann's in-house startup BeMobile, heading product management, business development and marketing. In 2003, he joined Vodafone Group R&D where he headed business modelling teams in Germany and The Netherlands. In 2008, he decided to focus his professional life on patient advocacy. The reason why Jan started to engage in cancer advocacy already in 2001 was that Jan received his diagnosis of a rare cancer, Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) at the age of 28 years. He joined a phase I/II clinical trial and started to translate and publish medical publications into German lay language. He has co-founded LeukaNET, the CML Advocates Network, the Leukemia Patient Advocates Foundation, the Acute Leukemia Advocates Network, WECAN as well as the ECPC. Today, he is a patients' representative in various steering committees and advisory boards and acts as an independent expert for the EU Commission. He is also member of the Ethics Committee of the Bavarian Chamber of Physicians. In 2016, he was awarded with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his work as a patient advocate.