Lonza is strengthening its commercial leadership with the appointment of Samanta Cimitan as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Senior Vice President and a member of the Extended Executive Committee.

 

Cimitan will join the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) by 1 January 2027, taking on a newly created role aimed at accelerating the company’s One Lonza strategy and giving customers easier access to its full global offering.

 

As CCO, Cimitan will oversee Strategic Enterprise Account Management, Global Marketing and Commercial Excellence. She will have direct commercial responsibility for Lonza’s strategic accounts while driving a unified go-to-market approach across the organization.

 

The role is designed to simplify how customers engage with Lonza, enabling them to navigate its end-to-end capabilities across all three Business Platforms globally.

 

Wolfgang Wienand, Chief Executive Officer, Lonza, commented: “Samanta’s appointment to the new role of Chief Commercial Officer is another important step in building One Lonza and making the full power of the Lonza Engine work for our partners in the pharmaceutical industry. 

 

"Our ambition is clear: Every customer should benefit from the unique breadth of our science, technology and manufacturing capabilities, helping them translate their breakthrough innovations into viable therapies for patients worldwide. Samanta brings deep CDMO expertise, commercial leadership experience and first-hand knowledge of Lonza. She understands what it takes to build trusted partnerships, execute with commercial discipline and create value across the full development and manufacturing journey. 

 

"I am very pleased to welcome Samanta back to Lonza as we continue to sharpen our commercial focus and deliver on our purpose of making the medicines of tomorrow.”

 

Cimitan returns to Lonza with extensive CDMO and commercial leadership experience. She currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Celonic Group, where she has led the biologics CDMO’s development and strengthened its commercial, operational, regulatory and innovation capabilities.

 

Before joining Celonic, Cimitan spent almost 13 years at Lonza in commercial and strategy leadership positions. Her previous roles included Vice President of Lonza Group Operations Strategy, where she developed and led transformation programs spanning Commercial, R&D and Operations.

 

Her return marks a move by Lonza to sharpen its commercial focus and bring its global capabilities closer together under the One Lonza model.