JoAnne (Jo) Forrest joined the Lions Eye Institute in 2022 as Director Clinical Research with a remit to build greater capacity within our clinical trials unit, as well as develop the Institute’s immediate and longer term vision for clinical research activities. She is a collaborative leader with a focus on mentoring and building strong alliances with internal and external stakeholders, to better support strategic deliverables.
Jo has enjoyed a long career working in clinical trials and is experienced in all phases of drug and device development as well as investigator lead academic trials. She has a strong operational background and comprehensive knowledge of project delivery, cross functional team building and commercial client management. While living in Canada, she held leadership roles in clinical trial delivery at an academic hospital and a large university where she also collaborated on academic research publications.
Jo’s experience encompasses working in private industry with large contract research organisations (CROs) based in North America, driving the delivery of global clinical trials for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. She comes to the Institute from Linear Clinical Research where she gained further experience in the not for profit clinical research sector, working as the Director of Early Phase.
