Sue Miller  /
Founding Partner

The CementBloc represents the culmination of a lifelong dream for Susan. She spent 12 years as a leader in the management team at Cline Davis & Mann (CDM), where she had the privilege and responsibility of launching 6 multibillion-dollar brands for Pfizer, including Lipitor.

Along with her husband, Rico Viray, she founded The CementWorks in July 2000 and began building the Indigenus global network of like-minded entrepreneurial agencies in 2005. The global launch of Spiriva in December 2001 and the success that followed helped springboard The CementBloc to become the second-largest independent full-service healthcare creative agency in the United States today.

Susan remains committed to brand building and is continually pushing The CementBloc, its teams, and its Indigenus partners to redefine what it means to build a global brand in a very challenging and rapidly evolving industry. As exciting as her past career has been, she firmly believes that the best is yet to come.

Rico Viray  /
Founding Partner

Rico’s strength comes from the diversity of his experience and the extent of his curiosity. Trained as a physiologist, he conducted basic science research in shock, dialysis, and artificial blood substitutes at Loyola University Medical Center and Baxter. In the late '80s, as HIV/AIDS emerged as the leading public health challenge, he joined Adria as Associate Medical Director for oncology and anti-infectives.

He continued working in HIV for FCB Healthcare and led the team that launched the GlaxoSmithKline HIV portfolio: Epivir, Combivir, Agenerase, and Ziagen. It was at Lowe McAdams that he met his partner and wife Susan Miller.

Shortly thereafter, they launched The CementWorks (now known as The CementBloc).

Jennifer Matthews /
Managing Partner

A respected marketing leader, Jennifer has more than 20 years of agency experience across various business sectors and disciplines leading successful integrated efforts that drive sales and build brand equity.

Since 2003, Jennifer has applied best practices learned from supporting a range of world-class consumer brands including American Express, AT&T, and HBO as well as working in the healthcare space with clients including Pfizer, Novartis, Medicis, and BMS. She is currently responsible for The CementBloc's New York office and for charting the convergence of the agency's rapidly expanding service offering, including branding multichannel strategy, relationship marketing, and managed markets to meet the demands of 21st century healthcare brands.

Prior to joining The CementBloc, Jennifer was responsible for the consumer healthcare group at Wunderman, leading a team across OTC, primary care, and specialty products. This experience proved to Jennifer that some of the most challenging and affecting work is taking place in the healthcare sector, and she is excited to continue innovating in this category.

Jennifer was recognized as an HBA Rising Star in 2009.

Ed Cowen /
Partner, Strategic Planning

Ed has over 20 years' experience in healthcare and communications. He was the first employee of The CementBloc and an integral part of the agency's impressive performance and growth.

Ed has an MA in health education and a commitment to encouraging creative thinking from his account staff. Ed has worked on the launches or relaunches of many brands, big and small, including Prezista and Intelence for HIV, Spiriva for COPD, Kadian for chronic pain, and Climara Pro estrogen replacement therapy.

His unique blend of clinical expertise and creative vision has been a major factor in his success at launching brands in highly complex, competitive markets.

Stephanie Berman /
Partner, Creative

Steph is a creative leader who works tirelessly in search of The Big Idea. Through 2 decades of successful copywriting around the world, she has helmed creative teams through big launches and long life cycles, across a broad range of categories, including MS, HIV, Crohn's disease, allergy, diabetes, schizophrenia, infectious disease, obesity, and women's health.

Stephanie has been with The CementBloc for 8 years. She leads the creative department and is part of the management team leading the Indigenus network.

Read Steph's Blog : http://www.moneyvsmommy.blogspot.com

Elizabeth Elfenbein  /
Partner, Creative

Elizabeth is a creative visionary with over 20 years of experience creating and directing award-winning communications. She applies her insights and creativity into building and evolving The CementBloc's creative department along with Stephanie Berman.

Prior to joining The Bloc, Elizabeth was an SVP, Group Creative Director for the Consumer Healthcare Group at Wunderman, where she led-and won numerous industry awards for-AstraZeneca's oncology franchise, multiple Pfizer brands, Shire's ADHD franchise and, Weight Watchers.

In addition to her healthcare expertise, Elizabeth has distinguished herself across multiple sectors including financial services, legal business solutions, publishing, technology, telecommunications, and the travel industry. This diverse background puts Elizabeth in a unique position to recognize nascent trends, stay on top of emerging technologies, to build brands with an eye toward the future.

Read Elizabeth's blog: http://www.mylifeasafocusgroup.com

Barbara Patchefsky  /
Partner, Account Services

Barbara brings more than 12 years of agency experience to The CementBloc, having led successful US and global launches and campaigns for a variety of leading brands. She has a proven track record of driving professional and integrated efforts that sparks brand growth and builds enduring brands.

Barbara's experience in healthcare marketing also includes respiratory and cardiovascular brands for AstraZeneca, as well as many other therapeutic areas. Leading multidisciplinary teams to build compelling brands and campaigns for clients has proven to be her passion.

Ira Haimowitz, PhD /
EVP, Group Director, Intelligence & Analytics

Throughout his career, Ira has led teams that provided healthcare clients with innovative solutions for competitive intelligence, segmentation, targeting, database design, measurement, and optimization. He has also enabled clients to evaluate the return on investment of their multichannel professional and consumer advertising campaigns.

At The CementBloc, Ira has led the development and implementation of analytics and operations solutions for Bayer, Medicis, UCB, and Novartis. Before joining The CementBloc in 2009, Ira led the Insights and Optimization practice for Wunderman Health, with clients including AstraZeneca and Abbott. Ira has also spent 9 years on the manufacturer side as a Director and Team Leader for pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Organon.

Ira received his PhD from MIT in computer science and clinical decisionmaking. He is a frequent industry speaker and author, including the newly published book Healthcare Relationship Marketing by Gower Press. Ira has also served as President of the Pharmaceutical Management Science Association.

Read Ira's blog on the analytics and technology of relationship marketing : http://www.healthcarerm.blogspot.com

Deborah Bernstein, MD  /
SVP, Medical Director

A New Yorker from birth, Deborah moved south to attend Princeton University, graduating with a degree in biology. Thereafter, she attended George Washington University School of Medicine and moved west to UCLA after graduation for training in internal medicine, in which she is board certified. After internship, residency, and a chief residency year at UCLA-VA Wadsworth, she entered clinical practice.

In 2003, Deborah became VP, Medical Director at Impact Communications, a New York City medical education company where she worked with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Amgen, Astellas, and sanofi-aventis. In 2008, Deborah entered the agency world, working both full time and as a consultant with Heartbeat Digital, Digitas, Draftfcb, GlaxoSmithKline, and now, The CementBloc.

Prodeep Bose /
SVP, Multichannel Strategy

Prodeep currently leads Multichannel Engagement Strategy at The CementBloc, and has previously held leadership positions at Digitas, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare. For over a decade, Prodeep has led best-in-breed digital and relationship marketing initiatives in healthcare, financial services, technology, and consumer packaged goods for clients including Pfizer, BMS, AstraZeneca, American Express, IBM, Cisco, Unilever, and other Fortune 100 companies.

Pro is a digital native and an entrepreneur at heart who strives to invent and discover new ways to connect people and brands. He has an MS in Interactive Telecom from New York University and combines a deep technological background with digital marketing experiences that he helped develop for class-leading relationship marketing across multiple clients including American Express. As a professional who's constantly focused on "what's next", Pro strives to apply innovation models developed across different industries to healthcare marketing. At each of the companies he's worked at, he has been instrumental in major organizational transitions and shaping how brands adapt to the shifting landscape of digital marketing. At The CementBloc, Pro is responsible for overseeing content and channel strategy as well as user experience design. He is also a regular contributor at industry events and authors a column on digital and relationship marketing.

Kim Johnson /
Partner, Account Services & Strategic Planning

Kim is a dynamic healthcare marketing professional with extensive experience across therapeutic areas and marketing disciplines. Currently, she is a client service and strategy lead at The CementBloc, managing talented, converged teams, and partnering with our clients to raise the bar with innovative work that stands out in the marketplace. Prior to joining the agency, Kim was a Marketing Director on the Celebrex brand for Pfizer and also spent approximately 8 years leading agency teams for clients including Roche, AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

Kim is passionate about the role that healthcare companies play in the education of disease and treatment options. In 2006, Medical Marketing & Media magazine named Kim one of the healthcare industry's rising marketing stars and in 2009, Kim was recognized as a DTC Marketer of the Year, by DTC Perspectives.

Art Chavez /
Partner, Account Services

Art has more than 24 years of professional healthcare advertising experience in a diverse range of client service and agency management roles. His extensive brand experience includes multiple launches across primary care, specialty, and device markets. Art has helped orchestrate successful brand-building efforts in support of several domestic and global assignments.

Art's category experience includes analgesia, anemia, anti-infective, antiviral, cardiovascular, asthma, cholesterol, dermatology, drug delivery, hemophilia, gastrointestinal, hormone replacement, multiple sclerosis, laboratory equipment, nutritional support, oncology, oral care, pain, optometry, osteoporosis, stem cell mobilization, surgical devices, sutures and wound closure, and vaccines.

His most recent roles and assignments have involved the successful growth and management of agency units. Art was most recently responsible for the direction and coordination of professional teams across WPP that collaborate in support of all professionally-directed oral care work for Colgate Palmolive worldwide. Art has a solid track record of partnering with clients to achieve great results with great efficiency.

Jackie Sanders 
EVP, Account Services

During her time at The CementBloc, Jackie has had direct impact on the growth and evolution of the firm. Most recently, she piloted a new, streamlined agency structure within several of her accounts to increase access and efficiency between the different product stakeholders (HCP, patient, MM) and promotional channels (traditional and digital).

Jackie has considerable launch experience within a wide therapeutic range. Her most recent launch experience includes the US launch of Gilenya for multiple sclerosis (Novartis), US launch of Sumavel DosePro for migraine (Zogenix/Astellas copromote), global launch of Toctino for chronic hand eczema (Basilea), US launch of Apriso for ulcerative colitis (Salix), US and global launch of Cimzia for Crohn's disease (UCB), global launch of Prexige for osteoarthritis (Novartis), and global launch of Emselex for overactive bladder (Novartis).

Carla Hundt /
SVP, Group Medical Director

Carla Hundt offers a unique combination of clinical and industry experience spanning the past 20 years. A licensed pharmacist, primary care practitioner, emergency room moonlighter, scientist and marketer, Carla brings her medical-marketing acumen to help drive brands to fulfill their potential.

For the past 6 years, Carla helped launch specialty brands in the diabetes space and in anesthesia, and has contributed to discovering insights and strategies for brands across a range of other therapeutic categories. She has an avid interest in promoting brands that stand to have a significant impact on patient's lives, both from a physiologic perspective and a quality of life perspective.

Eric Fink /
SVP, Account Planning

For 15 years, Eric has been inspiring, building and launching brands across the healthcare space; everything from vitamin C to IV antibiotics. Starting on the brand consulting side, Eric used proprietary consumer insight techniques to help position OTC brands.

Looking to take strategic thinking further into the creative world, Eric joined the nascent planning department at Cline, Davis & Mann. Over 10 years there, Eric helped shape and launch brands for Pfizer, Novartis, Amgen, Genentech and Merck. Along the way he helped solidify the planning discipline at CDM, became a certified Synectics facilitator, trained moderator and led every type of ideation session imaginable.

Most recently, Eric led the global strategic development of Novartis' COPD portfolio, consisting of 4 pipeline brands. Additional areas of experience include OTC, respiratory, infectious disease and antibiotics, nephrology, bone health, oncology and portfolio/added value programs.

After all that, he remains fascinated with the drama of medicine and the changing realities of healthcare today.

Brian Peterson /
VP, Director, Technology

Brian has 20 years of experience in the technology field. As the VP/Director of Technology for the CementBloc, he has responsibility for providing technical strategy, ideation and the management of technical solution development for each of their clients' initiatives. The work he oversees ranges from patient and physician websites, global HCP portals, CRM platforms, to e-detailing platforms and mobile applications.

Before joining the CementBloc, Brian was head of the technology group at Digitas Health in Philadelphia, where he was responsible for technical solutions in each of the company's client engagements. He worked closely with capability leads to deliver technical solutions that fit client business needs, utilizing a diverse set of development languages and tools. In addition, he managed the technical directors, developers, and software quality assurance team.

Previously he oversaw the technology initiatives for a New York-based advertising agency, HNW. His work there included the development of their publisher and campaign manager applications and oversight of all technology aspects of the company's strategic interactive engagements. Prior to joining HNW, Brian was senior vice president, global business solutions with Christie's. There he managed a global technology team and oversaw the company's integrated business systems, including Siebel, JDE, and many custom designed auction-specific applications. He was instrumental in the launching of "Christie's Live," an online, real-time interactive bidding engine.