奈克塔制药 NKTR

Howard W. Robin, age 73, has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer since January 2007 and has served as a member of our board of directors since February 2007. Mr. Robin has more than 40 years of successful biopharmaceutical experience managing clinical development and commercial operations. Prior to joining Nektar, Mr. Robin served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Sirna Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering RNAi-based therapies for serious diseases and conditions, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), hepatitis C, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Huntington's disease. During his tenure at Sirna from 2001 to 2006, Mr. Robin successfully re-launched the company and created significant shareholder value that led to its acquisition by Merck. Prior to joining Sirna, Mr. Robin was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the therapeutics division of Berlex Laboratories, the U.S. pharmaceutical subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical firm Schering AG, where he was responsible for the development of drugs, such as Betaseron(R) (Interferon beta-1b), the first therapy for multiple sclerosis, and Fludara(R) (fludarabine phosphate), the first therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. These drugs generated annual global sales in excess of $1.5 billion. Prior to joining Berlex, Mr. Robin was a senior associate with Arthur Andersen & Co. Mr. Robin received his B.S. in Accounting and Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he previously served as a member of its Board of Trustees.

Jonathan Zalevsky has served as our Senior Vice President and Chief Research & Development Officer since October 2019. Dr. Zalevsky served as our Senior Vice President, Biology and Preclinical Development from April 2017 through November 2017 and served as our Senior Vice President, Research and Chief Science Officer from November 2017 to October 2019. From July 2015 through April 2017, Dr. Zalevsky served as our Vice President, Biology and Preclinical Development. Prior to joining Nektar, Dr. Zalevsky was Global Vice President and Head of the Inflammation Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Prior to working at Takeda, Dr. Zalevsky held a number of research and development positions at Xencor, Inc. Dr. Zalevsky received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Tetrad Program at the University of California, San Francisco. He received dual bachelor degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Robert Chess, age 69, is the Chairman of our board of directors and has served as a director since May 1992. From March 2006 until January 2007, Mr. Chess served as our Acting President and Chief Executive Officer, and from April 1999 to January 2007, served as Executive Chairman. He also served as our Co-Chief Executive Officer from August 1998 to April 2000, as President from December 1991 to August 1998, and as Chief Executive Officer from May 1992 to August 1998. Mr. Chess was previously the co-founder and President of Penederm, Inc., a publicly-traded dermatological pharmaceutical company that was sold to Mylan Laboratories. He has held management positions at Intel Corporation and Metaphor Computer Systems (now part of IBM), and was a member of the first President Bush's White House staff as a White House Fellow and Associate Director of the White House Office of Economic and Domestic Policy. Mr. Chess serves on the board of directors and is the lead director of Twist Biosciences, a publicly-traded company in the synthetic biology field. He is Chairman of two private companies: Bighat Biosciences, which does ML-guided biologics design, and Issio Solutions, which is in the labor productivity software field. From 1997 until his retirement in 2009, Mr. Chess served on the board of directors of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Mr. Chess served as Chairman of BIO's Emerging Companies Section and Co-Chairman of BIO's Intellectual Property Committee. Mr. Chess was the initial Chairman of Bio Ventures for Global Health and served on its Board through 2022. He currently is a member of the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses in the MBA program on the healthcare industry and the business opportunity created by aging demographics and increased longevity. Mr. Chess received his B.S. degree in Engineering with honors from the California Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.

Roy A. Whitfield, age 72, has served as our director since August 2000 and as Lead Independent Director since January 2019. Mr. Whitfield is the former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Incyte Corporation (Incyte), a drug discovery and development company he co-founded in 1991. From January 1993 to November 2001, Mr. Whitfield served as its Chief Executive Officer and from November 2001 until June 2003 as its Chairman. He also served as a director of Incyte from 1991 to January 2014. From 1984 to 1989, Mr. Whitfield held senior operating and business development positions with Technicon Instruments Corporation (Technicon), a medical instrumentation company, and its predecessor company, Cooper Biomedical, Inc., a biotechnology and medical diagnostics company. Prior to his work at Technicon, Mr. Whitfield spent seven years with the Boston Consulting Group's international consulting practice. Mr. Whitfield received a B.S. in mathematics from Oxford University and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

R. Scott Greer, age 67, has served as our director since February 2010. Mr. Greer currently serves as Managing Director of Numenor Ventures, LLC, a venture capital firm. He also currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Vertero Therapeutics, Inc., a private biotechnology company. In 1996, Mr. Greer co-founded Abgenix, Inc., a company that specialized in the discovery, development and manufacture of human therapeutic antibodies, and from June 1996 through May 2002, he served as its Chief Executive Officer. He previously also served as a director of Abgenix from 1996 and Chairman of the board of directors from 2000 until the acquisition of Abgenix by Amgen, Inc. in 2006. Prior to Abgenix's formation, Mr. Greer held senior management positions at Cell Genesys, Inc., a biotechnology company, initially as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Corporate Development and later as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, and various positions at Genetics Institute, Inc., a biotechnology research and development company. Mr. Greer served as a member or chairman of the board of directors of numerous public and private biotechnology and medical device companies. Mr. Greer received a B.A. in Economics from Whitman College and an M.B.A. degree from Harvard University. He also was a certified public accountant.

Diana Brainard, M.D., age 55, was appointed to our board of directors in November 2021. Dr. Brainard is an Entrepreneur Partner at MPM BioImpact, a biotechnology investment firm. She formerly served as the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors of AlloVir, Inc., a late clinical-stage cell therapy company. Prior to joining AlloVir, Inc., Dr. Brainard served as Senior Vice President and Virology Therapeutic Area Head at Gilead Sciences, Inc. from 2018 to April 2021. From 2015 to 2018, Dr. Brainard served as Vice President of Clinical Research, Liver Diseases at Gilead Sciences, Inc. Dr. Brainard obtained her B.A. degree from Brown University and her M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine.

Jeff Ajer, age 63, was appointed to the board of directors in September 2017. Mr. Ajer is the Chief Commercial Officer at Mendra, a biopharma AI Company. He was the former Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer from 2014 to 2024 at BioMarin, a global biotechnology company that develops and commercializes innovative therapies for people with serious and life-threatening rare disorders. Mr. Ajer has more than 25 years of experience driving commercialization for rare diseases and specialty medicines, including leading commercial planning for late-stage pipeline programs, product marketing, reimbursement, and sales operations. After joining BioMarin in 2005 as one of the first sales and marketing employees, he held roles of increasing responsibility including Vice President, Commercial Operations, The Americas; Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. Mr. Ajer was integral in establishing BioMarin's commercial infrastructure and global footprint and played a leadership role in the launches and growth strategies for BioMarin's commercial brands including Brineura, Vimizim, Kuvan and Naglazyme. Prior to his time at BioMarin, Mr. Ajer served as Vice President, Global Transplant Operations at Genzyme Corporation and held positions in sales, marketing, and operations at SangStat Medical Corporation and ICN Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Ajer has served as a member of the board of directors of Viridian Therapeutics, Inc. since April 2025. He received his B.S. degree in chemistry and MBA from the University of California, Irvine.

Effective May 15, 2026, Linda Rubinstein, a partner of FLG, will serve as the interim Chief Financial Officer and the principal financial and accounting officer of the Company. Ms. Rubinstein has over 35 years of operational, financial and capital markets experience in life sciences and investment banking and has been Chief Financial Officer of numerous public and private companies. She was most recently the Chief Financial Officer of Adverum Biotechnologies, Inc. from 2022 through its sale to Eli Lilly and Company in 2025. As a partner of FLG since 2010, Ms. Rubinstein has served as the permanent or interim Chief Financial Officer of Apexigen, ArmaGen, Diasome, Five Prime, Ingenuity, iPierian, Kezar, PaxVax, Retrotope, Sublimity, True North and Tunitas, among others. Prior to FLG, Ms. Rubinstein was the sole principal of RDJ Advisors, providing interim Chief Financial Officer and other consulting services to life science and SaaS companies; held leadership roles at Solexa and ChemoCentryx; and served as Senior Vice President of Lehman Brothers' Global Healthcare Investment Banking Group. Over the course of her career, Ms. Rubinstein has raised more than $5 billion in private and public market financings and as Chief Financial Officer has generated more than $1 billion in realized value from M&A transactions. Ms. Rubinstein earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Zhang, Nektar's Vice President, Legal and Corporate Counsel,. Ms. Zhang has been with Nektar since 2021 after prior positions at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in San Francisco. Ms. Zhang holds a Bachelor of Arts in Neurobiology from Harvard College, a Master of Science in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford, and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.