Lonza, widely regarded as the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing organisation, has named Samanta Cimitan as its new Chief Commercial Officer, Senior Vice President and Member of the Extended Executive Committee.
Cimitan is expected to join Lonza in the newly created CCO role by 1 January 2027, marking a significant return to a company where she previously spent nearly 13 years.
The newly created position is designed to strengthen customer engagement, commercial delivery and a harmonised go-to-market approach across what the company refers to as One Lonza.
In her new role, Cimitan will lead Strategic Enterprise Account Management, Global Marketing and Commercial Excellence, taking direct commercial responsibility for Lonza’s strategic accounts.
The role is specifically structured to make it easier for customers to engage with and navigate Lonza’s full end-to-end offering globally across all three of its Business Platforms.
Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Wienand said: “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.”
Wienand added: “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.”
Wienand concluded: “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 currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Celonic Group, where she has led the company’s evolution into a focused biologics CDMO while strengthening its commercial, operational, regulatory and innovation capabilities.
Prior to her time at Celonic, Cimitan held several commercial and strategy leadership positions at Lonza over nearly 13 years, most recently serving as Vice President of Lonza Group Operations Strategy.
In that previous role, she developed and led transformation programmes spanning Commercial, Research and Development and Operations functions across the organisation.
Cimitan is expected to leave Celonic towards the end of 2026, with the company confirming that a CEO succession process is well advanced and a successor has already been identified.
An announcement regarding her successor at Celonic is expected shortly, and Cimitan will work with Celonic’s Chairman and the incoming CEO to ensure a smooth leadership transition.