Nicoline van Leersum is EMEA Diagnostics Leader at Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Trained as a medical doctor, she worked as a surgical resident at HMC Westeinde and obtained a PhD in quality of oncology care at Leiden University Medical Centre. As first employee of DICA, the Dutch Institute for Clinical Auditing, she built national registries and worked with national stakeholders and all Dutch hospitals to improve quality of care. After obtaining an executive MBA at INSEAD business school, Nicoline joined Johnson&Johnson (J&J) in 2017 and held various roles of increasing responsibility, including Director of external innovation and leading the EMEA Medical Affairs team in J&J’s Medical Devices sector. In 2019, Nicoline won the Young Captain Award.   

In her current role at J&J’s pharma sector, she aims to combine her medical, scientific and business background to improve outcomes for patients with cancer. She believes earlier, better and more precise diagnosis is critical to realize Janssen’s vision to eliminate cancer. Currently, she focuses on the implementation of biomarker testing to identify and treat the exact genetic cause of cancer.