Dani Heywood

President

"We are working collaboratively to ensure there are no silos in our business and identifying innovative ways of delivering cross-business unit primary and secondary data solutions and approaches to answer our client’s business questions.” -Dani Heywood

Dani Heywood

Dani works closely alongside Founder and CEO, Michael Karbachinskiy, to identify and implement the KMK strategy, integrate offerings between business units, and manage the day-to-day operations of the company.  

Areas of Expertise

As a senior global executive, Dani builds processes, strategies, and teams to deliver on growth targets in the Pharma/Biotech professional services space. She is skilled in coalescing stakeholders around a common vision and plan while creating high-performance organizational cultures. Nowhere is this more evident than when she successfully launched the U.S. presence for an international research company and grew it into a profitable eight-figure business.  

Dani is well-versed in rare diseases and has partnered with several successful brands from early inception to launch and beyond. She instills structure and discipline around project management, business growth, talent recruitment, and people development while establishing profitable client portfolios. By blending subject matter knowledge and strategic vision with transparency, relentless determination, and an engaging interpersonal style, Dani delivers big results where it matters. 

Career Background

Originally from the UK, Dani earned her PhD from Leeds University, focused on looking at molecular genetics of vascular disorders, which fueled her interest in the healthcare industry. From there, she worked with Unilever in the haircare division for five years where she developed a passion for understanding brands and consumers.  

Yearning for a stronger focus on the science of things, Dani was named Director of US Offices at Adelphi International Research where she was able to relocate to the US in 2004 to form and lead their international market research team. Not satisfied with doing that once, she then moved to Branding Science in 2011 to start and build their US business. 

Dani has expertise in Oncology in particular and has worked with several blockbuster brands to initial launch and beyond as they’ve expanded into additional indications or earlier lines of use. She has presented several times at Intellus Worldwide, most recently in 2022, especially around behavioral science topics both with Yale University and various clients. She has been a Vistage member for the past four years and is enrolled in the Vistage Stanford Executive Leadership program which complements the optimization of the KMK strategy.