Between Europe and the Gulf

Tomasz Hildt has spent his career in two worlds that rarely meet. For twenty years he worked at the top of global marketing and communications – chief executive of one of Leo Burnett’s agencies, part of Publicis Groupe, and a regional director for Procter & Gamble covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, following earlier roles at JWT and McCann Erickson on brands including Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, HSBC and Citigroup. It was a career built on understanding why people decide what they decide, as opposed to the reasons they give.

He then crossed into medical innovation. As chief executive of the Galien Foundation’s Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe operations, and of Prix Galien Middle East, he sits on the juries that decide what counts as a breakthrough, and in the rooms where those breakthroughs are financed and turned into national strategy. Founded in France in 1970 and awarded across continents, the Prix Galien is often called the Nobel Prize of biomedical research. He divides his time between the Gulf and Europe.