Christopher B. McDonald

Chris McDonald is Vice President of Manufacturing for Kite Pharma responsible for the design, construction, and start-up of a greenfield high volume cell therapy manufacturing facility. Prior to joining Kite, Chris was a General Manager for AstraZeneca responsible for AZ’s Colorado operations and later for the Fredrick, MD facility. Prior to AstraZeneca, Chris spent ten years working for Novartis Vaccines. At Novartis, Chris led a greenfield design, build, and start-up of a $600 million flu cell culture facility including drug substance and drug product manufacturing. As part of that role, Chris was responsible for the negotiation and execution of multiple US government contracts including a $486 million "bricks and mortar" contract that funded a significant portion of the capital costs of the facility. Also during his time with Novartis, Chris led the global manufacturing strategy group focused on defining the manufacturing network, tech transfers to CMOs, and bringing new products to markets. Prior to Novartis, Chris spent 10 years with Amgen and 7 years with Matrix Technologies, an independently owned automation company. Chris holds a bachelor's in Computer Science from Eastern Michigan University and an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business where he was a Fuqua Scholar (top 10% of his class).