Henk Smit

Director Operations

Henk is Director Operations at Progress and joined the company in February 2020. In this position, Henk is responsible for the implementation of Progress policy in the field of managing, motivating, and developing employees, and he is the primary contact for the consultants and contractors. He is also responsible for operational matters such as making the availability planning and matching employees/contractors to assignments, assembling project teams and project monitoring.

Expertise

Henk has more than 20 years of work experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He holds a Master’s degree in chemical engineering (Amsterdam) and in bioprocess engineering (Delft). Henk started his career at Centocor (now Janssen Biologics) in 2000, where he gained experience as a bioprocess specialist and project manager in late-stage process development, technology transfers, process implementations, process validation and launch activities for the commercialisation of monoclonal antibody products.

In 2011, Henk continued his career at SynCo Bio Partners (now Wacker) as project manager and later as DSP production manager. In 2015, Henk joined uniQure Biopharma as Head Process Development and from 2017 until 2020 he worked at HALIX as Director Manufacturing. In these five years Henk led and coached various teams and individual professionals within a biopharmaceutical production and process development environment, working with various virus products.

Personal

In his spare time Henk (1973) enjoys spending time with his wife, children, family, and friends. He is also fond of playing tennis, speed cycling and travelling. On his bucket list are some adventurous sports listed.