Kurt Turner

Kurt Turner is an accomplished Biopharma Managed Markets Leader and Patient Access Programs Strategist with 15 years of successful team leadership, consistently exceeding goals and distinguishing team performance. He excels at creating optimal product access through differentiating clinical and economic value propositions, specialty product launches, and expert account management.

His expertise spans Payer Marketing, Access & Reimbursement, where he has built and led successful National, Regional, and Reimbursement account teams across diverse channels including Medicare, Medicaid, Commercial, Specialty Pharmacy (SP), Buy & Bill, Specialty Distribution, Federal, IDN, and GPO. Mr. Turner is recognized for his energetic, strategic, and highly motivated leadership, fostering strong team cultures and driving results among diverse professionals. His therapeutic expertise is broad, encompassing Respiratory, Inflammation, Oncology, Immuno-oncology, Neuroscience (Buy & Bill / Specialty Pharmacy), GI, Cardiovascular, Diabetes, and Urology.

Key strengths include Payer Strategy and Tactic Creation/Implementation, building and leading Payer Account Teams, Reimbursement Team Development & Leadership, successful New Product Launches, Major Account Development & Management, and Pricing, Contracting Strategy & Negotiation.

At Sage Therapeutics, as Executive Director, Market Access Strategy, he was recruited to lead the development of the US market access strategy, integrate functional strategies, align with collaboration partners, and ensure accurate payer customer perspectives in commercialization plans. He led market access strategy for a lead depression molecule and cross-functional specialty pharmacy network development, along with account management tactical plans.

During his tenure at Gilead Sciences as Senior Director, Payer Strategy and Marketing, Mr. Turner led the development, execution, and evaluation of strategic and tactical initiatives for optimal coverage, provider reimbursement, distribution, and patient access of products in cardiopulmonary, inflammation, and oncology. He built a cross-functional launch team for payer strategy in inflammation and created tactics to preserve coverage in competitive specialty areas, also leading specialty product value proposition development.

At Otsuka, he served as National Director, US Access & Reimbursement Group, leading a newly created field organization of 6 team leaders and 51 Account Managers. Notably, he was nominated for a blended leadership role, serving as interim leader of HUB, creating the full concept, strategy, and vendor selection. As Regional Director, Market Access - Managed Markets, he successfully turned around a difficult relationship with Novation and Premier, launching a new anti-psychotic and achieving payer parity status ahead of schedule.

His extensive career also includes significant roles at GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, where he consistently demonstrated leadership in account management, market strategy development, contract negotiation, and sales growth across various therapeutic areas and market segments. He holds a Juris Doctorate from McGeorge School of Law, an MBA from California State University, Sacramento, and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Lewis and Clark College.