Leadership Corner

Walid Beylouni has been the VP for the Medical Business Unit since March 2023. He joined Danaher in 2013 as General Manager for the Danaher Life Science Platform for the Middle East & Africa Region and has progressed through several roles with incremental responsibilities in the Leica EMEA commercial organization since then.

In his prior role at Leica Microsystems, Walid has been the Vice President Commercial for the EMEA Region since 2018. Under his leadership, the Region delivered above-market sales growth driven by transformational commercial initiatives, process and talent capability building, and leveraging DBS. Before joining Danaher, Walid spent ten years with Stago Group, a global leader in specialized clinical diagnostics, for which he developed the business and established commercial operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Walid earned a master's in Biochemistry from Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France. Walid also graduated from EM Lyon Business School, earning a master's in Strategy and Marketing.

Georges Hakim took over the Vice President Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance (RA/QA) position for Leica Microsystems in May 2022. Georges joined Leica in 2018 as Director Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance (RA/QA) Medical. Georges brings close to 15 years of international regulatory experience with medical devices. He interacted with various health authorities worldwide to get innovative medical devices on the market. 

He holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg.

Dominikus Hamann joined Leica Microsystems as General Counsel on January 1^st, 2020. Dominikus joins us from the Danaher Water Platform, where he served as General Counsel EMEA and global General Counsel for the Hach and OTTHydromet businesses. Dominikus brings an extensive background from the Life Sciences and Technology industries and a top-tier business law firm.

Before Danaher, he worked at Stryker Corporation for 11 years in Legal Counsel roles with international scope and increasing responsibility, partnering closely with business leaders. Dominikus started his career at HEUKING, a leading German business law firm, advising healthcare, tech, and real estate clients.

Gianmarco Cicuzza has been CFO and VP Global Finance since January 2024. Gianmarco joined Leica Microsystems in December 2020 as Senior Director of Finance EMEA and global Finance Transformation. He successfully led the EMEA FSC (EMEA Shared Service Center) and the EMEA Cash Collection Team, on top of his FP&A role for the EMEA commercial business. In addition to his successful contributions to numerous projects, he was instrumental in developing the automation and digitalization program for the global finance organization. Gianmarco has also played a key role in recent Danaher and LMS Due Diligence and M&A activities.

Before joining Leica Microsystems, Gianmarco was CFO & Transformation Director at Jaguar Land Rover Europe Operations and held multiple leadership functions in Finance at Procter & Gamble. He holds a master's in business administration/management from Guido Carli Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Italy.

Nina joined Leica in April 2023 as DBS Commercial Director and quickly extended her responsibility to global Sales Operations. She has been with Danaher since 2015, then transitioned to OTT HydroMet where she most recently worked as Vice President, Commercial Operations and Business Integration.

As Vice President Global Service, Nina provides direction and leadership in developing our global service strategy with a strong focus on people, organization and execution.

Before Danaher, Nina held various roles at Nokia, leading Finance and Sales Operations, managing Product Portfolio and Pricing and bringing new Services to the Market.

Nina holds an MSc in Economics and Business Administration from Oulu University, Finland.

James O’Brien became Vice President of Life Science and Applied Solutions in January 2023 as we brought together these businesses. James originally joined Leica Microsystems in March 2019 as VP Applied Microscopy before moving to lead the Life Science Research business unit in June 2020.  

James joined us from Tecan where over 16 years his career progressed from a field-based applications role to leading a variety of Tecan’s end customer businesses. James has worked in academic and biopharma research, diagnostic and applied markets throughout his career.    

James’ educational background is in biology with his career beginning at Johns Hopkins University in genomic research. He holds an MBA from Kenan-Flagler Business School and the OneMBA program. 

Darin Stell joined Leica Microsystems as Senior VP Global Commercial Operations on September 1st, 2020. Previously, Darin worked from Hach, where he served as their VP Global Sales & DBS. Darin has built his career at Hach over the past 17 years with increasing sales & service responsibilities starting in the UK, then Europe, and since 2017 with responsibility for Sales for North America and Europe with revenues of 800M USD and a team of 1050 associates. Before Hach, he held progressive sales roles at Camlab and Thermo Electron. 

Studying Physical Chemistry and with a post-graduate diploma in Marketing, he started his career in the laboratory, progressing to Scientific Officer before moving into the commercial environment more than 25 years ago.

Dirk Voelkel joined Leica Microsystems as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Vice President, Global Research & Development in August 2022. Dirk joined Leica Microsystems from Cytiva, where he was Chief Technology Officer leading the Innovation organization. Previously, he developed his career over 15 years at Roche Diagnostics, holding progressive roles in R&D, CTO, and business development, innovating on medical devices for diagnostics applications. In his last position, he served as Head of Research and Technology at Roche Diagnostics Diabetes Care Mannheim. Dirk is passionate about science and inventive, resulting in several patents in his name.

Dirk earned his Ph.D. and diploma in Physics from the University of Göttingen. 

Vibeke Wollebekk, joined Leica Microsystems in July 2021 as Senior Director Digital Marketing and became Vice President Global Marketing in October 2022. Vibeke accelerated our digital marketing transformation, optimized our digital growth engine, and implemented improved systems and tools for marketing. Previously, she worked for seven years at Radiometer, where she successfully led Radiometer through the Transformative Marketing journey. Vibeke is an Advanced Certified Practitioner in Transformative Marketing and holds an ALE degree (Advanced Lead Education). At Radiometer, Vibeke led the Digital Marketing and Market Communication teams. She established strong DBS capabilities during her tenure, enabling marketing to generate and demonstrate incremental revenue, leveraging digital channels.  

Before Vibeke joined Radiometer, she held several progressive roles in the IT industry with regional and global scope in sales and marketing. She has also spent a few years in the advertising world. Vibeke is a strong voice for diversity in the workplace and for building an inclusive culture. Currently, she is also chair of the first Danaher European Associate Resources Group (ARG), Women + Friends.

Vibeke holds a Bachelor's degree in International marketing and leadership from the Norwegian Business School BI.

Aysar Ziyadeh joined Leica Microsystems as Vice President of Danaher Business Systems (DBS) in February 2023. Aysar has been with Danaher since 2014 where he started in the Environmental and Applied segment (now known as Veralto). Since joining Danaher, Aysar has held key strategic roles in which he advanced and leveraged DBS to deploy strategic plans across many business disciplines. This experience includes service commercialization, service digital transformation, product management, go-to-market strategies, supply chain and distribution.

In his most recent role at Hach as Global Integrated Supply Chain leader, he led the supply continuity and distribution strategy deployment which enabled Hach to navigate the supply chain crisis while delivering on company and customer commitments. Before joining Danaher, Aysar held roles with increasing responsibility at Siemens Healthcare, where he worked for 14 years.

Aysar earned his MBA from Northern Illinois University College of Business.

David Neubeck joined Leica Microsystems as VP of Global Operations on August 1st, 2024.

David leads the global Operations function, including integrated supply chain, incorporating the overall Leica business strategy to optimize our global operations footprint, drive innovation, and improve quality and profitability. He joined Leica Microsystems from LGC where he was Vice President, Integrated Supply Chain. Before that, he worked at Honeywell for nearly 13 years in various roles of increasing responsibility in manufacturing, strategic sourcing, and supply chain. 

David is a graduate of the University of Essex with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages, Business and holds a Master of Business Administration in Supply Chain Management.