Elena
Starinskaya

I've spent 15+ years inside some of the world's most demanding regulatory environments – Big Pharma, Biotech, and rare disease across Europe, Russia and the CIS – including compliance leadership at Bayer Healthcare, Boehringer Ingelheim, Baxter/Baxalta, Shire, and MorphoSys. I've steered ethics programs through product launches, mergers, and acquisitions, so I know what frameworks look like under pressure, not just in planning documents. One belief drives everything I do: integrity, built right, is not a constraint on business – it is what makes business unbreakable.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of ethics, artificial intelligence, and human transformation. I use design thinking to research how compliance functions can harness AI responsibly – not as a threat to manage, but as a cognitive partner to lead with. As Co-Lead of the Professional Development Pillar at ETHICS – Europe's premier Life Sciences Compliance Association – I design mentorship programmes and learning pathways, because the best compliance culture in any industry starts with people who feel genuinely supported in doing their work.

When I'm not on stage moderating panels about AI in compliance, you'll find me on the tennis court, hiking alpine trails, or at an art exhibition or opera house.