Silke Zentner

VP, Head of Global Business Services Lonza

Silke leads the global finance shared service organization of Lonza, Switzerland, collaborating with the business to deliver lean end-to-end services to enable profitable growth. Besides the more traditional finance processes AP, AR and R2R, she is also in charge of the financial health of the Lonzas legal entities, cost controlling / planning, master data maintenance and the newly created Centre of Excellence for SAP access management. Additionally she and her team are driving business harmonization beyond finance, to build the scalable backbone for the fast growing CDMO business of Lonza. As part of the Lonza finance leadership team she is driving D&I initiatves at Lonza, including the promotion of females into leadership positions. Prior to joining Lonza in October 2022, Silke held various positions at Novartis in the finance function, lastly the role of Global Controlling Lead for the S4/HANA implementation. Before this she held various Finance roles in commercial, drug development and strategy at Novartis. Her finance expertise spans from in-country experience as Head Controlling Hungary, regional Oncology CFO for 32 European countries out of Italy and various global roles in the Swiss headquarter. Silke was also leading the Business Planning & Analysis shared service organization in Hyderabad, India and build-up the new digital planning hub in Barcelona, Spain, leveraging Artificial Intelligence for forecasting. Before moving into finance, Silke served more than 12 years as a professional Investor Relations leader, both at Novartis and BASF. For BASF she was heading the American IR team and was in charge of the listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Silke lives with her husband, son and daughter in Germany. Silke graduated from the University of Freiburg, Germany, with a Masters in Economics. Silke is passionate about people and the inner journey of leadership. In her spare time she loves to be a wife, mother and friend.