Biography
Olav Hellebø joined Exonate as Chief Executive Officer in June 2026, bringing extensive international leadership experience from big pharma and biotech.
Alongside his role at Exonate, he is Executive Chairman of ION Therapeutics, an ocular gene therapy spinout from the University of Oxford. Earlier, as Chief Executive Officer of ReNeuron Group plc (2014–2021), he in-licensed a Retinitis Pigmentosa programme from the Schepens Eye Research Institute, part of Harvard Medical School, and completed equity financings totalling $125 million.
In big pharma, Olav held senior commercial and development roles across the United States and Europe. At Schering-Plough (now Merck) he served as Executive Vice-President leading the US Biotech & Oncology business unit. At Novartis UK he was Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Novartis Global Pharmaceutical Executive Committee. At UCB he built and led the Immunology Division following UCB's acquisition of Celltech plc.
A Summa Cum Laude graduate in International Business Studies from Hofstra University, New York, Olav also holds an MBA from IESE, Barcelona. He has lived and worked in Norway, the USA, France, Austria, Spain and the UK.