Lonza Group AG said on Wednesday it appointed Samanta Cimitan as Chief Commercial Officer, Senior Vice President and member of the Extended Executive Committee, effective Jan. 1, 2027.
Cimitan will lead Strategic Enterprise Account Management, Global Marketing and Commercial Excellence, with direct responsibility for Lonza’s strategic accounts. The newly created role is designed to unify the company’s go-to-market approach under its One Lonza strategy, aiming to simplify customer engagement across Lonza’s three business platforms globally.
Lonza CEO Wolfgang Wienand said the appointment strengthens the company’s commercial focus as it seeks to leverage its integrated capabilities to support pharmaceutical partners in translating innovations into therapies. “Samanta brings deep CDMO expertise, commercial leadership experience and first-hand knowledge of Lonza,” he said in a statement.
Cimitan joins from Celonic Group, where she serves as CEO and has led the biologics-focused CDMO’s commercial, operational, regulatory and innovation capabilities. Prior to Celonic, she spent nearly 13 years at Lonza in commercial and strategy roles, including as Vice President of Lonza Group Operations Strategy, where she led transformation programs across Commercial, R&D and Operations.
Lonza, headquartered in Basel, is the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) serving the healthcare industry. The company employs about 20,000 people across five continents and reported sales of CHF 3.4 billion with CORE EBITDA of CHF 1.2 billion for the first half of 2026.
The appointment follows Lonza’s listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange and SGX-ST, with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.
