Angeli Möller | Building the Future of Health with Precision, Vision, and Heart (SPARK20 – 142)

How do you lead at the cutting edge of health, data, and AI—while staying deeply human?

Angeli Möller has led global data science teams across pharma giants, co-founded one of Europe’s most ambitious AI alliances, and now builds high-performance biotech strategies with precision. But what truly sets her apart isn’t just her technical fluency—it’s her clarity, courage, and care in how she builds teams, solves problems, and pushes the boundaries of innovation.

In this episode, Angeli opens up about the quiet frustrations that fuel her mission, the invisible cost of ignoring innovation, and the principles that guide her client work today. Whether you’re an investor, founder, or policymaker, her journey will reshape how you think about leadership, AI, and what truly moves the needle in healthcare.

Here’s what you’ll take away:

• Why most AI projects fail—and how to spot the ones that won’t.
• How to lead technical teams with vision, warmth, and accountability.
• Why proprietary data matters more than fancy algorithms.
• What real innovation feels like—and how to know when you’re missing it.

At the center of it all: a calm, fiercely smart leader who sees through the noise and builds what matters.

As she says:
“Start with the real problem. If you don’t understand the problem, AI won’t help you.”

Timestamps & Topics

📌 (01:08) Missed AI Integration Costs – “It’s faster, more effective, cheaper—but it’s not part of the core business yet.”

📌 (03:57) AI vs. Real-World Drug Impact – “The question isn’t: does it use AI? It’s: does the medicine work?”

📌 (04:48) Post-Hype AI Fallout in Pharma – “Fraud led to disillusionment. And investors paid the price.”

📌 (06:39) Corporate Blind Spots in Innovation – “It’s a danger in business to think there’s nothing to learn from others.”

📌 (09:40) Building a European AI Alliance – “At first, pharma didn’t take us seriously. That changed with the data.”

📌 (11:02) Data Ethics and Regulatory Risk – “You can massively hurt your business through accidental bias.”

📌 (13:19) Data Access for Rare Diseases – “The only solution is to make that data safely available.”

📌 (15:22) Leadership Shift: From Bayer to Startup – “It felt too obvious. I needed something riskier, more meaningful.”

📌 (21:23) Three Core Leadership Traits – “Vision. Technical understanding. And knowing when to bring in others.”

📌 (22:27) Frictionless Health Tech Adoption – “It’s inevitable. The economics—and behavior nudges—are already shaping it.”

This episode offers more than insight—it’s a playbook for building what’s next in health, tech, and leadership.

👉 Listen now, and share it with someone ready to shape the future.

🎙️ With over 200 interviews, panels, and livestreams, Beginner’s Mind ranks in the Top 10% globally—and is recognized as the leading deep tech podcast for biotech, AI, and scientific innovation. 

Transcript

00:00:00:22 - 00:00:29:07

Christian Soschner

There is a question for you is artificial intelligence in healthcare? Just the hype or the key to billion dollar breakthroughs? And you develop a data science pioneer who's transformed pharma giants and is now chief executive health officer. Group she ambition for sustainable innovation. In this spark 20 episode

00:00:29:07 - 00:00:44:01

Christian Soschner

In only 24 minutes. Learn how to spot winning artificial intelligence startups and white costly traps and lead with impact insights for investors, entrepreneurs and leaders.

00:00:44:03 - 00:01:04:23

Christian Soschner

If this short version sparks your interest, I encourage you to explore the full episode. Please remember to like, follow, and share this podcast. It truly helps us reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned and dive into the full episode from where let's get started.

00:01:04:23 - 00:01:09:10

Christian Soschner

So we are still around, in your opinion. So pharma is not fully,

00:01:09:10 - 00:01:17:18

Christian Soschner

on this artificial intelligence robotics trend yet. So there is still some room in the industry today. I understand you always.

00:01:17:20 - 00:01:48:05

Angeli Möller

point to examples. So I think, it's come a long way in the last five years. And I think you can always put together case studies if, you want to, where you can show every single pharmaceutical company has, taken machine learning and used it in a set of specific use cases and specific studies. And I would say the two pharmaceutical companies I worked for were really, pushing innovation, really making investments into these technologies.

00:01:48:07 - 00:02:12:13

Angeli Möller

But in terms of it being embedded in the core business instead of just being it's over here and it's a use case. It's an innovation too. It's just the way we do things now. We just do it this way. It's faster, it's more effective, it's cheaper, happens to use new technologies, but it's just the way we do business now that I think is, is not not there yet.

00:02:12:13 - 00:02:40:12

Angeli Möller

And I think there's a lot more potential to make these new technologies part of the core business. I mean, of course, in another industry, you wouldn't even call them new technologies anymore. It's almost revealing that I use that terminology. But I'm from the pharmaceutical industry. but I, I, I, I see that there is just so much scope to make it, part of the core business to, even how do you engage with your customers?

00:02:40:12 - 00:03:02:03

Angeli Möller

How do you get the information up to key opinion leaders and hospital partners? How do you, make sure that all of your internal employees can communicate and find all of the information that they need very quickly? again, you know, my passion right now for manufacturing, how do you get that process to be as high quality, as high yield as possible?

00:03:02:05 - 00:03:05:01

Angeli Möller

I think there is just a lot more to do,

00:03:05:01 - 00:03:15:21

Christian Soschner

And you were very attracted to artificial intelligence in healthcare. What motivated you to go into this direction? Although back in these days it was not a common thing to do.

00:03:16:00 - 00:03:38:17

Angeli Möller

and I think, Christine, that a lot of my experiences resonate with yours. So even I remember, speaking to someone in 2016, you just said they didn't believe in artificial intelligence. That was their entire statement and sentence. And this is quite an influential person in the industry and said, I do not believe in artificial intelligence. Okay.

00:03:38:19 - 00:03:42:11

Angeli Möller

End of discussion. I would say

00:03:42:11 - 00:03:43:07

Angeli Möller

that

00:03:43:07 - 00:03:57:24

Angeli Möller

it's still very important to look at what is the reality of how the money is made in this industry and how a patient really is supported and benefits in this industry. So ultimately, the question isn't,

00:03:57:24 - 00:04:02:15

Angeli Möller

is it using machine learning? The question is, does the medicine work? And that should be the question.

00:04:02:15 - 00:04:22:22

Angeli Möller

That's the right question to ask. Does the medicine work? Does the diagnostic tool work. Those are the questions that you need to ask. Does it use machine learning yes or no? Okay. That's interesting, but does it work? And and that's true in many, many industries, not just in healthcare. Does the product work? Does it meet an unmet customer need?

00:04:22:22 - 00:04:25:02

Angeli Möller

I do think, though, that,

00:04:25:02 - 00:04:48:22

Angeli Möller

the big hype cycle it cost Gartner just popped out, latest report and I got that, sorry, the AI hype cycle I did lead to, a lot of, fraud. So a lot of false claims, people continuing to claim that artificial intelligence could do things that it simply couldn't. And that level, fraud led to a lot of disillusionment.

00:04:48:22 - 00:05:17:17

Angeli Möller

It also led to certain investors losing money because they were big claims made. And then those claims didn't pan out. so I'm very sympathetic to people who who went through that situation. But on the other side, there was a trend in which some companies really rebuilt their entire pipeline of how they developed new drugs, how they developed new products using all the technologies available to them, one of which was artificial intelligence.

00:05:17:17 - 00:05:27:15

Angeli Möller

They said, I'm going to use whatever's available to me to make the best product. And they've been tremendous, really successful. And Boston machine learning was a big part of their success.

00:05:27:15 - 00:05:38:16

Angeli Möller

And then you see others who just continued not to use all of the tools available for them to make the best product, and then suffered accordingly. that's a shame to see.

00:05:38:16 - 00:05:58:03

Angeli Möller

and I think that's where at the core of everything I do is saying you have to marry the technical expertise, with the business acumen, because you there are people who will claim something can do everything when it simply can't. And you need to be able to see through that and find your way through that.

00:05:58:03 - 00:06:06:19

Christian Soschner

It's amazing how advanced, the Southeast Asian countries are. So if it's, Korea, China, Japan, this is all in Singapore

00:06:06:19 - 00:06:11:02

Christian Soschner

directing 120 countries against teams, you know, 120 countries.

00:06:11:02 - 00:06:20:17

Christian Soschner

And how how how do you see the balance when it comes to innovation? I mean, I say European, I always like to think Europe is the most advanced region.

00:06:20:19 - 00:06:26:21

Christian Soschner

Then I started traveling to Asia ten years ago, and it was almost like a trip to the future. How do you see it?

00:06:26:21 - 00:06:39:10

Angeli Möller

I would say for anyone, whether you're, European, Asian American, from anywhere else, African, it's important to have an awareness for your biases.

00:06:39:10 - 00:07:02:16

Angeli Möller

So to not get, for instance, a Eurocentric, viewpoint. I don't know if you've been an international meetings, and sometimes it can be amusing, when you listen to people who have got a viewpoint where they really think, you know, there's the innovation, isn't there space? There's nothing to learn from any of the other regions of our planet, and they really think that they know everything.

00:07:02:18 - 00:07:25:13

Angeli Möller

but I would tell you, that's a danger, that everyone in business has to watch out for. Be aware of when you might have tunnel vision, because of your particular background. when I look at innovation and, particularly the machine learning space, I'm going to be a bit boring here because it often comes into what would that data availability, data privacy regulations, how can you access data?

00:07:25:13 - 00:07:56:17

Angeli Möller

How easy is it? and that has a big effect on where you see the growth of certain industries, where they are able to collect endless data on all of their end users without having to worry about end user privacy considerations. And and so certainly they have much stronger algorithms. And anybody else are any of their competitors. So I think, that's something that leads to different bubbles of innovation that we've seen in machine learning based, industries.

00:07:56:19 - 00:08:34:20

Angeli Möller

over time, I think the, interesting part as well is also looking at where you have a sustainable growth. Some investors, you know, maybe are looking for something that will be big, grow big quickly, maybe won't exist in ten years. But it went through a boom. and I think, for me, I'll say on honestly, I'm always very interested in why you have a sustainable growth trajectory where you have also a country, policy set, but also a CEO, a leader, a founder who's interested in that sustainable trajectory.

00:08:34:20 - 00:08:42:00

Angeli Möller

He's looking to build something at last. And I find that very interesting. to do, and different, different

00:08:42:00 - 00:09:03:03

Angeli Möller

I would say it's so me I wouldn't be able to say one country because as leaders change as the president or the prime minister, the policy, the political party changes in different countries, you see different shifts in policy, and then they encourage or support, different models, whether it's, I think boom or this may be more sustainable growth

00:09:03:03 - 00:09:08:04

Christian Soschner

what were the different mark moments of artificial intelligence in pharma, in your opinion?

00:09:08:06 - 00:09:08:17

Angeli Möller

That's

00:09:08:17 - 00:09:10:10

Angeli Möller

interesting. I think,

00:09:10:10 - 00:09:40:02

Angeli Möller

Looking back, it's definitely at the point where small, biotech companies started to have platforms where machine learning was a larger part. That was the drug discovery platform. so if I in 20 end of 2018, beginning of 2019, I co-founded together with some extremely, innovative CEOs, an organization called the Alliance for Critical Intelligence and Healthcare.

00:09:40:02 - 00:09:58:21

Angeli Möller

So that organization we then launched at JP Morgan at the Biotech Showcase, and it is made up of companies that at the time were really championing the use of machine learning and healthcare, and particularly in drug discovery. So most of them were drug discovery companies. And at the beginning,

00:09:58:21 - 00:10:02:17

Angeli Möller

it was met with a lot of skepticism by the pharmaceutical industry.

00:10:02:17 - 00:10:26:02

Angeli Möller

So the membership was really even today, it's still a lot of biotech companies. It's a lot of smaller companies. and, what made a difference was when those companies started to bring things into clinical development, because I said it at the very beginning of this, podcast, in the end, does the medicine work? That that should be what's important.

00:10:26:02 - 00:10:51:03

Angeli Möller

That should always be what's most important. And as they start to show in clinical studies that these molecules where the drug discovery pathway had been much faster or much cheaper because of machine learning, was still highly effective, in the clinical study with a good safety profile. Then that was the point, I think, where people started to really set up and pay attention.

00:10:51:04 - 00:10:54:23

Angeli Möller

I still think we're still at the early years of that.

00:10:54:23 - 00:11:02:16

Christian Soschner

What are the ethical considerations that we have to take in healthcare these days when it comes to data generation and making sure that the data is safe for our patients?

00:11:02:16 - 00:11:26:01

Angeli Möller

Now it's an unpopular opinion. I work with people all the time who say, no, I absolutely hate all of these regulations and guardrails, but I've always worked in a heavily regulated industry, so I look, you know, there's no part of me that goes right. I think if you read through the documents and again, if you're used to working in a regulated industry, you see that they're all quite manageable.

00:11:26:03 - 00:11:51:24

Angeli Möller

So I'll give you an example from the EU. I act, in that one of the examples they have, they talk about hiring. So software, hiring people and how to manage, biases in something. So it doesn't immediately exclude all applicants who have dark colored skin just because the algorithm was built with an inherent bias. So it might sort people based on did they go to a particular university?

00:11:52:01 - 00:12:23:24

Angeli Möller

That's not a racist sorting mechanism, but then that university might not have an intake of people of color. So you have a secondary, screening criteria there. You have a bias just because of the way you built your algorithm that you wouldn't have intended, but it suddenly comes out and it has just very simple rules about, you know, making it possible to look at how you tested the software, just, publishing how you tested the software and having some basic good practices about testing for these sorts of biases.

00:12:24:01 - 00:12:52:09

Angeli Möller

And I think, when I look at these responses, you should be doing that anyway. Why on earth would you not do that anyway? And if there's a helpful little set of checklist that help you make sure that you're not accidentally doing something that would hurt your business tremendously, I mean, if you get caught for accidentally having racist hiring practices, you can massively hurt your business just through having made a foolish mistake.

00:12:52:11 - 00:13:14:15

Angeli Möller

So why would you not want a simple checklist, a simple set of rules that is going to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot as you go into this new and exciting technology where you might in your company not have had a lot of experience before. So I think that's one, thing that I think when I look through these regulations, I think on healthcare access,

00:13:14:15 - 00:13:19:10

Angeli Möller

I do think in the end it is critical that the data become available.

00:13:19:10 - 00:13:52:14

Angeli Möller

So I sat on the management board of a charity called Rax, which is for patients with ultra rare diseases, and it helped patients to make that data accessible to researchers because obviously, very few of patients with ultra read disease, very little data are available to develop new medicines. And it was so important to discovering new medicines for what is mostly, a patient population made up of children, extremely vulnerable children suffering from debilitating, debilitating rare diseases with very few treatment options.

00:13:52:16 - 00:14:23:14

Angeli Möller

The only solution is to make that data available, to make it safely available. So I think, it is important to reduce the cost and reduce the burden of data access. And I think that's a great way to stimulate research into new cures, research into new medications, new diagnostics, to lower the burden for that innovation. And at the same time, I think there are technical best practices that allow you to protect patient data.

00:14:23:14 - 00:14:45:07

Angeli Möller

So we have our bunching data, which we also expect to be protected. There is lots of data that we expect to have predicted, and I think that all really well-established mechanisms for protecting that data, it's just important that if you're an organization that is handling patient data, you take the time to make sure you've got the right expense to make sure you know how to do

00:14:45:07 - 00:14:49:01

Christian Soschner

what was your motivation to found your own consultancy company?

00:14:49:01 - 00:14:54:17

Angeli Möller

there's a lot of entrepreneurial ism in my family. So it was more I was a bit the

00:14:54:17 - 00:14:55:24

Angeli Möller

odd one out who said, time?

00:14:56:01 - 00:14:59:01

Angeli Möller

just being an employee, I'll be it's a global executive in

00:14:59:01 - 00:15:01:16

Angeli Möller

a huge company, but I'm still good with that.

00:15:01:17 - 00:15:22:14

Angeli Möller

I don't mind having a boss if it's the right percent. and so I was more the odd one out, and, and it's more common in my family to, to be somebody who starts your own business, and runs your own business. And that's over multiple generations. So it's been a common trend. So I, I didn't have in mind that this was what I was going to do, but,

00:15:22:14 - 00:15:24:20

Angeli Möller

the company I did work for, rush.

00:15:25:01 - 00:15:47:22

Angeli Möller

It's a really great company, very supportive company. And they allowed me to do advisory and consulting work beside my brush control. So I had, then a contract with, UK Research and Innovation, and I had, scientific advisor contract for the biotech company called Multi-Omics Health, which do fantastic research into metabolomic diseases. And I've been working with them for a few years now.

00:15:47:24 - 00:16:09:12

Angeli Möller

So I already had, then this, track record of having done, this consultancy for a while. and I, was seeing that to be really effective in the pharmaceutical industry, as well, but, in the roles that I had, there was,

00:16:09:12 - 00:16:24:22

Angeli Möller

It was really clear what I needed to do was really clear. Okay. If you if you want this team to be really successful, you've been in these sorts of roles seven years now. If you want to continue going down this route of success, this is exactly what it would look like. It was pretty clear what it would look like.

00:16:24:22 - 00:16:30:15

Angeli Möller

I knew what would need to be done for for the next step. And I just love.

00:16:30:15 - 00:16:35:03

Angeli Möller

You know what? It feels a little bit to obvious.

00:16:35:03 - 00:16:37:16

Angeli Möller

It's a road. You're on. It.

00:16:37:16 - 00:16:46:21

Angeli Möller

You know exactly what you need to do. Some of it is just keep doing the same stuff and you're just on that road. And I thought

00:16:46:21 - 00:16:50:18

Angeli Möller

I have, you know, made good investment start properly.

00:16:50:18 - 00:16:58:04

Angeli Möller

Like many of your lessons. Again, I started investing, in the stock market myself in my 20s. and for a month,

00:16:58:04 - 00:17:11:08

Angeli Möller

steady portion of my salary. But it aside, you start to build up my own personal investment portfolio. And so I just felt like, you know, I'm in a good place. I'm in a place where I have, two great clients already.

00:17:11:08 - 00:17:34:10

Angeli Möller

I'm in a place where I feel very comfortable in terms of taking on more risk, more adventure. And I see that there's really something useful I can do. I see that there are people who are reaching out to me in my network, reaching out to me across the industry, who, are actually getting some use out of what I can do for them.

00:17:34:12 - 00:17:36:13

Angeli Möller

And so that was the initial trigger,

00:17:36:13 - 00:18:00:05

Angeli Möller

for really going into this. But as I, then spent more time in it and more thought in it, I think then it became something much bigger than just actually as an individual coming into this and that. It became then clearer where the opportunities were in the global market. It became also where the opportunities for expanding into something much larger with multiple partners, SAT.

00:18:00:07 - 00:18:25:18

Angeli Möller

And so that's really the journey that I'm just beginning now in the early stages of it's going from just being unclear as one individual going out and doing work to saying, okay, there are so many requests for more support. There are so many opportunities that are just sitting there. How do we now start to grow then? That takes us back to our earlier leadership discussion growth sustainably so that it's the right people.

00:18:25:18 - 00:18:49:06

Angeli Möller

And one of the things I'm spending time doing now is also just talking to people, to to see who, it has a similar passion for growing businesses who would be somebody to partner up with, who is equally interested in making a difference, through technical expertise, through technical consulting. but also who has a passion for growing a business?

00:18:49:08 - 00:18:55:12

Angeli Möller

just, you know, another scientist, another engineer, but somebody who really is interested in the commercial side as well.

00:18:55:12 - 00:19:20:16

Christian Soschner

When we talk about pharma, then you also need scientific, expertise in the digital world. And then you need leadership expertise. Is it really necessary to be successful in pharma in the digital world to have all three areas covered? Or can someone just say, okay, I focus on leadership and I have my experts, then I can go to how do you see the mix of this free would say free fund fundamental pillars of leadership.

00:19:20:16 - 00:19:37:05

Angeli Möller

I've been lucky enough to have leaders like that to try to be that kind of leader. and I think, the success story again, for companies is that the best talent? I want to work for this person. Yeah. and they stay in their retained, working for this person.

00:19:37:10 - 00:20:00:20

Angeli Möller

All the scientific and technical acumen. I was actually speaking to a client yesterday about. So, they were asking me about how necessary, this is in a role, which is customer facing. So for customer facing role, how critical is it to have this document? I would say that, first of all, it's you can learn it.

00:20:00:22 - 00:20:27:24

Angeli Möller

So if you didn't come up as I did through academia, don't imagine that you can't choose to learn a new skill set. I think we nowadays lived quite a long time, since we live quite a long time, it's important not to be afraid of of jumping in and learning a new skill set. I do think that in the scientific and technical industries, it does make a difference to be able to bring that background.

00:20:28:01 - 00:20:54:00

Angeli Möller

But you have to remember, nobody is an expert in every single part. the biotech, pharmaceutical business. That's why you have a cluster of experts, usually. I'll give you an example. So I've specialized in molecular biology, machine learning. And right now I'm doing our work on quantum computing, with the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which is, based in the UK.

00:20:54:02 - 00:21:23:15

Angeli Möller

so those are areas in which I would go and feel very comfortable. Okay. But if you look at, a completely different area like the go to market strategy, there are other people who are better qualified in a go to market strategy. And I think a key strength as a leader is to be able to say, now I will bring in somebody else who has that strength and make sure that the client, the customer or the company is getting really what they need in terms of the right expertise.

00:21:23:17 - 00:21:53:15

Angeli Möller

I think, then, you know, the third part of leadership is really strategy and vision, knowing where you want the organization to go, being able to have that resilience as you pay, setbacks, as you continue to drive the organization into the right direction. And that is, I think you you just have to do just, just have a lot of control and just be the sort of person who has a very clear idea of what the direction is.

00:21:53:17 - 00:22:15:14

Angeli Möller

and I think then where I really see leaders that I admire, those who are able to have that urgency, that sense of direction to overcome obstacles. And yet the still at the same time, listen to that teams so that they don't switch off and become blinkered while they move towards that goal. And then that's really, for me, the true strength of a great leader.

00:22:15:14 - 00:22:27:18

Christian Soschner

What's your prediction? Is this a point in time? Is there something that we can reach, to make such diagnostic possibility available to everybody?

00:22:27:20 - 00:22:27:24

Angeli Möller

I

00:22:27:24 - 00:22:49:10

Angeli Möller

So what are the things that I could provide in that person's home and a solution to reduce the burden, to make it easier to have the flags? one is to have the data tracking, but the other thing is to have those behavioral nudges, that really good applications give assent and start to change the way we, we act and think.

00:22:49:12 - 00:23:12:21

Angeli Möller

so I think it, as the economics play out, then it's it's inevitable. And you see this in many countries already. so I was in China just last year and, just looking at everything that is accessible to somebody living in Shanghai, for instance, not everyone checkpoints in the bigger cities, they have exactly what I think you're describing.

00:23:12:21 - 00:23:19:19

Christian Soschner

What actually makes clear is this real transformation doesn't come from buzzwords.

00:23:19:21 - 00:23:52:08

Christian Soschner

It comes from courageous leadership, both hearing and clear vision. If you are an investor, founder or policymaker, this is the mindset that separates legacy companies from those still chasing potential. To hear a full conversation, watch or listen to the full episode linked in the description. And if this clip sparked something? Share it with someone who needs to hear it.