Dr. Volker Schuster, PhD, MSc, has 22 years of experience in global market access, pricing, and health policy, both in industry and strategy consulting. As a seasoned leader and very collaborative person, Dr. Schuster has a wholistic understanding of biotech/pharma global business and actively worked on the global positioning and pricing of 50+ compounds and ATMPs. For the last 12 years, Dr. Schuster’s focus has been on rare disease market access and health policy and has been a member of various regional and global senior leadership teams. He has done early- and late-stage commercial pipeline assessments, primary payor research, and launch planning, and lead the development of 40+ payor value stories, global value dossiers and payor objection handlers. He has brought many U.S. companies to Europe and has hands-on HTA submission and price negotiation experience in major European markets. Also, he is an expert in launch sequencing.​

Prior to joining SAI, Dr. Schuster was a member of the global market access and pricing senior leadership team of Alira Health, a global life science management consultancy and a leader in regional market access as a top-20 pharma/biotech company. In total, Dr. Schuster spent 13 years in industry and nine years in consulting.

After earning an advanced degree in statistical physics from the University of Heidelberg in 2001, Dr. Schuster received his PhD in economics and business engineering form the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2007. In 2012, he got certified as health economist (EBS) by the European Business School. Dr. Schuster expects to receive his Executive MBA with honors in November 2023 from the Quantic School of Business and Technology, Washington.