Stavros Nicolaou is a member of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Limited Group Executive Committee and is the Group Senior Executive responsible for Strategic Trade Development. Previously he was CEO of Aspen’s Export Business. Aspen is Africa’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer and a now world leader in Anaesthetics and injectable anti-coagulants.
Aspen is one of South Africa’s most globalised multinational companies with a presence in over 50 geographies globally, with 26 manufacturing facilities across 6 continents. He was instrumental in introducing the first generic ARV’s on the African Continent developed by Aspen, which has gone on to save hundreds of thousands of lives in South Africa and on the African Continent.
Nicolaou is a graduate of Wits University and has over 31 years experience in the South African and International Pharmaceutical Industry, 27 years of which have been with the Aspen Group or its subsidiaries and is a previous winner of the SA Institute of Marketing Management (IMM) Health Care Marketer of the year Award. He is a previous recipient Monty Rubenstein Award for proficiency in Pharmaceutics from the Wits University Pharmacy Health Sciences Faculty.
He was awarded, the Order of the Lion of St Mark by the Greek Orthodox Pope Theodoros II and recently received the title of “High Commander of the Order of the Apostle & Evangelist Mark” of the Patriarchate of Alexandria. He has been inducted as a Fellow of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa (PSSA), one of the highest honours bestowed by the PSSA, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Medicine from Wits University, a top 100 Health Science Faculty for Clinical Medicine. He was appointed as an Honorary Member of the Southern African Society for Thrombosis and Haemostasis at the Society’s recent AGM.
Nicolaou is particularly passionate about diversity, transformation, championing localisation and building bridges between the private and public sector in order to improve access to treatment for patients in emerging markets and improving healthcare outcomes in these markets. He has been involved in a number of social responsibility and charitable causes aimed at reducing poverty, inequality and assisting economic growth and development in South Africa.
He has been a speaker at a number of conferences, including the Economist Roundtable, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and has delivered a lecture on ARV developments at the Raigon Institute, a JV between Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
