AstraZeneca Appoints New Global Marketing Director

Sobi Velauthapillai has been appointed as Global Marketing Director by AstraZeneca after being with the global biopharmaceutical company for almost two decades, and will relocate from Switzerland to the United Kingdom to take on the role.

Continuing to follow AstraZeneca’s five core values (Follow the Science, Play to Win, Put Patients First, Do the Right Thing and Be Entrepreneurial) Sobi will be responsible for shaping worldwide marketing strategy, driving commercial excellence, supporting product lifecycle management, accelerating global brand growth and advancing AstraZeneca’s mission of delivering innovative medicines to patients worldwide.

Progression with the company

Joining AstraZeneca in 2007 as Market Research Specialist – Oncology, Sobi has worked her way towards Global Marketing Director through various commercial, marketing, sales and regional leadership roles across North America, Europe and global markets.

Sobi’s responsibilities in her most recent role as EUCAN Regional Commercial Director included leading commercial strategy and execution across the Europe and Canada region – partnering with cross functional leadership teams to accelerate business performance and strengthen regional capabilities.

Before being appointed regional leadership responsibilities, Sobi held increasingly senior marketing positions across the years from Senior Marketing Manager – Portfolio Launch Strategy to Marketing Manager – Symbicort, in which she demonstrated her incredible leadership skills and strong potential to advance within AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca’s rise to recognition

Formed in 1999, AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company based at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK.

 It is known best for its notable contributions to public health, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when its Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was the first to be rolled out outside of clinical trials and administered in the UK on 4 January 2021.

Recently embracing AI has allowed the company to increase the rate at which medicines are developed and make smarter decisions throughout the research process. AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot adds: “The value of AI in our industry is productivity improvement. In the way you design a new medicine, a new drug, you can actually do it faster, do it smarter.”

Generating a total US $58.7bn in revenue in 2025, AstraZeneca has positioned itself as a significant company in the pharmaceutical industry and focuses on therapy areas such as Oncology, which is the most popular, BioPharmaceuticals and Rare Disease.

By 2030, AstraZeneca plans to deliver 20 new medicines, lead in sustainable healthcare and be an US$80bn company. The biopharmaceutical company aspires to be pioneers in science and harness the power of AI to transform patient outcomes.