Mariah Baltezegar

MBA, Vice President and Head Consumer Health & PPA Study Innovation, Real-World Evidence

Mariah is a senior leader within the Peri- and Post-Approval Studies (PPAS) group, responsible for the performance, growth, and development of consumer health and specialized real-world evidence (RWE) study solutions. She has been with PPD for nearly 20 years. Mariah has served in her current entrepreneurial role since 2019, setting the PPAS organization up for success by leading the way in decentralized approaches for non-interventional studies. She developed innovative solutions for hundreds of consumer health and RWE studies including strategies such as digital enablement, decentralized studies (DCT), central principal investigator models, and other approaches that aim to reduce patient and caregiver burden including eConsent, eCOA, tele-visit, home health nursing, and mobile health assessments to name a few.

For more than 20 years, Mariah has worked in various clinical research capacities on both the CRO and site side of the industry. Throughout her career, she has established herself as a results-oriented, motivating leader of global, interdisciplinary teams to develop innovative solutions to meet customer needs. This experience includes more than 15 years’ experience in all aspects of complex rare disease and gene therapy program development. Working in the rare disease space she has developed a unique perspective on the complicated choreography needed to be successful in rare disease development including minimizing patient and site burden, integration of patient advocacy groups in the development process, managing advocacy groups, the importance of the patient, site and sponsor relationship, and developing focused strategies for program and study success.

Mariah began her clinical research career at the site level as a clinical research coordinator where she gained experience working to recruit patients, perform study procedures, and manage study participation and retention. From there, she moved to PPD beginning her CRO career, spending seven years working up through all levels of clinical operations and gaining intimate understanding of patient, site, and sponsor needs for successful study conduct. Following her time in operations, Mariah moved to the commercial team at PPD where she successfully led teams in the development of patient-centric strategies to meet client development objectives in rare diseases. She then moved to Evidera, a PPD business, back to operations and her current role.

Mariah completed her Master of Business Administration degree at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in statistics from Winona State University.