Monkeys not Donkeys, QbD Group’s life science marketing and communication agency, strengthens its team

Maritina Kanatselou will become MnD’s new Art Director & Lead Designer. Maritina was visual designer and brand manager with biotechnology company Galapagos, providing art direction and quality control for their brand visuals. She has over 15 years of design experience and completed her BA at the University of West London, with additional education in Wales and Athens.

To add extra expertise to MnD’s editorial services, Emma Buchet will join the team as Copywriter. Emma holds a Masters in Scientific Communication and a BSc in Molecular Medicine. She also holds a science communication fellowship with Hiroshima University in Japan. Emma’s experience includes editorial support, grant applications and scientific copywriting for innovation driven organizations. Emma has Irish roots and lives in France. Therefore, she is fluent in French, while English is her mother tongue.

To bring in additional scientific knowledge, MnD has also teamed up with Wouter Laroy. Wouter has experience as Chief Scientific Officer and researcher at VIB in Belgium and John’s Hopkins Institute in the US. He holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Ghent (Belgium) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Wouter has experience in marketing and business strategy within scientifically driven organizations. He also has a profound understanding of how to communicate with a wide range of key stakeholders, including investors, board members, collaboration partners, researchers, business developers, and marketers.

This is the first significant growth of MnD’s expertise since the company was acquired by QbD in April of this year.

Kristoff Baeten, founder and managing director of Monkeys not Donkeys, commented: “Since we became part of the QbD group, we feel we have become more attractive as an agency to hire high profiles. As we are a small team, it's so important to get the right people - those with the right experience, but also enough flexibility and vision to see beyond their area of expertise and be able to work across industries. These new additions will enable us to strengthen our existing team and bring in new and more in-depth expertise to be able to connect with our clients on many levels to gain a better understanding and make campaigns more effective. Wouter, Emma, and Maritina are a good fit with the Monkeys - we're excited to see how their involvement helps us to evolve as a team and as a company."

Bart Van Acker, CEO of QbD Group, stated: “We are very pleased to welcome Maritina, Emma and Wouter to the QbD Group. Just as we are continuously expanding our already broad ecosystem through strategic alliances and acquisitions, we support the growth of our subsidiaries in turn. Together with our commercialization team of 'Health to Market', these new additions will allow our Go to Market division to round out their existing design and editorial services and include more focused marketing and business strategy support to clients.”