Patrick Retif
Fractional CIO,
Solution Architect
& Program Manager
Patrick Retif is the founder of Tailwinds Advisory and a Fractional CIO, Solution Architect and Program Executive focused exclusively on biotech and life sciences. With 25+ years building and running commercial IT — from pre-commercial Phase 2/3 organizations to $15B global enterprises — he has personally led or overseen 15+ product launches and 20+ M&A IT integrations.
He builds the commercial IT stack companies need to get to market and scale: CRM, data warehouses, analytics, AI, compliance — and he stays in the trenches until it's done.
Career Highlights
Patrick served as Global Commercial CIO at Allergan, a $15B global pharmaceutical company, leading 150 IT professionals across 75 markets and championing 20+ product launches while reducing commercial IT operating costs by 50%. His scope spanned Allergan's predecessor companies Forest Laboratories and Actavis, where he led technology operations for 12,000+ users.
At IQVIA, he served as SVP & GM of US Technology Solutions, running a $750M P&L with 2,000+ FTEs and transforming the business unit.
Earlier in his career, Patrick held senior consulting roles at PwC and IBM, and served as a CRM Practice Director at CSC, advising companies including Pfizer, Biogen, and J&J. He founded SRCI, a CRM software firm that grew to lead the French market, and helped transform Highpoint Solutions into a $200M consulting firm.
What Patrick Delivers
Since founding Tailwinds Advisory, Patrick has delivered 12+ biotech product launches for companies including Scynexis, Hutchmed, Calliditas, Egetis, Syndax, and others. He specializes in late Phase 2 through commercial-stage biotech that needs executive IT leadership now — without waiting for a full-time hire.
As a Fractional CIO, Patrick takes full ownership of commercial IT — setting strategy, managing budgets, leading vendors, building teams, and making CIO-level decisions as an embedded member of the leadership team. As a Program Executive, he drives specific large-scale programs — CRM rollouts, commercial data platform builds, launch readiness — from strategy through delivery, often working alongside an existing Head of IT. As a Solution Architect, he designs the target state across CRM, MLR, the commercial data warehouse, MDM, and aggregator feeds, and defines the integrations and data flows that implementation partners build to.
His work spans the full commercial IT landscape: CRM (Veeva and alternatives), Medical Affairs, MLR, Market Access, commercial data warehouses, Master Data Management, third-party data aggregator integrations, tokenization, BI/analytics dashboards, and AI frameworks. He also brings deep M&A IT integration experience, having led 20+ integrations across his career — harmonizing business processes, organizations, and technology platforms post-acquisition.