Julia Florence is the president of CIPA, and until her retirement was a senior patent attorney at GlaxoSmithKline. She has extensive experience of building, managing and defending IP portfolios for pharmaceutical products at all stages of development and commercialisation. Prior to GSK, Florence worked at Kilburn & Strode and the Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham patent departments. She has a keen interest in education and is a former examiner for the European patent exams. She served an initial term on CIPA council, returned in 2015 and has been a member of the CIPA patent and life science committees.