Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc. announced Charlene Banard will join as Chief Technical Officer. Charlene will oversee process science and development, quality, manufacturing, and supply. Ms. Banard comes to Atara from Novartis, where, as Global Head, Technical Operations, Cell & Gene Therapy (C>) Platform, she led C> lifecycle management strategy and execution and established the Technical Operations strategy for the company's cell therapy oncology pipeline.

Prior to that, she served in multiple leadership roles at Shire across Technical Operations and Global Quality.