From AI to IP with Bruce Wu, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at Deep Cell

I have to say I was so excited to talk to Bruce and it did not disappoint. We talked about all kinds of things, including AI. You could almost see him switching hats. He was like, okay, I'm going to put on my chief people officer hat and now I'm going to put on my chief legal hat and now my IP hat and my business hat.

Bruce is a super interesting person. He has a wealth of experience. He is currently the chief legal officer and corporate secretary at Deep Cell. But he has held a variety of positions with a variety of companies and just a really interesting guy to talk to. So I think people are really going to like this episode.

Welcome to Building Biotechs, a podcast by Reeconomics Consulting.

We've helped over 75 biotech, life science and venture capital firms strategize, hire and retain thousands of employees to scale companies that bring life saving drugs to patients.

We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground floor to the C suite.

We're your host, Karina and Allison. Bruce, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to chat with you.

Thank you for having me. So glad to be here.

Awesome. Well, as always, our first question is what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now and how did you get there?

Yeah, I spent a lot of my time trying to figure it out rather than what I want to be, but what I like to do. And so with all the activities that I sort of try, attempted, I sort of came to a conclusion that I like two kind of aspects, they all gravitate towards two things, right? One is that I like to help people. Um, I, for some reason I found even at 7 years of age that people have a tendency to come and wanted to talk to me. Um, they want to just talk to me, ask for suggestion or just for me to listen. And so I found that to be fascinating. And then if there's anything I can do to help people, even just cousins, neighbors and, I don't know, parents, I love doing that. Um, and then the other one is I like to build things, events. So there are a lot of broken watches being put together. Sometimes they're together, but there's sometimes they're not. But what I also enjoyed doing, I found myself liking to do is to find some sort of pattern out of chaos. And so you could be putting things together in a new way or the same way, but I just enjoy that. And so now that I am as chief Legal officer at the license company. And along this way I have tried again, dabble. I've dabbled engineering, I have dabbled on business development, of course, legal, hr. And I would like to think that I still have kept a little bit of that seven year old bruise even.

It sounds like it. That is really very insightful as a 7 year old because I definitely was running around in my backyard pretending to be a horse. So I'm really impressed by, you know, how you went about that career exploration and just staying true to yourself. You have a really interesting background. We talk a lot about career paths both here on the podcast and we work with a lot of job seekers, just guiding them and thinking about what is possible. Your career path is really cool. And so I wonder if you could walk us through the adult part of the career path, you know, from school to where you are now because you have a number of degrees and it's just really interesting how you got there.

Yeah, I started my career, school, career, academic career thinking I was going to be a professor. I've enjoyed the academia portion of things. I like to do research is I like to find new things, learn new things. But shortly after I started my graduate school at mit, I realized that I enjoy providing advices. I end up just by coins and a, as an advice colorist at MIT newspaper. And I found myself enjoy that a lot more than the lab itself. And so, and that's, that's also where I started to realize that there is that human elements that I really, really liked. And again, if anything that reminds me of the seven year old Bruce. Right. That they wanted to work with people together but at the same time still being able to build things and use the science aspect of it. And then so that's when I started to pivot to a more legal career. And so from that that has been sort of my trajectory. And at the same time I never really lost sight of trying to try different things.

Right.

And then along the way I picked up, as I mentioned earlier, there's the business development aspect at HR and others. And so rather than thinking those are sort of discrete milestones, I sort of see them as just I happen to be at the right time with the right people at the right place who are willing to invest in this person, me and then explore a potential new venture together.

Yeah. How did you actually get into the biotech space? Because you could have taken that in a number of directions.

Yeah, so I, I actually, my, my initial research was actually on nanotechnology and then it was sort of. But I Finished. Once I finished my master's degree, I decided to do something a little different. So I, for my PhD, I, I went into medical engineering. And so that was my first foray into a more bio area. And it just happens. And again I, when I was in the law firm, I worked with clients in all kinds of spaces. I worked with high tech companies, semiconductors, emerging technologies and biotech. And he just somehow the biotech sort of end up just stuck, right? And be it sort of the mentality, personality or just opportunity themselves, and I just end up working a lot with biotech companies and gravitated towards that space.

That makes sense to me because as somebody who likes to do a variety of things myself, biotech is nothing if it's not variety, right? There are so many interesting technologies coming through and it's fast paced and for better or worse, we do move around with different companies because it's a bit volatile, but for the right personality, that means a lot of fun experiences. So I can totally get that.

Well, and I think it was Lynn Walder who we spoke to on the podcast a few weeks ago, who said the thing with biotech is even when you try to get out, you always get sucked back in. So it's like once it sinks its claws into you, you're just working in biotech.

That's it.

And to your point too, biotech is so broad, right? AI is biotech. The company I'm right now at is they try to marry AI engineering and biology that it's as broad as you want it to be or can be.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Let's, let's dive into that topic because your company is really fascinating.

Deep Cell is the company where I'm at right now. It's using AI to image or understand better the cell and morphology features so that we can better understand the different properties of cells and with the hope that maybe it will provide better indications or information that might lead to treatments and all that cool stuff down, down, down the road.

And you're wearing a few hats there. Do you want to tell us about the couple of hats you're wearing currently?

Yeah. So I, I joined as a chief legal officer and the corporate secretary of Deep Cell and recently I also became the interim head of people. And this is not actually my, not my first time being the head of people, but the interim head of people role at deepso was fairly recent.

Can you take us through a little bit of what a day in the life looks like in your job, wearing all these hats and Working with this cool tech. What do you, what do you do when you wake up and like, what does your day look like? I'm fascinated.

I was gonna say my everyday is different, but I don't, I think my every hour is different. I'm pretty much an octopus, right? I just got of a call. I could be having one code about IP and the next call I'll be talking about retention, and the next one would be diversity and the next one would be back to potential contracts. So it's, it's, it's exciting, it's chaotic, but at the same time, it, it, it's, it, it allows me to sort of look at the company even more holistically than, than before.

And how many employees are currently at Deep Cell?

We have about a hundred people right now.

That's a legit hat you're wearing. Head of people. So we, you know, we work with some very small companies and a head of people might be overseeing, you know, 10 people and that, you know, that's pretty early to bring in ahead of people, but we've seen it before. But a hundred, that's a job. That's a lot of people to care for.

Yeah, it's never dull. It's fun.

How do you, I mean, if you don't mind me asking, I feel like, you know, everyone, maybe not to the extent that you do, but people are switching gears constantly. But that can be so exhausting and draining. So do you find that energizing or do you do something for yourself that kind of like resets when like, at the end of the day you're like, well, I was in 76 meetings and.

I literally did everything.

I think my answer is a little bit of both. Right. I will say I am an introvert. So I, I recharge by having alone time to decompress and then to be able to think through things. But at the same time, again, back to my earlier comment, I just enjoy fighting that thread in, in, in a pool of chaos and then thread that into different needles with the different needles and thread into something that makes sense. So to me, HR and legal are not necessarily independent because to me they're actually intertwined.

Right.

How, how do you make sure that people are empowered to do what they do so that, for example, the company can have the IP generated by the people because those are the assets? And then how do you protect this IP that you generate? Because to me, they're all part of the same.

I have noticed that, you know, at companies about that size, it seems like many times the Offices for the head of legal and head of people are very close by in proximity because there's a lot of, there's a lot of exchange there, you know, to your point. So I want to think a little bit about the strategy role that you're playing as well. So in a growing biotech, I, I would break these out into two different questions, but let's just keep them together. What are the main strategies that you're thinking through on a daily basis so that you can help the company grow, Whether that's legal people, you know, what are the things that you find most important, enjoyable and impactful to strategize on?

I see myself as a strategist, I spent a lot of my time trying to preempt what the outcome could be in the way that makes sense.

Right.

And a lot of my GC friends, they are trained to sort of put out fires, right? Litigation ensue or transaction happens, then they turn into a more reactive. And there's nothing wrong with it, just different models, different business a way of doing things and. But I spend a lot of my time trying to craft a strategy in a way that if something unexpected happened, it's not an entire surprise. For example, we. We look at potential problems on the road for ip, we look at potential employment issues because the new law that came up or, or the AI thing that just, you know, everything is sort of. I'm not trying to find an answer to everything. I think it's important to note that because the moment I say I know everything is the moment I don't think I know everything, anything. So if I spend a lot of my time to understand what the problems are and can be and find a way to proactively mitigate the potential consequences of it. And by doing that, then I look at. Back to your second part of the question. What empowers me, right? And so I find it the most energizing to be able to work with the people. I enjoy working with scientists that sort of go back to my IP route. But I also enjoy working with people on the non IP portion, right. Talking about inclusion, talking about how to make a place more empowering for all kinds of employees if that touch on the humanity portion of my interest. So I like to weave them together because I don't see why we cannot do both.

I like the way you describe that. I also like to look for things that could go wrong and have a plan for it. But I just call myself a negative optimist. I hope that it all works out.

But I usually plan for the worst point will made. One of the things that I have tried to do so that, you know, lawyers have a bad reputation. Right. Party of no. One of the things I try to do so that I don't become a part of. No. Is I say I'm a part of maybe.

Right.

And so the way I do it is to say, here are the risks. However, here are the things we can do in view of the risk. Now, now we have a menu in front of us to pick rather than, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Right.

And so, and, and that also allows me to work with the other teams, for example, at the executive level, at the different functional groups, or even down to the most junior of folks.

Right.

That now we know the different risks. How do we then sit together and craft a strategy that people can actually move forward as one? That has been the exciting part.

Yeah. I think risk mitigation is such a fascinating thing, and it's, it's kind of fun, right? Because if you're looking ahead and it's a risk down the line, it gives you more room to play. And you also do put parameters in place.

I am the one, though, who is running ahead full speed. And Allison's like, have you considered xyz? It's really helpful to have somebody on the team who is maybe a little more. I'm the classic entrepreneur who's like, we should do all the things. And Allison kind of reinstate in which is perfect.

Right.

And you talk about empowering and the energizing part. One of the part I, what makes, what drives a lot of the exercise I said, despite what I said, that, that being the part of it may be, is I surround people, like, surround myself with people who are very different than I am. And that's intentional. I, I, I very often hire people who are very different than I am just so that I can get a new perspective.

Right.

And so while I am doing what I'm doing, my approach is this. I want to make sure there are other people check in to make sure I am not putting myself in a bubble and lose sight of what I don't know.

Right.

And so that, that has been empowering, but it's, it's, it's sometimes uncomfortable because people are different than you are. I intentionally put myself in an uncomfortable situation. But the idea is so that I can grow, the team can grow together as well.

And you do a decent amount of work within the DEI realm as well and in your company. So I think that getting comfortable with that diversity that really Once you are comfortable, that makes the whole company better. And I wonder what your perspective is on helping people to push through that and sort of setting the stage for creating that diversity that, those different perspectives within the company and helping people to overcome maybe their discomfort. Initial discomfort, yeah.

So I would say of the D, E and I, I actually focus a lot on the I. It's not to say the other two are not important, but of the three, I like to focus a lot of my efforts on the I. The inclusion part.

Right.

And as a, as a growth analogy, the diversity will increase numbers. You will change representation. The equity might actually bring people in, but it's the inclusion piece that makes people stay.

Yeah.

Right.

And so how do I do it so that people feel very included? And included to me doesn't mean, okay, if I have a party, I invite you. It's that I want you to feel like you're part of the dance.

Right.

You don't get a ticket and that's it. You are part of the party to dance with me. And so to me, that is my, I spent all of my efforts on that piece of the, the, the DNI, or I like to call it I.D. really, I reverse the order. But that also means that people come from all kinds of backgrounds.

Right.

And people have different levels of comfort. They, they view the worlds differently. So very often we need to calibrate not to lose ourselves. I would like to be true. I think it's important that we are true to ourselves. But how do we do that so other people can also be true to themselves? I think that that has been a lot of work that needs to be done.

Right.

And how do you do it so that people feel they're listened to, they're seen at the same time, More importantly, they are empower to contribute because being seen is one thing. By being, feeling like they can be part of that community to be included and do something together as team, that is really something we will hope to achieve.

What have you seen work in companies, you know, when they're really trying to focus on the inclusion piece? Are there actionable things that you've implemented or you've seen companies implement that you think if other organizations were to know and do the same, it would actually foster more inclusion?

So I will speak from my own experience, right. That's my way of saying this is not a guidebook because I think it depends on the demographic of the company, it depends on the industry of the company. But what I found to be helpful is that the team, the senior leadership team should Strive for transparency, accountability and more importantly, vulnerability.

Right.

And so it's important, I think for the employees to see that the efforts to create a more inclusive environment doesn't just come from one person or some lip service that you develop as a brochure or some training you do once a year. It's that the issue all come all the way from the top to all the way to the bottom. Um, and, and I mean they shouldn't even be about. It should be just an entire company should be an effort for everyone to be involved. And that, that also means if there is a challenge, right? So maybe there, there's something that hasn't been done well, the, the team should, should actually confront it.

Right.

I believe that one way to work together to build that trust, to build that intimacy is actually by solving hard problem together. Not to avoid them together, but to actually confront them and then deal with it heads on. And that's how I feel in my, in my experience, people starting to trust each other and once you have that trust, people feel safer to potentially speak up.

Right.

And to, to, to potentially make mistakes. And that's when you actually handle and, and, and work together as one. Because otherwise you have a bunch of sort of discriminate people working on different things, but they never are bound together by some sort of cohesion.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's really impactful. Can we switch gears and talk about legal matters? I'm so curious about where you see the future of IP going with all of the rapid changes that we're seeing. Is there anything that you are just fascinated by right now and that's face I.

Well, yeah, the answer is definitely yes. I'm fascinated by quite a few things. And again, just a few months ago, I never heard of ChatGPT. I don't know anybody is, but. And look at where we are now, right. And I think one of the thing I find fascinating and one of the reasons I am where I am in both a company perspective or the legal career I'm in, is actually to learn the technology at the very beginning stage.

Right.

And, and that's actually by, really by, by design where IP comes from. You learn it before it's publicly available, you learn it before it's, it's well known. I, I think there's going to be a lot of unknowns and it's, it's not going to be a linear growth, it's going to be exponential because you know, once we open the door to taking AI as one example, I would not be surprised that all of a sudden AI can be used for multiple, multiple things that had never even been contemplated before. Now that also means now putting my lawyer's head back, head back on the technology is maybe ahead of the time or before the legal paradigm catch up. So before the courts can act, before Congress can act, we are going to have a lot of challenges as a result of exciting development in science and technology. Now we need to confront, right? And how do we protect privacy? How do we protect, you know, even bias? You know, are AI, Should AI be true to its people? I mean, there are a lot of things that are not yet resolved legally, but it has to be dealt legally.

Hey there, just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which it turns out quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the Biotech Career Coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the Collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our Career Coach column that we write monthly in biospace. But we go a little more in depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes or search for the Biotech Career Coach on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast podcasts back to the show within your space. Particularly, we're talking about imaging, right? And so using your technology to be able to survey vast quantities of images and to find the pattern so that we can identify disease tissues faster and that sort of thing. Are there any thoughts to the ramifications of that patient confidentiality and where will those data sets come from and all of those things? Because, you know, we, we're still in the midst of for instance, the HeLa cell legal issues. And so I'm just curious, are we going to see that again in 50 years with people's images?

I, I think that problem has never gone away. The reason is sort of on the surface less heard of is because of the legal paradigm that was created, right? And then so that's my way of saying because the problem never went away, anytime there is a scientific advancement that would probably be brought back in front and center, right? And so how do you, how do we advance the science of our kind, humankind, so that we benefit everybody without compromising at the same time the people being part of the, the the experiments that, that is going to be challenging.

Right.

And that's another, another part of that also is there is right now no cohesive framework. Europe act this way, us act that way. Even in the United States, this country, different states act different ways. So until there is a more cohesive framework, and I would, I remain hopeful that sometime soon this will happen. But until then it's going to be quite a bit of. Back to the my, my, my earlier comment about how do you preemptively and proactively think about the possible consequences before this framework is created?

Karina's question was so intelligent and like so far reaching and consequential. Mine is very in the moment. Do you allow employees to use ChatGPT at DeepCell or is that like, no, don't be funneling our information into this program?

Well, that's going to be a work in progress. But for now, for now we are not prohibiting ChatGPT. And, and to be realistic, this is the engineer part of me.

Right.

It's impossible to prohibit. So rather than prohibiting, we've been focusing on how do we do it so that we, we don't compromise our company's ip, for example.

Yeah, yeah. It's a lot to think of right now. I agree. We have, we're seeing, you know, schools are prohibiting it. It's like, oh, okay, but how, how are you prohibiting this? You know, this is where it's the education component. What should and shouldn't we use it for? Where's the privacy concern?

And actually the joke, the joke actually is when someone asks to, to write a policy of how to not use ChatGPT. Someone actually asks ChatGPT.

Yes, but here's my whole thing with it. I mean, here's my soapbox. This is the prime opportunity to teach people how to think critically. Just because it spits it back out at you and the tool is there does not mean it's accurate. And it's like a calculator. If you understand what the answer roughly should be or how you got there, sometimes you mistype in the calculator and it gives you a crazy answer and you need to be able to parse that out. And so I think it's like, you know, when we talk about people using these tools, they just have to understand the critical components of what they're trying to get to and does it even make sense?

And also I, you raised a very good point. Right. I mean that's again, that's a different way. That's my way, my way of seeing the world Is that one reason ChatGPT becomes ChatGPT is our framework and our way of looking at data being generated. It may not be healthy.

Right.

So for example, one of the reasons that school kids can actually use ChatGPT to get away at our assignment is those are meeting rubrics.

Right.

If you were to look at this and say the assignment is to. To for you to, to actually provide your thinking process, Those are nothing ChatGPT can do. Just like going back to a larger company environment. If what we are looking for is truly people generating new ideas and it could be ip, it could be non ip, but it's the thought process of sharing what you are generating. Those are not replicable by ChatGPT or even created by ChatGPT.

Right.

And so I think we have been. It may be helpful for us as a whole, as a society to look at what is valuable information as well.

Yep, I completely agree. I think it's a great tool for brainstorming. I think people just have to think through it and take it to the next level. Take the first iteration and then say okay, well that's what that's put out. But now how do I improve it and where does that lead me? And chase the rabbits, you know, so.

Kind of staying on this legal route. We are moving so fast. How do you keep up with that with the ip? Because that's not a super fast moving vehicle.

Whole thing about strategy is you need to preemptively think of what could be. It might be in a practical way.

Right.

And the reason is nobody has unlimited budget. And so so that that goes to what is the strategy shouldn't be just cover everything, scorch the earth. And so so that also means I think it's important when we build an ip, the strategy should be a science driven strategy rather than a legal driven strategy. Because if the the strategy is based on science, then you capture a technical solution rather than a legal driven maneuvering which can come and go based on how the courts act.

Right.

How the law change. But if a solution is a solution that actually builds a lot of the foundational pieces of what the assets of the company can be and that also builds. Allow you to be more creative.

Right.

Rather than using legal as a reason of what not to do and or what to do, you not open yourself out to a potential, endless potentials because your, your science will allow you to capture that from different angles. How do you find the different elements of that development, the technology improvement and it also how do you do it to find a synergy of the, the different elements, those are things are that are independent and agnostic from the legal requirements as well. And with that then the company can actually have an IP asset that match better with its commercial interest and you can explain to the, the, the, the investors or the, the rest of the world, here's what I'm doing and why rather than some arbitrary legal tools that nobody can understand.

I think that when we think about people who are building a biotech in like the very, very early stages, you know, obviously they need to advance the science. There's ip, they have like just standard HR legal issues. But most people aren't bringing in like a full time chief legal officer. Right. But when do you think the right time to start incorporating that in is.

For a small firm?

What do you think the tipping point is to like you need someone on site, is it in a hybrid capacity? Or what are your thoughts around that?

It's important to know that different companies are different, right? And then there, there are companies that are not generating as much IP as some of the more life science and biotech companies. So I don't, I don't want to pretend that you know, they should be all the same. In fact they should not be the same to be strategic. But however, for a science or, or a ip, an IP generating company, life science, Bing one, biotech, life science and biotech and also high tech, I, I would say it's probably better to bring a attorney that is at least knowledgeable on the IP front as early as possible because very often what ends up happening is when they hire, when they have the resources, more often is when they have the, when they were told to do it by the board. It's still a little too late, right? Because a lot of the founders didn't appreciate how important IP really is. And think about this. I would encourage us to think about this. Before a company commercialize a product, very often the only tangible asset is actually ip.

Right.

And so if there is to be a merger and acquisition, if there's going to be whatever transaction before a product is actually launched or sold in the market, the only thing that you can show, or one of the very few things you can show really is the IP assets you have. And so rather than playing catch up, it is important, I would even say critical, particularly for a biotech company to focus on the assets as early as possible.

Could see your chief business officer hat in that when it.

Yep.

No, that's really, really point well taken. That is, that is critical. And I think not very many founders do think about that as like I have an asset, how do I protect this asset? There's a lot of people who can't afford, you know, at an early stage to bring in a full time head of legal or even you know, someone on the IP space. How useful is it? Is it possible to use a firm to leverage an external firm and if so when is that not a good idea?

I think at the minimum the company should focus on ip.

Right.

And be whether that is by an outside counsel, outside firm or internal. At the minimum some effort should be made. That's what I would recommend. The question of when that balance is tilt so that it becomes in house. It would depend on a lot of factors.

Right.

And so resources being one. What I though would say from sort of anecdotally what has been successful for a license or biotech company to handle their IP is actually to have that transition to in house as early as possible. And here's why. Outside counsels law firms, through no fault of their own, they can handle task oriented IP project.

Right.

However, they are not going to have the visibility or even the insight into where the company wants to go. So the information they have is as good as whatever they receive. On the other hand, if you have someone strategic in house, what they can bring to the table is asking well what about something else? What have we missed?

Right.

And that strategies is very often not able to capture by an outside counsel that is not on the ground day to day and figured out where the company may go or whether where the company can be benefited in the future.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that was sort of my assumption as well. But so it sounds like you know, if you have to choose keeping external counsel that's doing like contracts and you know, more of the regular legal aspect. But can that be handled by your IP attorney or is that not generally done? I know you wear both hats, but can your IP attorney usually generally also handle your regular run of the mill legal concerns?

Very often different. Yeah, but they're also very often the same, particularly in a life science company. And that's another reason I like to weave my legal strategy based on an IP centric approach.

Right.

And, and so again this is this applicable in a more life science, biotech or high tech settings where it's. It's very uncommon. Any transaction will go through without touching IP in some way. Even a hiring of a consultant.

Right.

Or, or collaboration. So very often an IP trained attorney should be able to at least contribute to their transactional piece of that legal exercise. Although they are they, they're designed to be different. Um, but, but that, that's what my way of saying that if there is to be a legal transactional exercise, IP should have some input into it. But whether the person can actually do both, that would depend on what the person's background expertise is.

Yeah, this is an area I have very little experience other than yeah, we get contracts signed but we have not had to deal directly with IP because that's just not our area other than if a candidate comes in, you know, attached to a patent that we have to worry about.

In that situation, unless it's an IP focus. Typically companies like to have non people who are focused on the more transactional sort of data there.

For anyone listening who is like wow, what a cool career. I mean I think it would be very difficult to replicate your career path. It is very interesting and it is just diverse. It is fascinating. But if someone was like wow, I really think that like being the chief legal officer or you know, any of these interim roles you had or chief business officer like I guess in general, what advice do you have to someone who's you know, maybe early stage career, maybe they're still figuring it out, but maybe some of what you do sounds really appealing.

I, I actually get asked that question quite a bit. I do a lot of mentoring and so that, that's actually one of the most common questions I get asked. So I would. My recommendation is this. I, I think it's important to find your North Star values because that is going to be what help you weather the storms if there is one that is going to be what help you fire that your interest and understand why you don't like.

Right.

So find your North Star values as early as possible. Appreciating the value can change but, but in the actions can change and you should be willing to embrace that change because that's how you evolve. But find that value as early as possible and at the same time be intellectually curious.

Right?

And to, to say look, there might be things I don't know but let's find out, right? Don't stop there. Those up there's something I don't know, okay, too bad, but find out. Make an effort to find out. Be vulnerable and say I'm going to show up, I'm going to give it a try and if it doesn't work then, then let's be resilient and come back again or do something else. Know what you like, be true to yourself and then give it a try and, and just be, be, be present.

I Think that's great. Life advice.

Yeah.

Honestly, career, life, everything. I love that. Thank you.

Yeah. So what is next for you on this wild career ride that you're on? Do you have anything that is undone and you think, you know, before I'm done, I have to do this?

I don't really have one, probably, because I keep trying new things regardless, and I know I'm gonna keep trying new things regardless, but career wise, I. I think I. First of all, I have had a remarkable career journey to be where I am, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. But being where I am right now, I've started to enjoy a lot more. Giving back to the community, mentoring, and making sure that whatever I'm doing can actually help the next generation of folks who want to participate in any of the. Part of the journey I've been on, the legal part, the BD part, the HR part, science part, that I'm. I'm part of that community to make that environment a better place, an easier place for them to. To thrive.

Right.

I see myself being. Participating a lot more on the community efforts. Right. On the board, in a board capacity, perhaps, or, or. Or advisory kind of. So that. So that it's. It's for. For me to be able to help people and give it back.

What is your favorite book? Fiction, nonfiction. Could have read it 20 years ago, could have read it yesterday. A book you think everyone should read.

You know what? I. One of my favorite favorite fiction book, it's actually a children's book. It actually called the Rabbit Listened. And in essence, it's about this little kid. He was very frustrated, right, because the toy fell down, and there are a series of animals came to sort of comfort him. The bear roared because he was angry. The chickens said, let's talk. And the snakes, you know, it's just a whole bunch of different things and said, let's do this, let's do this, let's do this. And he didn't feel better. And what happened was this little rabbit, the rabbit came, sat by the kid, the child, and they just listened without saying a thing. And, and, and so as a result of that, the child started to angrily scream and then to roar and then to do all that stuff. And, and, and then at the end, the child goes, now I'm ready to rebuild.

Right?

And so to me, that was central, that a lot of times we think we're helping people the way we know how to help, but that's counterproductive.

Right?

And. And so if anything, that's a reminder for myself that I would like to help. We should help people the way they want to be helped. If anything, that create a more inclusive environment because that that can avoid a lot of the issues we're seeing with microaggressions and all that because we don't have the perspective of the other person. I do read a lot of fiction book, but this is probably one of my favorite one. Yeah. And the nonfiction this book I really like is called Emotional Agility by Susan David. And to me it was almost a summary of a lot of works that I really enjoy.

Right.

Renee Brown's work, Alan Grant's work on King's God's work. And so this sort of summarizes the how to be vulnerable, how to show up, how to stay intellectually curious and agile and then give it a try.

Right.

And so that, that's one thing I, I enjoy reading right now, actually.

Amazing. I'll put that on my list too. Yeah. I love all of the authors you mentioned. And so anything that brings that together, love it.

There we go.

Where can our audience get in touch with you if they have questions or just want to connect? Is LinkedIn good?

LinkedIn is great.

Perfect. We'll link that in the show notes if anyone wants to go link in with you. I'm sure you'll get quite a few folks that are wanting to join your network and just follow your career. I'm fascinated. I can't wait to see what you do next. And I'm going to be following your career religiously because it is so fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on. This was a lot of fun.

My pleasure, absolute pleasure.

Yeah, it's been a real delight. Thank you.

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