From Bench Scientist to R&D Strategy and Operations

Well, you are in for a treat today. I had a fantastic conversation with Dimple Doshi. She is currently in R and D strategy and Ops at Regeneron, which is probably a role you are not familiar with because it's a little different career path than the usual kind of bench scientist roles. Now, she did start as a bench scientist and she was able to make the transition on her own time, using her own willpower and her own transferable skills to move toward what she really wants to do with which is at the intersection of science and business. A very cool story. Also got to speak with her about her journey because she is a first generation immigrant, she's obviously navigated the visa system which is very challenging and she has been in large companies and small companies. She went through the very well known Northeastern Co Op program. So I feel like she's somebody that a lot of people will really relate to and see a little bit of their story in her. So I hope it's inspiring. I hope you get a lot out of it. And without further ado, let's get to the conversation. I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees. So I know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach podcast to give you simple, actionable, step by step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job then move up the career ladder. If you are exploring career paths, looking to learn about biotech, or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're in the right place. When we had our pre screening chat, I just came away thinking like, wow, what a cool career. We have so much to teach our audience. So I'd love to start out just with you telling us a little bit about why you even decided on biotech. What brought you to this stage? Give me the overview.

Growing up my family, my parents had given emphasis on a lot of giving back to the society, the social impact, serving the mankind. So it became ingrained, let's just say in my DNA and it became my passion, right? And what better way of giving back to the society than being involved in finding innovative ways to curing debilitating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. So that's how I landed in biotechnology that set the stage. But I also think that every choice that you make while you are deciding on the Job profile or even the position or even the company that you are going to go in affects every single career trajectory of yours. So the first half of my career I wanted to be a technical expert in certain cutting edge technologies like high throughput screening, IPSCs and primary cultures and so on. And the second half of my career I took this technical expertise and applied to solving rather biologically complex diseases, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, neurodegenerative diseases.

So tell me a little bit about some of those career decisions that you made that you, looking back, you're like, oh, that was a key thing that influenced my career. Tell me about those. And also I know you have an interesting career trajectory too and you made a bit of a pivot, which I think people will be excited to learn about.

If I look back, I think the decision of not pursuing a PhD was that one particular decision that impacted my career growth. Just like any decision, this decision even had pros and cons. So when I was pursuing my master's at Northeastern, just like every student, I was at that fence whether should I continue studies, continue doing my Ph.D. or I should get into the workforce. I was in a professional science master's program which last semester we get this option of a full time co op. So along with being a full time student, I was a co op at EMD Serrano Research Center. And that's where I got this first flavor of corporate world, pharma world, right where I saw that drug discovery was done with the end in mind to reaching to patients. Drug discovery and drug development literally went hand in hand. And just this whole approach of drug discovery I resonated very well with. So I decided to get into the workforce right away after graduating. Of course the decision had pros and cons. The biggest downside what I felt about this decision was that if I wanted to stay in hardcore drug discovery side of this drug discovery and development, it was just rather hard to climb the career ladder. This was the very problem that I was facing, made me come out of my comfort zone and start looking for other functions that impact the drug development. As we know, it takes a village to bring a drug to market. And this is where I started exploring functions like clinical of project management strategy, right? And this is where I started doing mind mapping of yes, technical skills are important, but what is more important is soft skills, your personality. So it always needs to be a perfect marriage of technical skills, soft skills and your personality. And that helps you ace in your career and at the same time the satisfaction of doing your job well, and that's where I decided to say, okay, something which is in me is looking at a bigger picture. The 30,000ft view, right. And that is how I decided to pivot my career into strategy and ops. But all the decade worth of experience that I had in drug discovery definitely helped me pivot and ace in what I do right now.

Okay. You hold a really interesting role right now. I don't think a lot of people maybe even know this is a career path. So I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now. What are the great things you're doing, what are the growth areas and opportunities there?

So currently I am an R and D strategy and OP in office of the CSO at Region Ron Pharmaceuticals. And here my role is around integrated portfolio analysis. So what does that mean? So basically looking at all the functional areas, all the disease area that the company is working in, working at the cusp of research and development and giving a flavor to development of what's coming down the pike from research. Right. That is the first. The second aspect of my role is doing assumptions planning, right. Which is quarterly assumptions, portfolio related assumptions, number of DC candidates that we are going to have, number of inds that we are going to have this year and also doing long term planning and composite modeling. Basically these are different models that we do for a better preparedness for what's coming and also ensuring a continued growth of the company. Continuously looking at the competitive landscape and seeing where we fit and how we can change our trajectory to be still in that competitive market in the pharma world. So that's my current role. As you would see, it's a very big picture, 30,000ft view, right. So I'll give you a little bit flavor of how every experience that I gathered on the way helped me. So the first aspect was, like I said, the first of my career was all technical expertise, right? High throughput screening, essay development. Right. These are the techniques which very well helped me in applied biology side of it. And I was fortunate enough to be working in always late stage drug discovery programs. So for instance, in one of my past rules humanity I was working for basically validating their EAZE platform and looking into the secondary screening and helping find the lead molecule which was transitioned into clinic for Parkinson's. And I did the same while working at Novartis in the space of Alzheimer's and psp. I think the biggest advantage of working in this late stage drug discovery projects is that every single data that you generate has a Very big impact. The impact is magnified. Any data set that you are generating is either guiding the clinical strategy of the molecule or it is actually deciding the fate of the molecule. Right. All this experience helps me put in perspective what matters down the line in development and I could bring that knowledge to the drug discovery. All this experience I could utilize in my current role wherein I could see anything which is coming from the drug discovery pace, how it is going to translate in drug development and I'm able to put everything in perspective. So I think it's not the degrees what matters, it's the experience. What do you make out of the experience? And at the same time, how do you piece everything together?

Yeah, I love that you mentioned that because we talk a lot about how people who do want to make a shift can use transferable skills. The questions we get are often really, I've only worked at the bench and they want somebody who has already experience in X, Y, Z. How did you market yourself? How did you make that transition? And, and kind of, you seem very self actualized. You definitely understand your value. Did you always know that, you know, what brought you to this level of confidence?

Oh, no. I think in all this mentors have played a very important role because I think we discount that. But having strong mentors helped me value my own strength. Right. I think I particularly am of a person who likes to focus on my weaknesses and how I can make better of it. But I've had career mentors who have given me a different perspective to it. They are like, well, weaknesses could be at the hindsight, but why don't you focus on the strength, right. On the transferable skills. Right. Like you said, anything that you're learning is not just limited to it, but what matters is how you can apply down the line. So when I'll give an example on how I cracked this interview. Right. So first of all, it was not just one application, it was a lot of applications. Lot of efforts that you need to put in. Carefully tailored application is very important just to get shortlisted. Also a side note, this was a role, this was an interview that I secured completely through networking. The idea here is to see what all are the requirements in the job description. Right. And mapping on what your skills are literally being on a whiteboard, mapping on how everything translates. Right. And how you could show that to your interviewers. I think that's the key and at the same time I just feel that broadening your understanding, broadening your value for yourself helps out in that. Right. And I think the other aspect to this is how many coffees are you grabbing with people? Because every single conversation I've had with people, they have broadened my thought process about what I can bring to the table. Right? Having coffee chats and having lunches with people belonging to different functions or even people who are expert in their own field, not knowing them, but reaching out to them and investing in that relation helps me continuously evaluate where I am and what I need in my current role and at the same time help out in making my profile stronger.

Let's talk about networking because that is so key. We are seeing that honestly more than half of the jobs, it's really hard to track even the number because of how networking works, right? We're seeing that more than half of jobs today are being landed through networking through those connections. How did you work that in this case?

As a first generation immigrant? I think networking has helped me not only in my professional life, but my personal life as well. Imagine you decide to move to a different country to start your professional life. You are basically uprooting your life in your own homeland and trying to establish not only your professional life but your personal life as well in a completely unknown country. Right? And that's where I leverage the power of networking. Starting from what decision to make, like for what school to go for masters, right. To what co op should we go. Right. And I think all this happens via meeting a lot of people. I have discussed five strategies of networking, both online and offline. We are in pandemic or post pandemic world. I'm not sure where we are, but let's just say pandemic world, right? So online networking is equally important, Right. So I have discussed this in one of my interview with an authority magazine. We can leave the link in the show notes, but I would say that mentoring is one of the investment in your professional life and networking is the second investment in your professional growth. And also when we are at networking, I would surely like to emphasize for the listeners the power of personal brand. It's absolutely important how to brand yourself. Now what is personal brand? Basically who you are, right? And it's exactly your technical skills, your soft skills, what you could bring to the table and how could there be a win win situation when you're meeting someone, right? And of course authenticity around it, it's very important. That's the key. And I think that a message to the listeners, especially the early and the mid career professionals, invest in your two minute elevator pitch. It's absolutely important, have mirror practices because I have done thousands of them in my early part of my networking and leverage the power of social platforms like LinkedIn. I have had a pleasure of meeting absolutely amazing people globally who have been expert in their own fields and who have helped me go in my career and at the same time helped me evolve as a person.

Hey, I just want to cut in to say that if you are enjoying this podcast, you may enjoy the Building Biotechs podcast from our sister company, Recruitomics Consulting, which is a talent acquisition strategy firm that specializes in helping small biotechs hire exceptional talent. In that podcast, we interview amazing people who are building biotechs. They are industry leaders in all different verticals and it will allow you to explore career paths in biotech and to get to know companies that maybe you've never heard about. So if you are a biotech fan, you are exploring careers in biotech, I highly recommend the Building Biotechs podcast. We'll link that in the show notes or you can search for it on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. All right, back to our show. You touched on personal branding. We actually talk about that a lot in our LinkedIn course because it's something that scientists particularly were a little bit uncomfortable with, right? A bunch of introverts over here. But as you say, it is really not anything scary. It is expressing who you are, the value you bring, what you care about, that where you want to take a stand. Those sorts of things are your personal brand. And I just want to say that anybody listening to this, every single one of my show notes, invites you to link in with me. If you have not done so yet, you're missing an opportunity. And we will also invite you to link in with Dimple because why not, right? Grow that network. And also you reached out to me based on a post that I put out and that's another example. I've been talking with you. I just am continually impressed because you take the bull by the horns and all you did was say, hey, I'd be willing to share my story. And here we are. And that's going to grow your network, that's going to grow your impact. That's the power of that personal brand. It's not scary exactly.

And I think it's the. It's. You need to put yourself out there. There are millions of us, Kareena. How will you separate out yourself from others? The only way is to put your put yourself out there. Every single conversation might not fly, but some might. You need that one conversation that needs to fly and align you with maybe thousands.

Others can we talk a little bit about your journey. You said that you're a first generation immigrant. There are a lot of folks in our community and listening to this podcast who also are in the process of navigating the visa situation and all of that. What was your journey? What were the challenges and opportunities there?

Let's just say I was not born with a silver spoon. I had to work twice as hard, if not more, to get anything. And I think if I go back, it's been 15 years that I have been in US and if I go back to that very first half of navigating through it, I was the first in my family to have science as a major, right? And even in my undergrad school, I was first one who wanted to get out immediately after undergrad is done for masters. So as you would see that I did not have a lot of mentors. It was difficult to navigate. Back in India, we have lot of consulting services which helps you navigate your applications and visas and that once I got my visa and I thought, like, the battle is won. You know what? It was just the beginning when I came here, I think the very first thing that I noticed was this huge cultural difference. And I'm like, the approach of life is so different, honestly. And I have been a person who just focus on your life, just focus on your professional life and get out there and achieve. And I have been so uptight. And here I see people have been so relaxed, yet they have been achieving miles in their career, right? And I think that was one of the constant shock that I got. Also, education system was so different. I came here for my master's and Kareena, you cannot believe that was the first time I got exposed to the concept of open book exams. And oh my God, they were tough. And I am like, what is this? So it's just that navigating not only the culture, but even education system, the very thing that I was here for was of course very different, right? And I came, I graduated in 2011. As you would remember, we were just getting out of the recession, so securing that first job, getting visas, that was like, let's just say a challenge itself because a lot of companies were not, not ready to sponsor your visas. I think the key to me was, apart from being lucky, the key to me was having the conversation with employers in the beginning and not wait for that your visa clock to end on the second step of the sponsoring, right? A lot of people like to leverage their opt period and do not go for H1 sponsorship directly. But my urge is to not wait for that. If you get H1B, it's a lottery system, please go for it directly and start your green card process right away. So I think these were the keys along these lines, of course a lot of mentors have helped me, a lot of postdoc students who have helped me navigate to navigate to selecting the co op roles that I was getting to. Selecting every single move in companies were very important because we immigrants live two lives. One is your passionate professional growth life. But hey, everything is associated to visa. So keeping that in mind, we have to make career choices. So it gets tricky.

Yes, well, there's a lot of educating yourself in the process too. To your point, there are consultants and mentors and everything, but you have to know the process inside and out. And one conversation that I have often I work with really tiny companies and we I can easily get them set up to be able to take a student on an opt that's easy. But in this climate it's even worse. Now 2011 was hard. Now the lottery system is more congested. And so I'm going to echo and I'm going to reinforce what you just said. Make sure any potential employer is willing to help you with the lottery on the first round. You need all three chances. You really do.

Meanwhile, immigrants, we are like major in science but we are minor in law. It's like you really have to stay on top of it because hey, you got to stand up for yourself and you need to know inside out of the immigration system to navigate through it.

So you touched on a little bit earlier the difference in culture here and that people seem to maybe take it a little bit slower. How has that impacted you? What do you do with work life balance? I know you have a family, how does that work?

I just feel in the current world stress is at a whole different level. Even if you open up the social media, I think what's happening out there increases your level of stress. And I just feel that work life balance plays very important role just to have anxiety under control. And having been in a workforce for over a decade, one thing what I have come to a realization is that it is not one size fits all concept. You really need to sit and work on it, tailor what works for your own life and take it from there. I'll just give an example on how I navigate this right. So I have a four year old, she's a tornado and I like to really wake up 30 to 45 minutes before she does just so I can have, let's just say control of the day and wake up with the right mindset. But I think what I have noticed is if I have my work life under control and if I know what I'm doing there, my personal life sets in place for me. I like to start my day off right by checking emails. Yes. But at the same time I like to divide my day in certain halves. So certain halves are like meeting conversations, but certain half are like focus time. So I can really work as well. Along with that, I also like to squeeze in some 15, 20 minutes of walk or like coffee with someone new because that just is very refreshing to me. And we have a barista at Rijsundron and I walk there and I just grab a coffee with someone I am meeting for the first time. You're leveraging networking, but at the same time you're refreshed. Also I spend 15 minutes towards the end of the day by in just planning for next day. Because what I have seen is I have my anxiety under control if I plan a day ahead instead of on the day off. So that really helps me. After I come home, I like to completely stay away from work laptop and work phone unless something is pressing and needs attention. And towards the end of the day I like to spend 15 minutes in reflection on how the day went, what good happened, what would I have done better? And I just feel that 15 minutes of self reflection on a daily basis has evolved me as a person. It has made me more emotionally intelligent, it has made me more empathetic and also forgiving to myself because that's very important. So let's just say it's a work in progress as always.

Yeah, I do the same thing. I do gratitude journaling and that really does put the day in perspective. I love that. Okay, what do you hope to be doing in the next 10 years? How does your career evolve from here?

You know, one thing Pandemic has taught us is life is so unpredictable. So it's better to make peace with the uncertainty like 10 years down the line. Professionally, I feel I am in a role which is absolutely resonating with my personality and my passion and my technical skills. So I seek myself continuously growing in it and hopefully reach to a position wherein I am the decision makers in very big at a very impactful roles. But also Kareena, what is more important to me is giving back to the society. Right. As I mentioned earlier in our conversation. So in this few things are very close to me. One being empowering women, especially women of color, mentoring first generation immigrants at the same time ensuring that helping people leverage their strengths. So 10 years down the line at least I see myself having contributed in this particular things which are very close to my heart and yeah, continue growing as a person and having gratitude day in and day out for my life.

So if people want to learn more about you, we're going to send them to LinkedIn. They should definitely link in with you and me. Everybody link in and we'll be able to find you in the Slack community as well. And then we're going to link to some great resources in the Show Notes. So make sure you visit the Show Notes. That'll be a great place to learn more about what she's done and where she mentors and all the good things. Thanks so much for listening to the Biotech Career Coach Podcast by the Collaboratory Career Hub. To join our free Slack group and to get access to other great free resources and materials, head over to CollaboratoryCareerHub.com and be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn Pro Tip when you connect with me on LinkedIn, you get instant access to my entire network of biotech folks, which is patient, powerful for your career. If you found this podcast valuable, please subscribe or follow us on YouTube so that you never miss an episode. And if you leave us an honest review, screenshot that review and send it to helloollaboratorycareerhub.com we'll give you totally free access to our popular LinkedIn course so that you can learn all of the secrets behind creating a magnetic LinkedIn profile that drives your career forward. Have an amazing week and we'll see you back here next Friday.