Shaping the Future of Biotech: Trends and Challenges with Paul Miller of Lighthouse Biopharma Consulting

All right, so that was an awesome conversation with Paul. Paul Miller is the founder and president of Lighthouse Biopharma Consulting, and he's the chief scientific officer at Artisan Bioscience, and he gives amazing advice, specifically about mentoring.

Yeah, absolutely. I learned so much about mentorship from early stages, and I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. He comes from a really strong background in science. He's been a leader at so many companies, big names that you'll recognize like Pfizer and Astra, Zeneca and Synlogic, if you've been listening to the podcast. And he has a strong microbiology background and 30 years in the industry. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion. We certainly did. Welcome to building biotechs by Recredomics Consulting. We've helped over 90 biotech, life sciences and venture capital firms strategize and hire thousands of employees to scale companies that impact human health. We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground up. I'm Karina Klingman, founder and principal at recredomics Consulting. Enjoy the show.

Paul, welcome to the show. We are so happy to have you today. We're going to start off the same way we start off every single show by asking, what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now? And how did you get there?

Oh, that's great. Well, thank you. First of all, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really excited to be here today. Yeah. The earliest sort of profession I can remember aspiring to was I wanted to be an astronaut. I was a kid in an age when the Apollo missions were happening and vaguely remember the moon landing and things like that. My parents got me a book about US space program and all that, so I thought that would be really cool. But as I went through school, I became more interested in science more broadly, and so I became a drug discovery researcher, a biopharmaceutical scientist. That's where I am right now, and I really, really enjoyed it as a career path.

Well, you have a lot in common with Alison. That was her aspiration, really.

Okay, I did.

I really wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I was one of those kids who would sit in the refrigerator box and totally pretend that it was my space shuttle. And then I got older and I realized I am really claustrophobic and so was not going to work for me.

Well, obviously I had no idea about the training at the time and the selection process and what you had to go through. To become an astronaut.

But yeah, I'm going to be honest, I think there were a lot of reasons for in the end it wasn't going to pan out for me. Not being great at math and physics was probably also going to impact that dream at some point. But I do love the idea of little kids who want to be astronauts. Is so fun. It's so exciting, right? It's space. It's so cool.

So, Paul, I've known you for years and you have a really rich career history. Can you just give us a quick walkthrough of kind of the high points of that?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So when I went to college, I really had the goal of becoming a doctor, a physician. But during, you know, the course of taking a lot of my biology classes and things like that, particularly biochemistry, I became fascinated by the discovery process. How did we learn about diseases? What were some of the great observations? How did people figure these problems out? And decided I wanted to go in that direction. And that led me into sort of biological research, my PhD program, which was in microbial genetics as well as my postdoc. And from that point I decided to go into biopharmaceutical research. I thought that would be really interesting to apply that kind of discovery knowledge to the invention of new medicines and supporting those kind of programs. I've had a really great set of experiences starting out at Warner Lambert Co. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, then Pfizer, AstraZeneca and then finally a couple of biotech companies, Synlogic up in Cambridge and then Artisan in New Haven, Syntax. So a varied journey, but each of them has been a great learning experience working with great people.

Yeah, that's awesome. We met at Synlogic and so I've seen you at a few companies now. It's been a great, great to follow.

Your career and this year you founded Lighthouse BioPharma Consulting. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing there and how, how it's going? It's what we're. What are we in? Month nine of the year. How are the first nine months?

Good. It's been an interesting journey. This has probably been one of the bigger jump and I can share a little bit about myself and why that has been my experience. But stepping back a bit, the last couple of years has been really challenging in biotech and biotech fundraising and things like that. And at Artisan we found ourselves in a similar situation. We have very promising set of programs and a pre clinical development candidate. We were preparing to move into the clinic, but the Fundraising has been really challenging. So earlier this year we decided with our investors that we'd pare back our operation, just focus our resources on our lead program. And in agreement with our investors and our leadership, I pared back my role there. And that gave me an opportunity to continue to support Artisan and moving our most advanced program forward. But also setting up my consulting business so that I could work with other companies and other clients and help them with their, their drug discovery projects. I would say as an introvert, it's been really interesting because as a, you know, having a company of one and Karina, I'm sure you started out this way also. You have to sell yourself. Something I'm not that experienced in and didn't have to quite do so much of when I was working in, you know, full fledged organizations. But it's been great because through networking I've gotten to interact with a lot of people in various stages of the drug discovery process, whether it's academics who are toying with an idea of trying to set up a company or already established companies who want to take their, their programs and move them a bit further.

So yeah, I can relate to that for sure. I can tell you my introvert secret, if you want to hear it, is LinkedIn. So hiding behind LinkedIn and like really putting time and effort into getting that to be a great business development tool has been my very best investment. So I'm happy to work with you at some point and I can give you some little tips and tricks there because that will really help you.

I will appreciate it. And I have become sort of increasingly aware of the value of LinkedIn as a networking tool and staying engaged in it and active in it, so. But I would love your wisdom there.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually trying to round up a group of folks that, you know, we're executives that I've worked with that have either been affected by layoffs or riffs recently. It would be nice to just do a little networking lunch and learn because I think all of those folks are going to end up in other startups and that might be really fun to just everyone get their LinkedIn whipped into shape, right?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Well, it's one of those things too. They change the LinkedIn platform all the time and the styles change and what's trending changes. So I feel like it's like a constant trying to keep up with, with the LinkedIn algorithm. It's crazy, but worth it.

Yeah, definitely worth that. We talk a lot about communication within organizations and you mentioned that Artisan has undergone some funding challenges. How have you been communicating that with the employees there and with your investors? There's a lot of communication that has to happen, right?

No, that's a great question. I think it's the big challenge, and it's an important aspect of this overarching leadership and mentorship theme here is being really thoughtful and deliberate about communication. There are overarching messages that everybody needs to hear, and you have to choose the right tools for that. If everybody is not in the same place, sometimes you do have to send things by email. It's best to be face to face with groups to make sure everybody's hearing the same thing. But I think as important, if not more important, is considering the impact on individual people. It's not going to affect everybody the same if you have a difficult message to share. An artisan isn't the only company in which I've had to develop those skills and practice them. When I was at Pfizer, I was there for 13 years, and there were several rounds of restructuring that happened there. And you do need to consider how people are going to take it. But you also can't always assume, you know, oh, this person isn't going to be that affected by that. So you have to be very mindful that everybody is different. But for example, if a company was making a decision that a specific program wasn't going to move forward and that was going to affect the activity of people and might affect the roles of people, those people should probably find out first. It would be just sort of natural human nature for them to be, even if they understood the communication, to be frustrated by hearing it at the same time as everybody else, even though they're the ones who put all of the blood, sweat and tears into the program. So I think being very thoughtful and mindful about communication, keeping individuals in mind when communicating is really, really important.

Yeah, I really like that. I agree with that a lot, too. And I like the idea that you could get everyone into a room and have all these conversations face to face. So many of these companies now, including our own, we're all remote. And that can be so challenging as well. It's really difficult to share hard news or intricate news sometimes if you're trying to balance out, you know, you're on Zoom and is someone having a tech problem? Is everyone's camera on? So I do think there's huge value to those things being done in person.

When they can be, no matter really almost how much effort and energy needs to go into it. If you can be There person, you want to be able to try to maintain some level of trust, even if the person is really affected by it, and then the other people who may be less affected are watching how the affected people are treated. That's important in retaining some loyalty and relationship with the organization that is going to go forward from that communication point. So it isn't about making everybody like you. It's really far from that. But it's really, you invest in organizations that you trust and you have to build that trust up and you have to work hard to retain it. And I think communication, especially in difficult times, is an important test of whether somebody's working on that trust relationship.

Can you tell us a little bit? We're leading in there, so I'm just going to jump right into the question. Can you tell us a little bit like your leadership style and sort of how you've developed and changed your leadership style throughout the years and all these different companies you've been in? Because that's really what we're driving at here is how to be a good leader, right?

Well, I do think that the communication piece is really important. I think that you do have to work with some humility. People are looking to you to make decisions and provide guidance to the organization and direction. But at the same time, I don't think that you can pretend to know all of the answers. And you have to be open and honest about where you're confident and certain and where you're exercising your best judgment despite the uncertainty surrounding the situation. I think another thing is you just, you need to be accessible as a leader. I think it's very, very important to be open and honest with communication, to get to know the people in your organization, to be accessible to people. As busy as you may be in senior leadership positions, if you look like you can't be bothered all the time, that people who have an important issue feel like they're putting you out, if they say, hey, do you have a minute? You need to be much, much more open and willing to be interrupted, to be accessible, to be available and to let people know that your professional relationship with them is really important. It isn't about just giving people assignments and expecting them to deliver and come back for the next assignment. I think you really need to be both a leader and a collaborator and a partner with the people in your organization. You're all adults. I think you need to challenge each other to sort of behave and develop relationships in that way. Those are a few of the keys. And again, I think that by doing those Things you can build trust with people. And when people trust you, you get the best out of them because they have confidence that you will be supportive of them and be helpful with them and help develop them. And as you're doing that, they will be better contributors to the organization.

Absolutely. And that kind of leads into our mentorship questions for you. We've seen you really take people under your wing and mentor them well over the years. Can you tell us about your own mentors, though, sort of set that precedent in your life?

Yeah, I don't think Perina. When I was sort of first starting out in my career, I had very good appreciation for the importance of that, but reflected on it later on when I started to interact with other people and realized, oh, those early mentors I had were great. Not everybody's like that. My PhD advisor, Harry Tabor, my postdoc advisor, Ellen Hinnebusch, were really smart scientists, but really great people who spent a lot of time with me teaching, being available, being accessible. And although they're both in academic settings where, you know, they're really, really busy all the time, they demonstrated through their actions a good work life balance, an understanding for how hard science is, and that things don't always go the way you want. And so I built off of that. And then my first two bosses, mentors in industry, Steve Gracek at Warner Lambert, Steve Gilman at Pfizer. Steve Gracek helped me put a lot of effort into helping me with that transition from an academic trading setting to working in industry. Then Steve Gilman when I went over to Pfizer, from working and leading science in a lab environment to leading a department, being a manager and that kind of a leader, and the transition you need to make in roles there. So I got off to a good start with some really great advisors who were great role models for me.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Did you find that those mentors held you to a pretty high standard and sort of, you know, helped you to develop upward?

Yes, absolutely. You know, both scientifically and professionally and from a leadership perspective. I think the leadership mentors that I've had, you know, weren't just simply coaching me and guiding me along there, but were describing what the expectations were for successful leadership and what the fullness of that role was, and then giving me guidance on how to develop the skills I needed to be able to do that. And I think what was also sort of implicit in that, which I've tried to take to heart, is, okay, now that you're moving up into leadership, you're going to have to do this for your people now so you can learn it, can you teach it? And I think that's the other part of the leadership role is being able to not just master this part of the job, but teach the next group of emerging leaders their roles and how to do it as well.

Yeah, that's a great. That makes me really have to retake all that by stumbling over words, but so I think that's really interesting because how do you actually teach someone to be a great mentor is one of my questions. I think that it's. We all talk about it and everyone wants to be a good mentor, I think. But how do you actually know if you're doing a good job?

I mean, it's hard. I think part of it is whether the people you're mentoring are succeeding and I think also whether or not you've identified where they need to be mentored and how you can help them. So, for example, and this happens more in biotech companies and smaller companies. In larger companies, there may be formal mentoring programs where emerging junior leaders partnered with somebody else in the organization who can help them develop their leadership skills, but who may not be their boss. Sometimes there's a belief that that separation of roles is helpful, but in a small company, you don't have that luxury. You know, the boss is the mentor. There aren't that many mentors to go around. So, you know, one of the things I ask myself is, okay, what is the skill set that this person needs to develop? If it's sort of leadership or growing into a team role, I can help them with that. If it's something more technical, I may not be able to. But as a mentor, my goal is to find them somebody who they can mentor and connect them with. So, for example, we had somebody at Artisan who was a really strong laboratory scientist, had worked in that role for several years, but was very interested in moving into business development. So one of the things I did was to partner her with one of our board members who was very strong on the business side and was willing to spend some time speaking with her about how he got his, you know, how his career developed, how he got into his role, and whether he knew of any programs that she might be able to enroll in where she would get a little hands on experience learning about business development and things like that. So if it's working, you kind of get a sense it's that kind of feedback loop that, yeah, you're on the right track, they're becoming more independent in that area.

Yeah, I think That's a good point though. The mentoring doesn't necessarily have to come from you. If you can make the connections, the networking is really half the battle sometimes is just being able to make that connection for someone else to learn from?

Absolutely. I think that that's really important that you shouldn't feel sort of unsuccessful or inadequate as a mentor because you yourself don't have all of the experience is needed to help this person with where they want to go with their career or what they, what parts of their professional development they need, you know, help with.

I want to touch a little bit Paul, on your new company if you want to it would be, I think you'll get some of these clips and you know, shorts and things that you can start to share out on your LinkedIn, for example. So do you, you know, we don't have a lot of questions in here teed up about that but. But do you have anything you want me to tee up for you, a question I can ask you that will let you get some good stuff out there about your new venture?

Well, you know what was interesting, Karina, in setting up Lighthouse and some of the clients that I've connected with was that it created for me a realization that I really like mentoring, in fact and what I really like is working with early stage startup companies where the focus isn't necessarily on having some sort of deep seated technical expertise. So working with an artificial intelligence company and making them even better at artificial intelligence capabilities, that's not piece that I'm looking for. It is more of a new company. An early stage company has a great new technology in the biopharmaceutical therapeutic area, but they need to learn well, how do I transition this into a drug discovery thing? How do I take this novel technology or observation and convert it into something that can actually generate a product that could be useful for patients. So that piece and helping the team mold itself into sort of a drug discovery organization, recognize what additional skill sets it might need and I'll tell them go to Recruitomics to find your best talent. Those are the parts I really like doing because it's very personal. Many of these teams are really just eager to learn about what they don't know and how they can gain that knowledge. And I think it's a win win there. And from them I really learn a lot about the new science and exciting technologies that develop. Continuous learning is really a huge motivation for me.

Yeah, well we appreciate the, the recommendation and similarly when we work with small companies we. It's interesting to see you Know, some founders come into ecosystems where they have a lot of expertise surrounding them. You know, I'm thinking of some of the bigger VCs with more of the incubator style. And so these founders come with these great scientific ideas and they're cutting edge, they're coming right out of school with all of these, you know, all this energy and enthusiasm and then they have a great team of experts around them to help grow a business out of that. Some founders are not that lucky. Some founders don't have that support network. And so when we go into a small company, you know, often we try to connect them with that mentorship that they do need in those different business areas to take their awesome scientific idea and make it a drug, a therapy, a platform, whatever it is. So that's really speaking our language, right?

Great. And so an example of one mechanism like that, that, that I've become really interested in, involved in is this program Nucleate. I don't know if you're familiar with it, it started up in the Boston, Cambridge area in San Francisco, but there is now a chapter in New Haven. I was contacted to see whether or not I would be interested in serving as a mentor in the New Haven Nucleate program. And over the past couple of years I've worked with a couple of companies there, startup companies, companies in formation and help them get started and give them a bit of a boost there. And I've really enjoyed that. And part of the reason for moving ahead with Lighthouse is to identify more of those opportunities to work with these early stage companies and help them.

Yeah. How are you finding your clients? Are you. I mean, We've talked about LinkedIn, we've talked about various forms of networking. Are these sort of people you're connected with organically or is it coming from Nucleate? How are you connecting with these people?

Well, I mean, Nucleate is one area, but a lot of it is organic. And through my network having, you know, worked in different companies in different areas, I did socialize on LinkedIn when I launched the company and got some leads from there. But other contacts I have, you know, through my career have reached out to me and said, hey, there's this group over here that I've been talking to and they could use some help and I think you'd be helpful for them. So it's sort of grown organically in that kind of way and it's gotten me reasonably busy.

We should get you connected with CIC. We're working with them. Are you familiar with CIC?

No.

It's like a WeWork but for tech and biotech. So you know, WeWork's like co working spaces. They have a really interesting. They have labs, they have 3D printer lab, they have some lab space. It's nothing, you know, extensive, but mostly office space shared and kind of communal. And they do a lot of mentorship of startups in there and so we're getting involved with them pretty heavily. I bet that would be a. Yeah, sure.

I'd love to hear about, learn more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll connect you in with, with our folks over there. We're going to have at least two of them on the podcast at some point.

Oh great.

So Paul, I have a question that's not on the list, but I am curious. So you know, obviously we work together at Artisan and we know that New Haven was not the hub that Cambridge, you know, the seaport, bringing tons of people in. You've worked across a variety of organizations and with what you're seeing now, are you seeing that the hub of, you know, the central biotechs that we're used to are as important to these new founders or are you seeing companies kind of grow from wherever they are, be it New Haven, you know, the Amherst area or anywhere else? I feel like, I feel like we're branching out of Cambridge and you know, the more Silicon Valley esque historical biotech centers that we're used to. But what's your perspective on this? What are you seeing?

I'll try not to be too long winded on this, but I think this is a fantastic question. In my perspective, I am seeing a lot of these other smaller hubs really take root and develop and for a few reasons, but I don't think it's at the expense of Cambridges and San Francisco, the Bay Area and things that like, like that. I think it's sort of in addition to, and there are a couple of reasons. One major universities in these smaller areas, a good example is Yale in New Haven, have kind of caught the, you know, the vibe of translating their internal academic science into commercial opportunities. And so they've really ramped up their business development offices and created a lot of enabling functions that allow their faculty to be able to consider the idea of starting up companies. Obviously MIT and Harvard universities like that have really refined that practice. The other thing is that I think because of COVID there have been more people who have traditionally just migrated to the major hubs who have been willing to give a look at some of these other hubs that aren't that far away, but maybe not in the main area. So increasingly over the last couple of years, companies in New Haven have been successful at attracting talent from outside of the New Haven area and are not really reliant exclusively on Yale or Connecticut graduates to staff their organizations. The cost of living is lower, housing is more affordable, schools are good, and, you know, you still are only two hours from New York and Boston in the area. So people have been given much more serious look to some of these areas over the last couple of years, and I think that's going to continue. The state of Connecticut is really investing heavily in growing the biopharmaceutical and biotechnology industry in the state. There's a lot of laboratory space construction ongoing in New Haven, so there's a lot of enthusiasm for it. And so I think a lot of reason to believe that it'll continue to grow. But again, I don't think it's decreasing the impact or importance of the areas like Cambridge. It's just giving people who are looking at that in their careers and other options for places to do the work that they want to do.

Yeah, we're certainly seeing candidates that are preferring to stay in these decentralized locations as well. And I think the thought pattern before was that the infrastructure and the close proximity. Proximity was really, really important. I think we're starting to move away from that just because we are communicating more asynchronously and everything. But your, your comment about the state investing, I think that's really key because it is. Doesn't matter where you are. You need the lab space and that is expensive. And the, the infrastructure to even get that up and coming is expensive. So have you been involved at all with. With the state in any way? Are there any organizations that you've been kind of pushing to do more?

I have not been in a formal role perspective, but I have been invited to participate in workshops in conversations that have involved state leaders and even some national leaders who want to understand what the state of health is of the biotech industry in the state and in the New Haven community, what kind of investments or infrastructure would enable further growth, things like that. That's been useful. And that the state reaching out to members of the biopharma community to try to understand what they can do to help continue the development and growth of the industry.

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 podcasts. Back to the show. Yeah, state of New Hampshire, take note, we're here. Yeah, we'd love to see New Hampshire, do a bit of investment there.

Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure. Well, you have probably, I'm sure, a lot of scientists who live and work in the Boston, Cambridge area who actually live in New Hampshire, right?

They do, yeah. We've become a bit of a commuter hub up here.

Absolutely.

Oh, I want to talk a little.

Bit about what you've seen as some of the major shifts in biotech as a whole throughout your career and what's just getting you excited right now.

You know, one of the things considering questions like this, one of the constants is the continuation of technology emergence. And you know, it seems like it's exploding right now, but it's always, there's always been something new and it's motivated by the need to come up with new ways to understand disease, understand biology. Overall. One shift that I think has been really interesting in the biopharmaceutical industry is a shift towards biology. When I first started in the industry, it was a heavily chemistry led field and chemistry was really strong. I think it's matured more quickly than the biology has. Finding new targets was very difficult. The emergence of things like genome sequencing and all sorts of omics technologies has allowed us to understand biology and find new targets and has put more of the onus on the biologists to find and validate targets that can now be the subject of chemistry investigations or large molecule antibody kind of things. So I think all of those things, the omics explosion has been terrific. Artificial intelligence is obviously a big deal. I don't downplay it, but I don't agree that it's new. For example, in the 1990s we were working with novel targets that came out of genome sequencing in the microbiology area. But we had X ray crystallography and were able to solve the three dimensional structure and use that to guide the design of small molecules and dock them into those three dimensional structures. And that was computationally driven. What's different right now is the incredible computational power that exists through cloud computing and things like that that allow you to do some of those kinds of analyses in minutes or tens of minutes and not days. That's been remarkable. I think the ability to analyze complex data sets quickly and generate insights is really transforming the way science is done. And it's allowing for an iteration between basic science and the clinic, because in the clinic now you're able to gather large amounts of data from patients and use that to help learn more about your therapeutic approaches and do more about target validation and patient characterization. So there's just so much going on right now. I think it's important always though, to keep in mind to distinguish sort of the real potential and promise from some of the hype that happens every once in a while. I've worked in a couple of fields that have been a little bit of a victim. When I was at synlogic, we work in the synthetic biology area. Synthetic biology first became sort of a frontline kind of area of biomedical research. There was a lot of hype and promise that within a couple of years we'd have all these drug candidates. And synlogic now has a phase three program, which I'm pretty excited about about for phenylketonuria, which is promising, but, you know, it hasn't exploded the way it was originally promised. But it is maturing and it is going to deliver. And similarly, microbiome research came out as, you know, this new area of investigation, and it turned out to be more complicated than had originally been hoped. But companies are persevering. We're learning more and more about how our endogenous microbiota influence inflammatory neurologic diseases and things like that. And as we continue to tease that biology apart, we will be able to learn how to translate that into therapies. But just because an area has opened up and becomes promising doesn't mean that next year you're going to be taking a prescription based on, based on that area of science.

Yeah, that's really fascinating. You, you really struck a nerve with me, the crystallography, even, even back, what, 12, 14 years ago, I was doing a crystallography project and we crystallized my protein bound to different molecules and it would take two weeks to resolve a structure. And that's not that long ago. And then fast forward, just a couple of years ago, two years ago, I was working with a client and they were resolving hundreds of structures at a time in the cloud, in a Matter of hours, they might go home for the night and let them resolve. But it blew my mind. That really was the limiting step, was this processing power.

And if I can tie that back to the mentoring piece, one of the things that I think is interesting is to retain the sort of profound excitement and sense of accomplishment of sort of younger scientists who've been involved in some of these technology advances, but want to apply it to drug discovery to help them understand how do I integrate this science into sort of more established drug discovery processes? Because there are certain things in drug discovery that you're still going to have to, to prove true in order to be able to have a therapy, have permission to go into patients in clinical trials and make it to market. So it isn't the case that, for example, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean we never have to do any more experiments. They tell us which experiments to do and where to look. But there is still a validation. There are great computational tools right now that can tell you what the three dimensional structure of a protein is just based on its amino acid sequence. But it's worth periodically generating the crystal structure to confirm that your computational model is correct and not leading you astray over time. Maybe you'll never have to do that, but you still have to verify things that are computationally suggested.

As we're talking about this and we're talking about all these AI and tech advances, one of the conversations I have fairly often, and I think it's super interesting, is how this is going to impact the level of education people need to join a biotech. What we're starting to see and hear some rumblings of are, do people need to, does everyone need a PhD? Do they need an advanced degree? Are there certain things we can just train people out of high school to do and be in the lab and get things done? And so I think that's going to have some interesting knock on effects as this technology does become more, you know, I don't really know the word I'm looking for, but as it becomes more commonplace in the lab and maybe a little bit more reliable, I'd love to get your thoughts on sort of where you see that going and maybe the shift you've already seen with, you know, roles that once were super highly technical, required a really high degree of education, maybe becoming more open to a lot of broader audience.

Yeah. So Alison, I don't know that I'm going to have a perfect answer for you on that. I think we're all sort of watching this evolve and I think in the educational area. Part of what you're seeing is a blend of concern, but also anticipation because it should be possible for people to learn things more efficiently due to a lot of these kind of advances. One of the challenges obviously is when you're gathering knowledge and trying to increase your own understanding of things through a computationally driven tool to be able to confirm that the information you've gathered is actually accurate information. Although I think we're always completely trusting of our teachers, who are the ones who are teaching us everything, there's less confidence that if you use ChatGPT to pull together some information that you would necessarily have the same level of confidence in what you've pulled together. Nonetheless, it's hard for me not to believe can't be helpful accelerating the way that people learn and learn about things that they're really curious about and to accelerate their own learning. I mean, it seems possible that over a summer vacation, if you are interested in geology, you might be able to gather a fantastic amount of information rather than wait until the fall semester geology class to get started on what you want to learn. So there has to be a way to be able to integrate these things together to accelerate customized learning for people. You know, in terms of the PhD piece, one of the things that has always been, I think, true for me and from my own experience in my own organizations that I've been in and that I've led, is that PhD is a really important training opportunity to give you advanced, sophisticated learning in a particular field. Field that can be overcome by on the job experience. I've had a number of senior leaders in my organization who've moved up quite far in the organization without a PhD simply because they had, you know, sort of the curiosity, intellect, drive and motivation and hands on experience from working in the field that there, you know, there was no reason to say, oh, you can't have that job because you don't have a PhD be to their discredit and the organization, organization's discredit. So there have to be other ways to learn early on as well that might mitigate someone's decision not to pursue a PhD, but still nonetheless provide them with the background to be able to pursue, you know, to advance their careers as far as they want to.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We're seeing some pretty cool learning tools coming out for the K through 12 space that are almost like learning companions that identify people's areas that they need maybe a little bit more tutoring and help in. And I guess my hope with that is that partly that Integrates a knowledge of even what career paths exist within an area. Because I hear over and over that folks who go into science often had a good science role model and so they knew about it. So maybe that'll overcome some of those gaps in our current education system at some point. That's my hope.

Yeah, no, it makes sense, but I'm not sure I see that in the near future for something like leadership, where I think leadership really is helped best when somebody is paying attention to you as you're developing as a leader and providing timely feedback on how you're doing and helping with that process. I mean, there obviously are people who are born leaders, but I think even them probably need some rough edges rounded off a little bit and through the help of, of others who've, you know, gone before them, things like, oh yeah.

You'Re always learning to be a better leader, right? Yeah, that does not stop.

No, that doesn't.

So when, when do people call you in in your consulting capacity and when do you actually wish they would call you in? Are they calling you in soon enough in their process or, you know, when do you enter the world of a startup?

It is a mix. I mean, there are people who called me in very early where it feels like the timing is really right and they're ready to try to learn more about how they evolve their business. But you know, I do have one client I'm working with right now where I kind of wish we had interacted a year ago, although I personally may not have been ready at that moment, but somebody maybe had been. I think, because you can move a little bit far down the road, sort of trying to feel your way through the drug discovery process without internal experience, that would have been helpful. So having somebody at the earlier on in the planning stage. You know, when I'm working with some of these companies, one of the things that I found is really most effective is to have them tell me what they think they should do because they have given a lot of thought thought to it, they have tried. And most of what they have thought about or considered or put into their plan is probably right or good thinking. I might sequence it a little differently, but more of what I'm looking for is the gaps that they didn't see or can't anticipate because they just haven't done drug development before and they don't know. Okay, you should factor this into your planning, which can have people and budget implications. So catching them before it's too late is, or before they've gone too far is the helpful thing, and that's one of the reasons I like working with companies that are just forming early on, is I think there's a blank slate there and, you know, less. Less commitment. You know, the cement isn't dry yet completely. And you can. You have a lot more flexibility, a lot more receptivity.

Well, Paul, typically we ask people where they see the next stage of their career going and, you know, if they wanted to kind of expound a little bit about their ideal retirement. But you've just launched this, and so I can't imagine you're really thinking about the next stage of your career aside from continuing to grow the business.

But I did want to say that I am quite flexible about what that might look like. I like being busy right now, but if I was working with a client where the relationship evolved to the point where they said, hey, would you be willing to consider joining us full time in this role? I would seriously consider that. I mean, if it felt like that was really a good decision, I would do that. I could delay the consulting piece a bit longer, but down the road, I eventually want to consult. I can never see myself, though, not in the near future, saying, okay, I'm just going to quit cold turkey and play golf. I would be bored. The learning stuff is too much fun and it's sort of addicting, and I just want to keep doing that.

Biotech obviously draws the same type of person in because I think we have yet to hear someone say they're ready to just retire or they look forward to doing nothing. Everyone's like, no, I'm never giving it up. I love this.

And I had a friend I've known for decades who retired a while ago, and he posted on his LinkedIn probably a year and a half ago, done over. He worked for the same company for 30 years, and I've had it. You know, six months ago, I reconnected with him. He's consulting, so he thought, you know, he may have wanted a change from his specific work environment and thought that might mean just stopping his career altogether, but he couldn't. I think that's probably to your point, Alison. Probably more typical of people who work in this field, I think.

So.

It's a trap. You can never get out. You just don't want to. You're right. It's just the pace of the pace of the discoveries, and you don't want to be left behind. You want to. We want to be right there.

Absolutely. And I almost feel like it's, you know, walking out of the movie theater 3/4 of the way through a good story, you want to see how it turns out.

Now, you've given a lot of good advice, but what is one extra juicy piece of advice that you would give to an emerging leader in biotech? Maybe, maybe a brand new founder?

I would say to always make sure you have skin in the game, personal, visual skin in the game. So if you're working with building the organization and a team, you are constantly, even if you're the most senior person in the organization, you're constantly asking, what can I do to help you succeed in your job? And making it clear in the fullness of the company, you know, I have a role I'm playing and I'm doing it. Let me leave it at that. I don't want to leave negative examples, but I think we, you know, you could see people in very senior leadership roles who appear to really just sort of enjoy being off in the high profile networking part of it. And. But the team really would like to see more of them and understand what they're doing and how that helps the organization grow. And so I think living that and doing that with the team all the time with the company is important.

We start with the same question. We usually end with the same question. What is a great nonfiction or fiction book you have read recently or your favorite of all time? We are compiling a big list of everyone's favorite books. It's going to be great. Doesn't have to be business or science based. It can be anything you like.

Okay, I guess so. So the truth is often stranger than fiction. I tend to read almost exclusively nonfiction. I'm a bit of a history buff and a book that I read recently that I really liked is called Mornings on Horseback. If you know this book, this is by David McCulloch, who's a historian and it's about Teddy Roosevelt and his early years in his life. So Teddy Roosevelt's is larger than life, kind of big guy. But it was really interesting to see, you know, how does somebody become that? And he had a very interesting background, but he came from a privileged background. So it's not a rags to riches story. But what was interesting about him is he had great parental upbringing in that his family highly valued service and philanthropy and giving to people. And he grasp that he had a very unique personality. And so just cutting to the chase about some of the things which ties back into mentorship and leadership here that I found really interesting about his story is that he felt well, when he was young, in his 20s, he first ran for political Office. He lived in New York City and he ran for a state assembly role representing his area in New York City. And he did that because he was really concerned and disturbing by a lot of local corruption that was going on and felt that government organization could be improved to help the lives of the people in the community who were being negatively affected by corruption. So he ran for office, he won. And then he was sort of just like this flurry of activity once he got to Albany, the state Capitol, introducing legislation to try to clean up corruption and things like that. He then ran for, these are two year terms. He ran for a second term and was elected again. And during that term, he had an opportunity to try to see if he could become speaker of the assembly, which is sort of like a leadership role. He didn't get it. There were other more experienced people who were interested in the role, and one of them got it. But he was asked afterwards, you know, are you disappointed that you didn't get this more powerful role? And he goes, well, I'm disappointed, but not because of the powerful role thing. He goes, I came here, I wanted to get into government because of the opportunity for achievement. I want to do things for people. And the only reason for me that he's interested in a bigger role is it increases his chance for achievement. And I think if you take that to heart, this carried him through to being the president because he did all sorts of stuff. He's known as probably the person who had the most fun being president because it gave him a chance to try to do big things. He had a lot of big ideas. He wasn't perfect. Not everybody who listens to this podcast is going to agree with me on all this. But I think the point is, when you're going into roles with leadership, I think if you will be successful, if you aspire to higher levels of responsibility, if you're doing it to make your organization, your teams more successful, to be able to improve the chances that you can accomplish the teams that the things that the company wants to accomplish. And so I thought that was really a really interesting story of his personality and kind of what motivated him to do the things that he did and why he became sort of the kind of leader that he's recognized as.

Definitely.

Check that out. Yeah, I mean, there are dry aspects to it because it's really, really detailed, but it's good. To be honest, I listened to that on Audible as an audiobook, which makes it a little bit easier sometimes, but I really enjoyed it.

That's awesome, Paul. Thank you.

Yeah. My husband and I are horseback riders and we have always wanted to get up to Acadia, which I think he and FDR really laid the groundwork for a lot of the national parks.

But.

He was a big national park person. He was an outdoors Acadia.

Yeah. And Acadia specifically was a horseback riding destination. The carriage trails are still in existence and you can ride for miles on groomed trails or people go up to drive. It's one of the last places you can in the, in the country.

Wow. Yeah. Fantastic.

All right, well, on your drive up there, you know what to listen to.

That's right.

100%. Okay. Paul, where can people reach out to you if they want to learn more? We're obviously going to link your LinkedIn here. Anything else?

LinkedIn is the the best place to reach out to me and again I'm increasingly engaged in. I check it quite often respond to everybody who contacts me. So that's the best place to do that. I am pondering setting up a website as another opportunity. The reason I do appreciate the connection and the resource there, one of the reasons I've been sort of hesitating on that is because I'm still interested in permanent roles or the possibility that a permanent role might emerge from the consulting work that I'm doing. If it does, it's great. If it doesn't, great. But I hadn't wanted to sort of over build should my career go in that direction and have over invested in that. But LinkedIn is the best Building Biotechs.

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