Episode 37: Implementing a Chief Strategy Officer Role in Academic Medicine with Key Opinion Leader James Zanewicz

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I'm James Zanewicz, the Chief Business Officer for the Tulane School of Medicine.

And I'm Dr. Elaine Hamm, the Executive in Residence for the Tulane School And this is Bio from the Bayou.

Good day and welcome to Bio from the Bayou. My name is Allison Best, and I have the honor of serving as the University of Mississippi's Commercialization Director, which means my team is charged with all things good coming out of the innovation and research enterprise out of the University of Mississippi. Today's guest is one of our frequent hosts, James Zanewicz. James was recently promoted to become the Chief Strategy Officer at Tulane University School of Medicine and the Tulane National Primate Research Center. In this role, he oversees marketing, crisis management, all things change-oriented, and as they relate to strategic initiatives and business development for the research and clinical enterprises. I'm looking forward to digging in more today and learning about how he's applied his experience to create a really unique model outside of the traditional tech transfer office environment, and one that we can all learn from. James and I have been colleagues for a long time, so I'm just going to dive right in. Does that sound good, James?

Perfect.

James, I'd like to start out by exploring about the beginning of your business development journey. In 2015, as you joined as the first Chief Business Officer at Tulane, did you have a clear version? And I'm curious about how it began. And how has that vision changed since you started?

In 2015, when the university created this role, it was interesting. They had contracted with PwC to come in and do a survey of where some gaps were in the enterprise and what something might look like. And what had been recommended to them was really short-term dollars, contract-focused, really much more transactional than relationship-focused. When I applied and interviewed for the job, I kind of came in with a totally separate vision where I said, that's a job. It's not necessarily the job or the position or the vision that I would put in place. And if you want to buy into a longer-term relationship strategy where we position ourselves as a bioscience gateway and we really focus on your research and translational science, so often a lot more of the things coming out of the PhD labs on the School of Medicine side and some of the applied clinical research, but much, much more on the basic science and translational science perspective, I'm your guy. But we won't have probably tangible outcomes for 5 to 10 years because this is a longer-term strategy where we're building long-term relationships, are creating that baseline where companies, investors, whoever we're working with, will come back to us again and again because they get to know us. It definitely was a contact sport. It was going out and meeting with a lot of companies, a lot of investors in the places they are. And we did that kind of with the traditional one-sheets that we had always seen in tech transfer at that point. I'd come out of the tech transfer realm and then open science at HHMI, so kind of brought a little bit of that perspective as well. But focusing on augmenting the Tulane brand, but doing so in a marketing business development fashion, much like a company or investor investment firm would do on their own, but just doing it inside an academic medical center. And then we had several Tulane-focused events that we started as well, beginning with our immersion days where we kind of highlighted Tulane science for at first one day and then eventually 2 days. As things progressed, that vision did change, kind of as you alluded to. That was in large part due to these conversations, these long-term relationships we were building with companies where they felt really comfortable giving us feedback and telling us what they were looking for and how what they thought we were doing was great, but to elevate it, to make it more of what met their needs, here were things to do. And one of those was killing the one-sheet, the one-pager was not useful to them. They said, that's great, it's a great thing to show up. You can show your faculty, hey, we did something. But what's useful for us is a 5 to 7 slide pitch deck that has important information. They made it very clear that they don't need to know the market. They know the market. It's what they're paid to do, to skip straight into the science and what the value to them could be for that. And again, that led to us broadening the types of meetings we did, really focused more on approaching it like a company or investment firm would, and less as a traditional academic center. And also working with our startup companies or startups that were in our region and offering to function as a BD arm for them as well, where we would take 5 to 7 slide pitch decks for them into meetings because it costs us nothing extra to bring them up while we're in the room, but it can be tremendously valuable for them because they can't afford a business development arm. In addition to that, we're not just focused on pushing things out like many universities are. We were also looking at what was out in that realm, what companies were doing, what portfolios of investment firm companies had in their space, and could we be a soft landing zone for those outside the US who wanted to come to the US? Could we be somewhere that did clinical trials or had had key opinion leaders who could serve on boards or advisory committees or just a quick 15-minute conversation when they had a question? Or could we be a first customer for things in that academic medicine space? So we really moved much more from just, hey, we're helping to push science out and make connections with the outside world, to what is every single type of way we can engage with the outside world? And that could be pushing out, it could be pulling in, it could be making introductions to things in our network or people in our network that could be useful even if we weren't involved. And really just showing that we're the convener and we're the connector that allowed us to position ourselves for 10, 20, 30 years from now. And, and a big part of that shift where we had started shifting already, but coming out of COVID I worked with a corporate coach, Ashley Stahl. And as part of that, she helps you hone down on kind of what your skills are and what drives you. And some of the work, some of what she has you do is go with keywords and boil down to like 5 or so keywords that describe what your skills are. And one of her keywords was innovation. And a lot of people were picking that for me and it And working with Ashley, she's like, you're actually more of a creative and less of an innovator. She explained to me that what that means is innovators invent something out of nothing, and creators or creativity people see patterns in things that other people don't see and put them together in interesting ways. And I feel like that at the heart of what we do, that is what we do in the Office of the Chief Strategy Officer, is we look for patterns, we look for ways to promote things, ways to put them together.

Yeah.

that others don't see and try and make something magical happen out of that.

So, James, what's your philosophy now in approaching new partners versus the ones that you've established that 2, 3, 15-year relationship with?

When we're working with potential corporate partners, what we're really looking at doing is going in and seeing what we have to offer them across the entire spectrum of Tulane and the Tulane universe. And so that means not only science we might have or resources or tools or people But how might we use, as we kind of alluded to before, how might we use what they have to offer and bring it to bear inside? And and that can be for CROs, CDMOs out there. Can they be useful for grant applications for us? Where by introducing them to our faculty, they may have a crucial piece that our faculty members either can't or don't want to do, and they can be included in grant applications, which can lead to kind of slam dunk contracts for them coming out if the government funds something. It can mean that we become that first customer because as an academic medical center, we want to be a destination place for healthcare and give the citizens of the Gulf South first access to things so that they can be healthier and do so in a way that is the future of medicine and not what has always existed. And really introducing companies to each other as well. If we meet companies that should know each other, we'll introduce them. And sometimes that arises in collaborations or partnerships they have, and Tulane may not be involved at all other than just having helped be that nexus and make those connections.

That's great. And you actually mentioned the ability to interact with the large-cap corporate partners by introducing them to means to other folks. So let's talk a little bit about dialogues with those other folks, investors, these funds, smaller family offices. Is there anything different in that approach there?

Yeah, so I think where most academic centers, most universities, they approach investors Funds, offices, things like that, with the mentality of, hey, here's what we have that you could invest in. We actually really flip that on the head, and we flat out say in our outreach to them, we're not looking for investment right now. We'll be happy to connect you with companies you might be interested in, in our universe. But what we want to do is do a deep dive into your portfolio. Who have you invested in? How might we provide those experts who can be scientific advisors or on your board? Or just someone you know you can call if you're doing something in the field of neuroscience and you want to run something by a neurosurgeon and hop on the phone for 15 minutes. Do we have someone who can do that, which maybe will turn into a longer-term relationship for our faculty member outside of Tulane with that company, or maybe it's just that one-off? So in thinking of adding value for them, for that portfolio of companies, it really is that, that deep dive into long-term relationships and who do we know. And that could be investors or family offices that we have who are either parents of Tulane students graduate of Tulane who might have an interest in their space. It could be that we've met people at other events that they should meet, which could be services, could be investors, could be other companies. But any way we can help them align, connect, and add value, that elevates the Tulane brand in their mind. And I think the benefit of that is then when we have things that we do put in front of them that are investment opportunities, if it's our startups like Informudo Bioaesthetics, AxoSim, Obatala, I think they get a little more attention. They understand it's coming from a trusted space, and that if we put something in front of them, it's because we know what their goals are, and that these are probably things that they would have an interest in. And our companies are in a better position to get investment because of that. There's never a guarantee, but any kind of little step up you can give them is worth its weight in gold.

You've hinted at some fantastic examples. Tell us a little bit more about what these favorite outcomes of your time has been?

There's several, and I'll say a lot of them are some of our great companies that have, have come out of Tulane, out of our, our Bioinnovation program through our School of Science and Engineering, where they often collaborate and do their research in a School of Medicine lab. Bioaesthetics was one of my very first ones. Bioaesthetics is a company that replaces the nipple areola complex for women who have had mastectomies due to breast cancer. And they were able to get into the IndieBio training program on the West Coast and actually participate some in the MassBio Challenge programs up in Boston because of connections we had made at conferences. Informuta is another company. They're a really great, more recent graduate out of the BioInnovation Program, and we were able to get them a slot to present at the BioInvestor Forum in San Francisco this year, where they told me they've made some connections that are very likely to be some of their first large investors. With larger companies, companies like Elanco, who we met with at partnering conferences early on and invited down to our very first immersion day, and they took a gamble on this university that had never done this before and showed up and found 5 projects that they were interested in tracking. They were all super early stage, nowhere near anything that the company would, would license or take in yet, or even do collaborative research around. But they followed those projects for 5, 6, 7 years, and eventually one of them turned into a series of a couple sponsored research projects that are going on right now where they're evaluating, is this something that could be a commercializable project for them? Another one of my favorites is Nikon, because Nikon, you would think, what kind of collaborative research are they going to do with the School of Medicine? Well, obviously we're a potential buyer of a lot of their technology, and a lot of our scientists would love to have some of the most innovative things. And Nikon loaned us one of their cutting-edge two-photon microscopes for 2 weeks, came in, ran experiments for our faculty, and one of the faculty members at Tulane actually used that data to get an R01 grant out of the federal government. There's just so many pieces and things here. And one that's even odder is positioning our scientists as key opinion leaders. And Dr. Bruce Bunnell, who has left Tulane for a chair job somewhere else now, but I think a big part of that is because we positioned him with an industry trade journal and they were looking for guest editors for columns. And we're like, Dr. Bunnell would be great. And his name really got out there as a key opinion leader in the space. because he was doing these guest editing columns in an industry trade journal, which I think elevated his profile a good bit. But all these kinds of things are a little different. And I think that's why they're my favorites, because they're a little more outside the norm. They're not what you usually think of as wins. They're the softer, fuzzier metrics that are hard to quantify. But often they will lead to those licenses, those straight dollars back in that are the metrics for our Office of Intellectual Property Management, who we partner with a lot. And we actually have one of their key staff members who serves the School of Medicine sits in the office with our team so that he can collaborate with our business development associate. They share an office, so they're constantly talking and sharing information back and forth. But this allows us to kind of become that intel inside the university that's functioning and powering things and pushing things and creating more work for the other offices that are driving those deals.

So, James, those are fascinating examples for how you can connect, and especially that long game with industry. Tell us a little bit more about that Nikon example in terms of From your first introductions to the company, how they came onto campus, and then what led to what you wouldn't traditionally think of as an outcome, which is an R01.

The interesting thing with that is Nikon brought it in, loaned it, had it on site, brought a team of 2 people to help run things. And we had probably around 8 scientists who came in, ran experiments, got this amazing data, and one of which saw uterine fibroids for the first time in It was either rats or mice. And she was then able to use that as part of her grant application for an R01. So I'd say it was probably a year later, at least she knew she got the R01. But from the relationship initiating, I'd say it probably took us about 3 or 4 years until we thought of this microscope loan as a potential option. And that was because I met with Melin Avratney from Nikon at the BioCEO and Investor Conference in New York. And we sat down and I was telling her my dreams. And it's funny, she actually told me that Years later, when I said, "Hey, I'm going to do these immersion day events, and we're going to have companies and investors come in," and she thought no university will ever buy in, and this is crazy. And years later, after she had come down a couple of times, she was like, "I have to apologize to you because when you first told me all these things," she was like, "I thought no university will ever do this. He's crazy." She was like, "And by gosh, you made it all happen, and and it's amazing for us to be able to come in. And you I think we're fortunate that we're in New Orleans, and people love to come here. So if we give them an excuse." They're willing to do so. But I think almost every area of the country has some sort of event that happens in or around their city, their region, that they can leverage. Um, and it may not be year-round like we have in New Orleans, but there, there's almost always something that you can use as that, that hook in that crux to get people to want to come visit. And if you align with it, it's a really great way to pull things forward.

So James, let's talk a little bit about some of those unpaid side gigs, other duties as assigned, because I know this is a big part of how effective you and your team are. So tell us about— I know you work with entities like BIO right now where you're chairing the Tech Transfer Committee. Thank you for that. The Alliance for AI in Healthcare is such an important thing right now where you're on the board, and then AdvaMed. And these are just a few examples, but how does this help you day to day help your team's objective?

This is something where I think it's vital to be engaged. And if you want to be seen as a true corporate partner and a true player, you have to get involved in industry, associations. While organizations like AUTOM, NACRO, ARI, the more academic or research institute ones are tremendous for us to network with our colleagues, if you want to be seen as a member of the corporate or investor realm, you have to go where they are. And that's not just events and conferences, that's getting engaged in their associations. And I've been really fortunate to be able to do that. Like with the AIH, it's one of my favorites. And I got engaged with the Alliance for AI in Healthcare through a team that was helping them kind of stand up as an organization who reached out to me and said, you might be really interested in this. We think it's where science and healthcare are going. And in doing just a little research, I really bought into that early on before we had this big AI push and this big AI wave. And what that's helped us do as an institution is kind of form an AI strategy around how we're going to try and evaluate AI and look at things out there and how we can implement it both on the scientific and the healthcare sides. Because of that exposure that I've gotten and getting to work with companies who are using AI for drug discovery or using AI to create digital twins for patients to optimize potential clinical therapeutics or using AI to analyze back-office data for healthcare so that you can bill and code more effectively or have patients adhere more to their treatment regimens so that their healthcare outcomes are better. All those types of applications, I'm getting to talk to people in the real world figuring out how to make that happen in real time. And then we're able to look at how can we implement that or how can we leverage what those companies are doing and can we partner with them? Can we offer to be a resource? Could we be a first customer and client? All those things we talked about earlier on the podcast around this next level of innovation in this space. It's kind of amazing what the ability to have those conversations and that knowledge will do for creative thinking and how you can do things yourself in the space. I'd say with this also, it really helped us to figure out ways we can leverage fellowships with some of our students. We have an AI-focused business development fellow, Eric Malamud, who works alongside our business development associate, Alexis Ducote. It really does help us evolve the office because every year or two we're looking at what's next, what is our goal, what is our focus. And it is very different now because originally it was just kind of, let's figure out how to partner, get research dollars and market innovations for our tech transfer team. And now we're kind of what can we do and how can we stay ahead of everywhere else? And what does 10 to 20 years down the line look like for us as opposed to what can we make happen in the next 2 months?

Okay. So, James, speaking of impact locally, regionally, especially in the Gulf, let's talk about a signature event that is very near and dear to especially the University of Mississippi, as we've been Fortunate to be a part of. Let's talk about Bio in the Bayou, which showcases not just academic science and biotech for the Gulf South, but it really is a way for investors to quickly connect to these innovations. Where do you want to go in the future with this event?

This has been incredible, Alison, because again, this is— we talked about Immersion Day earlier, and that was the first iteration. And again, this is what comes from you, myself, Elaine Hamm and Patrick Reed, and now Kenesha Akinpolomi from Xavier University of Louisiana. We pay attention when people come in. And what they told us was, you know, this is great, but why don't you all band together and pull in even more of your friends? Because the more universities you can get here, we'd love to come to New Orleans. They'll love to come to New Orleans. You don't have to have your people be the only ones on stage, because if we're here, we can meet with anybody. But give us a reason with a huge ROI for us. And by pulling together the universities in the Gulf South and doing so in a very cost-efficient fashion where We're fortunate to get sponsors to cover the cost of registration for this, where it doesn't cost them to attend other than travel and time and being out of the office. They get such tremendous bang for their buck. I think with this, what we're looking at doing in the future is strategic alliances with some other entities out there, potentially looking at, do we partner with Equalize, that great program run by Osage University Partners, or do we partner with The Bullpen, who had both attended last year? To give startups that they work with another opportunity to highlight themselves and really to leverage their networks on top of our own. Because while all of us have built really tremendous networks with companies, with investors, folks just in the ecosystem who really want things to move, both with Osage University partners in Equalize and with the Bullpen, those are the folks out there interacting with those venture capitalists every single day. And if they show up and if they're partnered with somebody, I think it adds yet another level of legitimacy. And not that we haven't established that already, but Bio on the Bayou has offered a lot of exposure, a lot of potential for people. And I think you and I have been very excited about how it's grown every year. And I feel like we're on the cusp of something where it's about to become even more, and I can't wait to see what that is. And I know that we're going to always sit and evaluate and look ahead and see how we can tweak it and shift it to make it the most it can be.

You know, the University of Mississippi's part how important this has been in that very metric that you just described, which is return on investment. This is an opportunity for our investigators and our innovators to have hard, blunt conversations with potential investors that talk about what they're bringing to the table in a way that they feel comfortable, but yet they also realize that they need to make that investment to take their company to the next level.

No, absolutely. And it's one of those things where I was actually going to ask you, why did you get involved? And you did that for me.

All right, so James, aside from Bio on the Bayou, anything else on the horizon for Tulane?

We have one thing that my team may kill me for talking about because once I talk about it, then we have to do it. And it may be a method to my madness. But one of the exciting things is I've, I've been involved with the Cleveland Neurodesign Project for a long time, which was this really amazing workshop weekend that pulls together teams to solve problems around neuroscience they get from real neurosurgeons and things like that. It's incredible because it more is about teaching the amazing biodesign process out of Stanford, which is a way of thinking, and occasionally you get solutions out. Well, I've been in conversations with Jojo Platt, who is one of the key drivers behind that, about coming in and working with us at Tulane and doing an AI in healthcare design course, where over the course of 4 days, we'd pull together teams who can get real-world problems either from companies in the AI space or from our partner, LCMC Health, in our clinical healthcare system, or from the Tulane University Medical Group, our internal practice plan, but real problems that physicians or the back office or people are having that AI might be able to solve. We'll bring together these teams for a weekend where they have the opportunity to be coached, to get some educational stuff, to have a tiny bit of social time because it's a really intense 4 days. But by the time they're finished at the end of that weekend, they're doing a full-blown pitch before investors who are rating them and have the potential to win not a tremendous cash prize, but a small cash prize. But the knowledge and the experience and the connections they make could be life-changing for many of them. And I'm super excited about that. And I'm hopeful that maybe the University of Mississippi will want to partner with us.

That sounds great.

Do you like how I did that?

I do. Whether you're a large university or with an established medical center or you're a smaller office, the point is that customer discovery and solving real-world problems is what is the only way that you're going to make a difference. And so, this sounds like a fantastic opportunity for all of our audience.

Yeah, now that I've said it, we have to do it. So I guess we're gonna have to chop chop.

James, it's always fun when we get together. I always appreciate the chance to learn more from you and especially to hear about everything that Tulane's doing. Any any last thoughts for our audience?

No, I just I appreciate you doing this, Allison. And it's I guess part of my evil genius is that hey, Allison, why don't you guest host? And now you're a host forever, which is one of my favorite things to do with people. It's how Kenisha became a host as well. I talked her into doing it just. once. And I think she's on like her third or fourth now, which is fantastic. And so maybe next time, though, we'll turn the tables and I'll jump back to hosting. And we can talk you into talking a little more about everything Ole Miss, which I know will make Sharon Courtney, our VP of Government and Community Relations and a proud Ole Miss alum, very, very happy. You think we could talk you into doing that?

I think that would be fantastic.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

That might be a Bio Europe drop or a Bio on the Bayou drop this year. Who knows?

I definitely like that. I definitely like that. Well, as always, we will have our incredible guest today, James's contact information, all the links. We're going to have the Tulane School of Medicine Business Development Office, the Alliance for AI Bio, People in the Bayou, all of those great things that we'll have available for you. Thank you so much for your time today, James, and thank you to our audience for joining us.

And thank you, Allison. This is a great time as always. Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join If you'd like to learn more about the emerging biotech scene in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, visit us at biofromthebayou.com, where we have more info on who we are, how to get involved and connected in biotech in New Orleans, and the industry events we'll be hosting where you can meet with us in person.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't give a special thanks to the Accelerator Network for providing funding for this podcast. Learn more about them in our show notes.

We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou. Bio from the Bike.