Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 54– Adam Thomas - Chief People and Experience officer at Moma Therapeutics

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Episode 54– Adam Thomas - Chief People and Experience officer at Moma Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:05
Welcome. Back to the episode of the Bio
0:06
Hub. Today we're thrilled to be
0:08
joined by Adam Thomas, who's the Chief People and Experience
0:11
Officer of Moment Therapeutics. Adam brings over 2 decades of
0:14
leadership experience across his roles at Pfizer, SC, Johnson,
0:18
Shire, Sin Logic and now Moment Therapeutics.
0:22
And Adam is instrumental in shaping the company's culture
0:25
and employee experience, ensuring that as the
0:28
organization advances scientific mission, it remains a place
0:32
where people thrive. So join us today as we'll talk
0:35
through Adam's journey, his thoughts on why Chr rows are
0:39
rarely seen on boards, as well as the highs and lows of
0:42
biotech. So Adam, thanks so much for
0:44
coming on. How are you?
0:45
I'm very. Well, thanks.
0:46
Thanks for having me. It's great to see you, Tom.
0:48
Yeah. Nice to see you again.
0:50
Thanks for coming on. It's a pleasure.
0:52
Absolute. Pleasure, delighted to do so.
0:56
Cool. So look, let's start off with a
0:58
little bit about you then. So can you tell us about your
1:00
journey in biotech and were there any specific mentors or
1:04
role models who influence your professional journey?
1:07
Yeah, absolutely, Tom. And you kind of covered it in a
1:10
better way than I ever could in your introduction.
1:12
So thanks very much for that. But I started off working for
1:16
the corporate executive Board, which is an HR consultancy that
1:20
many people in the, the HR field would, would know.
1:24
I was there for a couple of years very early in my career
1:27
and that's now part of the the Gartner Group.
1:30
When I was working there, I had exposure to lots of different
1:32
organizations and industry and I became very, very interested in,
1:36
in, in biotech and pharma. And I had the good fortune to
1:39
join Pfizer. And I have worked for Pfizer
1:42
both in the UK and the US for about 12 years in various
1:46
different HR positions focused on R&D primarily.
1:50
And I met a number of great people there, which I'll come
1:52
back to in a second. On your, your question about
1:54
mentorship. Well, I was at Pfizer, I had the
1:56
good fortune that they supported me to do an MBA and they did
1:59
that at Boston University. And after I graduated my MBA,
2:03
there were a number of changes happening at Pfizer as well.
2:05
And I decided it was a good time to, to make a move.
2:08
And I went and, and actually left the industry and joined SC
2:11
Johnson consumer products company Make Pledge and Windex
2:14
and Ziploc bags and often RAID and lots of consumer products.
2:17
And I was the head of HR for R&D at SC Johnson.
2:20
I've been living in Boston prior to that with with Pfizer, but I
2:23
moved over to Milwaukee, was working in, in Wisconsin for
2:26
that role. Then decided I wanted to come
2:29
back to the industry and came back to came back to Shire where
2:32
I was the head of HR for R&D at Shire and had a great time.
2:35
There was a fantastic company and then decided that I wanted
2:39
to move into a, a smaller company and I joined a biotech
2:43
company called Synlogic. Sylogic, when I joined them was
2:46
42 people. We were just going from research
2:49
into development. We're just getting ready to go
2:51
from private to public. And I joined there.
2:54
I worked at some logic for seven years, happy to talk about the
2:57
highs and lows there. But unfortunately, we eventually
2:59
shut the company down. And from there I joined MoMA,
3:03
which is where I am today. I've been here for about a year.
3:07
You'd asked for you asked about your mentors along the way.
3:11
So a few I would highlights, certainly one was I worked with
3:16
a guy when I joined Pfizer first, whose name is Dermot
3:20
Callahan, who was the most generous supportive mentor I
3:24
could ever hope for. Spent so much time with me as I
3:26
was early with within my career, really invested a lot of time
3:29
and effort and get me up to speed on so many different
3:31
things. And I attribute a lot of my
3:34
growth and development to Dermot.
3:35
He's just a fantastic mentor very early in my career.
3:39
I've also had, as I think back, I've had an interesting
3:42
experience. I've worked with three leaders
3:45
twice in different organizations and they all stem from the days
3:49
of Pfizer. So when I was in the UKI worked
3:52
closely with Rod McKenzie. Rod was then the person who was
3:57
leading a research site in Cambridge and he helped fire me
4:02
into the role that led to me moving from the US to the UK to
4:05
the US. And, and Rod would say I owe my
4:08
life to him, which is probably true about in, in many ways.
4:11
But again, fantastic mentor, but also a fantastic sponsor in
4:15
terms of opening that opportunity to me that led to
4:18
the, to the move over. Phil Vickers was another guy I
4:21
worked with closely. So I worked with Phil at, at
4:27
Pfizer again. And then Phil was the, the, the
4:31
heads of Shire R&D at a time I was looking back to get into
4:35
biotech and hired me there. So I had a great experience of
4:37
working with with Phil again in that experience, he's now the
4:41
CEO of Solu, another biotech company, and a fantastic guy to
4:45
work with. And then I also worked with a
4:48
guy when I was over in the US with Pfizer called JC Gutierrez
4:51
Ramos, who was the CEO of Synlogic, then hired me across
4:54
into Synlogic. So in terms of those folks,
4:58
they're people who were willing to kind of sponsor me and having
5:01
worked with me once, willing to work with me again, which is
5:03
probably the definition of insanity.
5:05
I would say, you know, doing the same thing twice, expecting
5:07
different results. But I've learned a huge amount
5:10
from all three of those. And then more recently, the CEO
5:14
at Synlogic was a for Brennan, I bought your board chair was
5:19
Peter Barrett, learned a huge amount from both of those.
5:22
And in the role I'm in here now a Ciproix, our CEO, Jeff Albus
5:25
is the board chair and I'm learning a huge amount from them
5:27
as well. So I've had the good fortune of
5:29
working with some some great people, Tom.
5:32
Some of them more than once, it turns out.
5:34
Yeah, local free, terrific answers there.
5:38
And just in terms of so, I mean, there's obviously a lot of
5:41
biotechs out there. You've worked to various
5:43
different types of companies in terms of small biotech, big
5:46
pharma. What attracted you to MoMA, and
5:49
how does this mission resonate with your professional values?
5:53
So it's an interesting question, Tom, to answer it fully taking a
5:57
step back, So I was working at Shire, much bigger biotech
6:02
company. We were 5000 people when I
6:03
joined following the acquisition of Back Solta, we went up to
6:06
22,000 typical mid to to large sized biotech company.
6:13
I became interested in going to a much smaller company and
6:16
joining some logic as I started thinking about different
6:20
experiences I could get. And I figured I could do many
6:24
more years in, in, in Shire or a company like Shire and I'd learn
6:28
a lot. But there would be a different
6:31
experience getting into a much smaller company for me
6:34
personally in, in in many different ways.
6:36
One of the things that I was conscious of is I've worked with
6:40
in biopharma for almost 20 years or more than 20 years, as you,
6:44
as you said in the intro, I've worked with many teams that have
6:47
launched products, many teams that have drug drugs to market.
6:50
But in a big company as, as somebody in HR or HR related
6:53
fields, you, your, your impact on any single product is pretty
6:58
diffuse. You, you may work with the
6:59
teams, but you can't say it's got your kind of thumbprints on
7:02
it. And I really wanted to be in a
7:03
situation where I could say once in my life I got a drug to
7:07
market. And that was what one of the
7:08
real key things that attracted me to Synlogic.
7:11
So the ability to work and really put your, your finger on
7:14
something and say that you got that product through the market.
7:18
And then the ability to learn and do something different and
7:20
really go on an accelerated learning path of doing something
7:22
different. That's why I got into Synlogic.
7:24
Had a fantastic experience there.
7:26
Got a huge amount of breadth, did various different roles, ran
7:29
facilities, operations, legal communications, bunch of
7:32
different things outside HR Really good broadening
7:35
experience. Was the corporate secretary of
7:37
the board. Did a bunch of different things.
7:39
Unfortunately, we got as far as phase three at Synlogic and then
7:43
we had to shut the company down. The program wasn't working out
7:46
as we'd expected. Funding was really, really tight
7:48
and in that the market at that time, you don't get a chance to
7:51
to kind of do over and get another shot at it.
7:54
But having had that experience and been unsuccessful, I was
7:56
looking for a similar kind of size and stage of company again
8:00
to try and I guess I say to try and really influence a culture,
8:02
really influence an organization, learn and do
8:05
different stuff, but also have a fingerprint on a drug going to
8:08
market. And MoMA was similar to Some
8:10
Logic at the time I joined really depth of science,
8:13
oncology focused, great culture, great people, some great
8:16
programs, but also they were kind of right stage to to come
8:19
in and hopefully influence a product getting to market.
8:21
So I was delighted when the opportunity came up here, very
8:24
disappointed about Some Logic obviously, and the way it ended,
8:27
that was pretty heartbreaking. But I was delighted to have the
8:30
opportunity to come here given the size and stage and journey
8:33
of the company. And I felt I could contribute
8:35
something to to the mission. So that was how I ended up here.
8:38
Very good. And I know, so this next
8:40
question I know was a topic that you were particularly passionate
8:43
about and an absolute one that made me think a little bit more
8:47
on it. So I was looking forward to
8:48
hearing your answer. But I guess despite the critical
8:51
role that people play, despite the critical role that people in
8:55
culture play in biotech success, especially in innovation driven
9:00
and high growth environments, very rarely do you see CHROS on
9:05
biotech boards. What?
9:07
Why do you think that is? I think Tom, it's, it's
9:12
something that you mentioned. I was passionate about it.
9:13
So I think it is something where over time we'll see a shift.
9:19
But right now you're exactly right.
9:20
There's, there's not that many board opportunities.
9:23
The, the, the first thing I would reflect on is that boards
9:27
by their very nature are highly selective.
9:29
They're only asked any, you know, a limited number of board
9:32
seats in, in any given company. So boards can be very picky
9:36
about who they they have on boards and those positions tend
9:40
to turn over at a very, very slow pace.
9:42
Many people are on boards for multiple years.
9:45
And so the pace of change when it comes to boards can be a
9:49
little bit glacial. If you look at there's been a
9:51
big push to get more women on boards, which is a fantastic
9:53
drive and really, really important.
9:56
But again, the pace of that change has been, has been pretty
9:58
slow in happening down to the dynamics somewhat the dynamics
10:02
of boards and the turnover and many other factors as well,
10:05
obviously. So that, that is 1 dynamic.
10:09
The, the second dynamic is, to be frank, HR hasn't had the
10:14
reputation for being a strategic, strategic important
10:17
function. If you look back to, you know,
10:19
the 70s, it was a personnel function, it was administrative
10:23
and HR leaders weren't seen as being really important
10:26
contributors. Often they didn't report to the
10:28
CEO, they reported that second level.
10:30
And I, I think some of that perception of, of HR still
10:33
persists or is, is something that we're still working to, to
10:36
kind of change. I do think though, things are
10:39
changing slowly. So the compensation committee in
10:44
many organizations is becoming a compensation and culture
10:47
committee or compensation and talent Commission.
10:49
The, the, the remit is growing more broadly than just what you
10:52
pay the, the, the CEO. We're starting to see more and
10:55
more HR executives take on broader roles, broader
10:59
positions, manage different functions, really being kind of
11:01
business leaders. And there's a real drive in
11:05
boards to have an oversight into culture and talent.
11:08
If you just look at the pandemic, so much of the time
11:10
was spent around the culture of the organization and things like
11:13
work from home policies or when will you get people in the
11:16
office. And I really think there's an
11:18
importance in terms of people and talent that maybe there
11:21
wasn't there a decade ago, which is kind of kind of happening.
11:25
So I do think in, in many ways that the time is now, Tom, and I
11:28
think that the, the opportunities are going to start
11:30
to, to open up as, as organizations do this.
11:33
And I think there's a very natural spot.
11:35
So CFOs run the audit committee, CHROS, chief people officers
11:39
could run the compensation committee.
11:40
That's why they have expertise. So there is even a, a kind of
11:42
critical role to play there, which I think is, is, which is
11:46
great. We did it at some logic.
11:48
My previous company with Lisa Kelly Crosswell, who was the the
11:52
CHRO of the Boston Medical Center had been CHRO of Vertex
11:56
during the period of their rapid growth.
11:58
And we had her on the board. She was a fantastic person to
12:00
have on there. So we added, we added on there.
12:03
And I do think it has a secondary benefit that if boards
12:06
are looking to diversify, which many of them still are, then you
12:10
have a big pool of potentially diverse talent you can tap into
12:13
as well. So my hope is over the next
12:16
things move slowly in boards as I said.
12:17
So my hope is over the next decade we see more and more
12:21
CHROS of chief people officers joining boards and I think it
12:24
will start to happen. Yeah, very good.
12:27
And from your experience working at companies like MoMA and
12:31
Synlogic, you're obviously working very closely with the CE
12:35
OS of those companies. Just talk us through why that
12:38
partnership is so vital, particularly in in smaller
12:41
biotechs like those. I, I, I think it's a really
12:45
important relationship clearly. And I think the, there's so much
12:51
of whether you can deliver on your goals and your mission as a
12:54
company depends on whether you have the money to do it and
12:57
whether you have the people to do it.
12:58
Those are, those are two factors and the capabilities obviously
13:01
within that. And you'll typically have ACFO
13:03
who's there to make sure that you have the finance and capital
13:06
you can deploy against whatever your goals are and your chief
13:10
people officers there to make sure you have the people and the
13:12
talent and the culture that's going to deliver on that.
13:15
And so I, I think it's, it's particularly in biotechs where,
13:19
you know, it's a highly intensive human capital
13:20
business. It's knowledge, knowledge
13:22
business. I think it's really, really
13:24
important that the the CEO knows they have someone they can trust
13:27
who's going to work tirelessly to, to build the right culture,
13:29
get the right talent, make sure the organization is really
13:32
performing in a high, a highly effective manner.
13:36
I, I also think that the, the CEO role can be extremely lonely
13:41
in different companies and start having somebody close that they
13:45
can be a confidant that can make it, they can rely on, they can
13:48
bounce ideas off. I think that can be important.
13:51
There's a great CEO network out there within biotech and I know
13:54
that they, they share ideas a lot with each other, but having
13:56
somebody within the company who's that that kind of that
13:58
sounding board can be, I think a useful thing to see for the CEO
14:01
as well. So I do think it's a really
14:04
important relationship and it's one that hopefully I've
14:07
cultivated here in other roles. Yeah.
14:10
And you've, you've touched on Synlogic already where you were
14:13
for almost 7 years. Talk us through the highs of
14:16
that journey, you know, going from an early stage company to
14:19
to, you know, getting the program through the clinic and
14:22
growing the the business out, as well as the lows of, you know,
14:26
restructuring and eventually having to wind the company down.
14:30
Yeah, we, we had many, many highs, Tom, and we had, we had
14:34
many, many lows. I think like a bit like a cat.
14:38
We had 9 lives. I sometimes think it's in logic
14:41
and I like to think that we really gave it our best shot.
14:46
But unfortunately it was, it was not to be.
14:49
So the, the science of synlogic was really highly innovative.
14:52
We were taking E coli Nistle as a living bacteria.
14:55
We were using synthetic biology to engineer the E coli Nistle as
14:59
a therapeutic, as a living therapeutic that you take like a
15:02
probiotic, go into the gut, chop a toxin and therefore reduce the
15:07
effects of, of, of a harmful disease.
15:09
And we were working on rare metabolic diseases primarily the
15:14
the technology was really, really innovative and we were
15:16
really the only people doing it. And that has many, many pros and
15:19
cons. But it can be very hard just
15:22
from a, a fundraising and capital type perspective to
15:26
raise funds on something that is so innovative and keep people
15:29
interested in the natural cycle of long gaps between data
15:34
readouts for a small company with different programs.
15:37
So I joined when we were about 42 people.
15:40
As I said, we were just going into development.
15:42
We were just getting ready to go public.
15:45
And that was a fantastic, real high on the day that we went
15:49
public, we, we got a bus, we took the whole company down.
15:52
You could fit them all in one bus.
15:53
Took the whole company down to to ring the bell at NASDAQ and
15:57
that, you know, fantastic experience for everyone to be
15:59
involved in in something like that, which was great.
16:03
And those early days of building things out with fantastic.
16:07
We built out our own manufacturing from scratch,
16:09
really bootstrapped it. One day I had equalities for a
16:13
guy, Rick, fantastic guy because we were struggling a bit on the
16:16
manufacturing side, say, Oh, I know a guy that might be able to
16:18
help. And if you ever hear a guy that
16:20
knows a guy, that's kind of how good things happen.
16:22
So that, you know, early days of building all this up, we're just
16:25
incredible experience. The team was phenomenal work
16:28
with some great people, but it was a, it was a hard slog.
16:33
It was hard to raise funds, hard to raise capital.
16:38
First program into the clinic unfortunately didn't work out
16:41
and that was a hit that was hard to kind of recover from, really
16:44
impacted our stock. We were public at the time.
16:46
And unfortunately, you don't get the same ability to come iterate
16:49
on stuff, particularly for an early platform, if you're public
16:52
as you do when you're private, because everything is is is
16:55
reported and you just don't have the chance to kind of go back
16:58
and lick your wounds a little bit and then come at it again.
17:01
And our second program was a lot stronger than our first.
17:04
And so I think had we been private, maybe things would have
17:07
be a bit different. But we took a hit on the stock
17:10
and then it was hard to raise funds.
17:12
And then unfortunately, we built the company up.
17:14
But as as it got harder and harder to raise capital to
17:17
support increasingly expensive development programs, we had to
17:20
go through different cutbacks and we went through a series of
17:23
different reductions. And then eventually we closed
17:26
the company. And that was really, really
17:27
tough because at that point in time you've got really a really
17:31
strong team, everyone working incredibly hard.
17:35
It's just incredibly sad to release people.
17:36
But I like to think firstly we look people looked after people
17:40
on the way out the door. I like to think that everyone
17:44
felt we did as good a job as we can.
17:46
We took a swing at it. Sometimes you swing and you
17:48
miss, but unless you take a swing at it you will never know.
17:51
So I think we did the best we could on the programs and I
17:54
think it was an incredible experience and a great, a great
17:57
journey we had over the 10 years of the company in the seven
17:59
years I was, I was there. So I'm incredibly proud of, of
18:02
the work we did. Not many companies making the
18:04
phase three as a small biotech. So I'm, I'm delighted that we
18:07
got to phase three. And I just hope that we move the
18:10
field forwards both in terms of engineered bacteria as
18:13
therapeutics, but also the, the lead program was in the disease
18:16
called phenylcatinuria or PKU. And I hope that we've helped
18:20
others who follow us because it's a a disease in new in need
18:24
of many new treatments as well. So good experience, but you're
18:27
really bittersweet at the end when we shut the place down.
18:30
Yeah. And I think you've just
18:31
summarized biotech in a sort of nutshell with the highs and
18:34
lows. You know, one minute you, you're
18:36
expanding and you, you've got drugs in the clinic and you go
18:39
in IPO and then sometimes macroeconomic factors can just
18:43
prove too much of a challenge. Yeah, no, it's, it's funny.
18:46
You could, if you graphed our headcount over the life of the
18:50
company, which I, I did, you could see distinct periods,
18:54
rapid growth level where you're consolidating relatively flat
18:58
growth to kind of replacing turnover.
19:00
But you're really one of our board members used to describe
19:02
it as you first you grow up, then you go out.
19:04
So you're working on optimizing everything, capabilities,
19:07
performance. Ideally you'd hope to kick on
19:10
from there to another period of rapid growth, but sadly with
19:13
some logic it went from consolidation to then a
19:16
reduction and eventually closure.
19:18
So on the on the head crowd graph, you end up with very
19:21
distinct phases and it's kind of clear what you're working on at
19:24
those different times. Yeah, fine.
19:27
And you've held HR leadership roles on both side of the fence,
19:30
so large farmer, Pfizer and Shire and now in small biotech,
19:34
it's in logic and Mona, what are the biggest differences that
19:38
you've experienced in leading people's strategy in big farmer
19:42
versus biotech? And does that change your
19:44
approach it all as an HR lead? I, I think that the, the roles
19:50
are different. I don't necessarily think
19:53
they're better or worse. I think some of it is you have
19:56
to pick what you want to work on at the, at the time and the
20:00
environment you think is going to be best at the time.
20:02
So in, in a big company there, there is so much going on.
20:07
You get exposed to a ton of different stuff you can.
20:11
You know, there's so many internal experts you can call on
20:13
for various different things. You can get some really good
20:18
teams together internally without having to stretch too
20:20
far. If you have a problem, you have
20:22
an army you can throw at it sometimes.
20:25
And I think there's a huge amount of depth.
20:27
You can spend a lot of time doing internal stuff.
20:30
Like, I don't know how many times I've worked on projects to
20:32
relook at the operating model in a big company, but it's probably
20:36
counting on two hands. How did you know what teams are
20:39
set up, governance structure. So you can become quite
20:41
internally focused and you know, you can be people can say it's
20:46
bureaucratic, although the review process often means you
20:51
make a better decision in the end, it might take you a bit
20:53
longer to get there because during those reviews, ultimately
20:56
people are giving input, which is which is valuable.
20:59
So I think that's that's incredibly important, can be
21:02
very, very rewarding. The small company, often times
21:07
you're a bit scrappier, you don't have that same internal
21:09
support. Your external network becomes
21:12
very, very valuable. We're very fortunate in biotech
21:14
that within the biotech HR community, there's a phenomenal
21:18
HR network. And if you're looking for ideas,
21:21
suggestions, coaching, guidance, you can reach out across the the
21:25
community and people will pitch in and help each other, which I
21:28
think is one of the great things about biotech.
21:30
And it really came to the fore during the pandemic when you
21:33
didn't know which way was up or down and lots of people helped
21:35
each other out. You can be nimble and quick in a
21:38
small company in a different way, but sometimes that means
21:41
you might not have fully thought through a decision or it might
21:43
be not fully baked at the point you're going out and you're, you
21:47
cover everything, which can be good or bad.
21:49
I mean, my, my role here covers HR, but also covers facilities,
21:54
operations, communication, legal, admin, IT, technology,
21:59
informatics, because because of a whole bunch of different
22:01
things. So you often times will wear
22:04
many, many different hats. And so I think it comes down to
22:08
kind of what environment you want to work in and where do you
22:11
see your particular strengths? Because I think the, the roles
22:13
can be, can be different in a small company like this, there's
22:16
not many people to delegate to. So if it needs to get done, you
22:19
need to do it, whereas you might be running a bigger team.
22:22
And you know, as I mentioned earlier, I've worked with three
22:24
people at least twice and that all came out of kind of bigger
22:28
company. So I do think that they're
22:30
different, Tom. They're not better or worse.
22:32
And I think some of it comes down to how you, how you go
22:36
when, when I speak to kind of students coming out of school
22:40
and they ask for kind of career advice, I always say start big
22:42
and go smaller. I think that's probably a bias
22:45
because that's somewhat what I did in terms of my experiences.
22:48
But I do think that early in your career, getting that blue
22:51
chip name on your resume and getting that blue chip
22:53
experience can be really, really good in terms of just shaping
22:57
you and, and learning and building your skills and
22:59
training you up. And then if you want to then dip
23:01
your toe in smaller companies, you then have that background to
23:04
kind of fall fall back on. So for, for what it's worth,
23:07
earlier people who are early in their career, that's the kind of
23:09
advice I, I give them, But they always say, you know, advice is
23:12
worth what you pay for it and that's free.
23:14
So you people should ignore that and and take their own path for
23:16
sure. Yeah, and I love the point that
23:20
you mentioned about like biotech being a community.
23:22
I think a really good example just given what's happening in
23:25
the current climate is a lot of layoffs going on, not just in
23:29
small biotech, but in big pharma.
23:31
And I think biotech has that community that when a company
23:33
hasn't for what they had to let go that, you know, resume books
23:36
have passed between companies and and genuinely just wanting
23:39
the best for people and helping people out.
23:41
So I think biotech, similar to what you said, is really good
23:44
from a community standpoint. Yeah, I agree with that.
23:48
I think the resume book is a great practice.
23:51
We benefited from that. It's in logic when we shut the
23:54
company down, seeing people pitch in and really be
23:59
supportive. Every resume book gets reviewed
24:02
by hundreds of people. People really look at trying to
24:04
place people as quickly as possible.
24:06
I think that's fantastic. It is a process that is getting
24:09
strained at the moment because the opportunities aren't there.
24:11
Sadly, with the with the job market and biotech being what it
24:14
is and the capital markets being what they are, it really is a
24:17
tough time. So you're getting a resume book
24:19
every day, every other day, you'd love to help out and it's
24:22
just not the positions to do it, but that will pick up.
24:25
So I think the practice needs to continue.
24:28
And as we hopefully get out of this, this dip we're in and
24:31
things start to pick up, there are some fantastic people out
24:34
there on the market and I really look forward to seeing them
24:36
placed pretty soon. So I hope as things pick up,
24:39
maybe not this year, maybe early next year, but you know, the
24:42
resume book is a great example of people pitching and helping
24:45
out. Yeah, for sure.
24:47
And this is a question that we always finish with on the Bio
24:50
Hub, and I know I wanted to give you a heads up on it as well,
24:53
but if you were to have dinner with three people, past or
24:56
present, who would they be and why?
24:58
They don't necessarily need to be people that work in biotech,
25:02
although they can be if you like.
25:03
But yeah, three people for dinner.
25:05
Yeah, thank. Thanks for the heads up on this
25:08
because it was actually quite thought provoking and I tried to
25:10
get to an answer that was, you know, something that I had
25:16
considered. So my, I hope it's OK.
25:19
My list is actually four people rather than rather than three.
25:23
The, the first people I'd love to have dinner with are my
25:27
grandparents on my dad's side. I had the good fortune that I, I
25:32
got to know my grandparents on my mom's side reasonably well,
25:35
But just given where I grew up was far away from, from that
25:37
branch, my family, given they passed away when I was pretty
25:40
young. I never really, I don't really
25:42
have any memories of my dad's parents and I'd love to meet
25:46
him. And, and I think that would be a
25:49
really interesting experience. My, my grandfather worked down
25:55
coal mines and so very, very different experience to how I
25:59
grew up. And I'm sure his life and his
26:02
experience would be fascinating. So that was, that was one.
26:06
The second, and I say, and I say this knowing that there's a lot
26:10
of baggage with this. The second is Churchill, and I
26:15
think that whenever you see, I mean, obviously I grew up in the
26:18
UKI grew up in Scotland, Whenever you see kind of lists
26:23
of the greatest Britain, whoever lived, Churchill was always top
26:26
and I think his lessons on leadership would be fascinating.
26:30
And he was always quick with a joke as well.
26:32
So it'd probably be quite an entertaining dinner.
26:35
I say there is baggage because you know, some of the things,
26:38
some of the acts he did while Prime Minister don't stand,
26:42
haven't really stood the test of time particularly well.
26:44
And I think he he's seen as being potentially racist and
26:48
misogynistic. So I'd love to take the good
26:51
parts of Churchill and recognize it's one dinner, not a kind of
26:54
friend for for life. And then the third is is Taylor
26:59
Swift. So I have a 12 year old daughter
27:02
and A and a nine year old daughter.
27:04
And if I could tell them I had dinner with Taylor Swift, they'd
27:06
just be blown away. So for completely personal,
27:10
selfish reasons, the third would be Taylor Swift.
27:12
I think she's an incredible business person.
27:14
She writes good songs. I think it would be, it would be
27:16
fascinating, but it's more so I could tell my kids I did it.
27:20
So my grandparents on my dad's side, Churchill and Taylor
27:22
Swift, those are my 3. Yeah, I love that and I love the
27:26
thought that's gone into to some of those answers as well.
27:29
But look, thanks so much for helping us out with this.
27:31
I think it's been really unique just to see to to listen and
27:34
hear your perspective on like why HR people aren't on board.
27:39
Like that was something I was genuinely interested in,
27:41
something that I've noticed for a while and just your journey
27:44
through big pharma through to small biotech, I think.
27:47
Yeah, thanks so much for helping us out with this.
27:49
I think you you've added a lot of a lot of value.
27:51
Fantastic. Tom, it's been an absolute
27:53
pleasure. Great to see you.
27:53
Thanks for the opportunity and it's it's great.
27:55
I look forward to seeing future podcasts with other people as
27:58
well. So thank you so much for doing
27:59
this.