Executive search conducted as a long-term partnership builds companies of lasting value. With client and candidate relationships that span decades, TSG offers an expert perspective across executive search, science, and business and a level of insight that goes far beyond the search process. As Life Sciences specialists, our ultimate success is determined by the industry impact of the executives we place.
We place not only the C-Suite but also the executive team. Leveraging our cross-functional Life Sciences expertise, we are regularly engaged to build out entire leadership teams for our clients.
The search initiates with a client meeting to gain alignment on search requirements, timeline, and process. The competitive landscape is analyzed, criteria and strategy are set, and a marketplace-ready position description is created. A core team of Managing Partner, Recruiter, Researcher, and Operations Associate is deployed on every search engagement from kick-off to close.
During the second phase, TSG engages its network of executive relationships and launches original research to map the most up-to-date organizational and competitor landscape. As research and recruitment continue, interviews and formal benchmarking are conducted to assess candidates against pre-defined criteria for specific competencies, experience, leadership skills, culture fit, availability, and motivation. Regular progress reports to the client are scheduled for the duration of the search.
Throughout the candidate calibration phase, candidates are prepared for client interviews, targeted recruitment and referencing are on-going, and bi-weekly status updates to the client continue.
Final interviews, compensation review, and professional referencing define this stage. TSG facilitates a successful closure by counseling the candidate on both their resignation and the on-boarding process. Performance monitoring is active and a two-way feedback loop between the client and TSG is established.
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Global Biopharmaceutical Company
Senior Vice President, U.S. Managed Markets
Our client engaged The Stevenson Group to identify a Senior Vice President of U.S. Managed Markets to replace a valued member of the U.S. leadership team. With two product submissions and subsequent launches on the near-term horizon, it was imperative that our client hire an executive who could not only maintain the strong momentum generated by the incumbent but also identify and build new competencies to support the company’s focus in oncology and immuno-oncology. It was also essential to introduce and build a “buy-and-bill” model, given that expertise did not yet sit within the company.
The Stevenson Group was retained based on our five-year partnership with this client on talent initiatives across functions, geographies, and all key therapeutic areas, including neurodegenerative disease, immuno-oncology, oncology, and immunology. Throughout the partnership, TSG has demonstrated deep domain understanding of both the oncology marketplace and the evolving managed markets landscape vis-à-vis the R&D initiatives, commercial strategy, and company culture of our client.
In the context of this search, our client was focused on competencies to counter the reduced profitability of the traditional fee-for-service care model in the wake of the Affordable Care Act. With several recent and highly visible executive placements in managed markets, TSG was particularly well positioned to target innovation leaders in the design and delivery of healthcare.
The Stevenson Group rapidly developed a robust candidate slate by leveraging industry relationships and mapping all competitor companies operating in oncology with established “buy-and-bill” infrastructures. In addition to identifying candidates at the cutting edge of the oncology payer space, we also vetted candidates for global as well as U.S. product launch experience, as we anticipated that the SVP of U.S. Managed Markets would be expected to provide input on future global target product profiles (TPPs) and global value dossiers.
The candidate placed by TSG had both the strong track record of capitalizing on emerging trends in managed markets and the requisite “buy-and-bill” expertise to serve as a change agent as the company prepared to compete in uncharted areas. The Chief Commercial Officer, to whom the Senior Vice President of U.S. Managed Markets reports, continues to provide positive feedback on the impact of this executive. We continue to partner with our client on the build-out of his team.
Biopharmaceutical Company
Executive Search
Over the course of the fifteen years since inception, our biotech client has evolved from a research start-up to a public company with one drug approved for market use and one of the most robust pipelines in the industry. The lead asset, a nanoencapsulation of a standard chemotherapy drug targeting a particularly intractable cancer, qualified for accelerated regulatory approval as an effective treatment in an area of high unmet need. Global sales for this drug in the primary therapeutic area alone are estimated at $800 million by 2025; the global market for all nanoparticles in pharma/biotech is estimated to reach $80 billion by 2019.
Founded by Harvard and MIT scientists, our client’s long-term goal from the outset went beyond discovery to the development, marketing, and commercialization of novel therapeutics as a fully integrated oncology company. Despite the scope of the projected build-out across all functions and the on-going challenge of attracting top oncology talent, our client had a distinct advantage in that highly competitive marketplace as a biotech at the cutting edge of targeted drug development paired with next generation diagnostics technology. With their first marketed drug in the lucrative nanoparticle space, our client offered candidates a significant opportunity from a commercial perspective as well.
At a critical juncture in the history of the company, as our client was transitioning from a research focus to a clinical focus, TSG stepped in to scale up the leadership team across all functions: research, development, manufacturing, and commercial. In addition to our domain and functional knowledge, TSG was retained on this initiative based on our reputation in the industry for expert communication of the unique value proposition of each client’s oncology story to the market. In the context of this build-out, that involved addressing the broad range of issues of topmost concern to highly targeted oncology talent.
Despite the business opportunity presented by the continued record pace of R&D investment in oncology, candidates in this space remain highly selective about both the timing of a move to a new company and the type of opportunity that merits their consideration. When presented with a new position, candidates naturally give significant weight to whether their new projects would offer both compelling science to differentiate their careers and the likelihood of clinical and commercial success. However, premier oncology candidates are primarily driven by passion for their work and commitment to their products and patient populations. They also give considerable weight to whether their departure from their current team would create a void at a crucial stage of development or commercialization. TSG is expert at negotiating all the hurdles that affect a candidate’s decision, from the commercial forecast and the scientific focus to the timing of current commitments.
As our client went from privately held biotech through their IPO and first FDA approval, TSG partnered on the critical hires that led their evolution. Target candidates for the executive team had both the scientific and the commercial competencies to drive a proprietary systems-based platform that paired biologic and diagnostic techniques from fields as diverse as cell biology, computational modeling, and protein engineering. To differentiate our client as an employer-of-choice, TSG communicated the commercial and scientific value proposition of their unique approach to drug discovery, development, and delivery and then custom-tailored the pitch to each candidate’s individual priorities. Culture was another strong selling point for our client, and TSG maintained consistent messaging about multi-disciplinary teams of mission-driven, patient-focused researchers, clinicians, and business executives building a high-capacity pipeline with broad utility across cancer.
The cross-functional scope of TSG’s build-out ranged from General Managers to serve as regional CEOs, to a Vice President of Manufacturing for multiple product candidates (pre-commercial and commercial), to Oncology Marketing Leads to champion pre-launch and launch strategy, to Field Leaders to develop training roadmaps for the commercial organization. TSG also built out the clinical development organization from the first physician and then inserted leaders into Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance, and Program Management.
With multiple oncology indications in development for their first marketed nanotherapeutic as well as five candidates in clinical trials and seven in preclinical or clinical development, our client is building a flexible platform for continued development across diverse markets. Joint development initiatives with partners in emerging markets and the EU have also resonated well with investors. As commercialization deals with global partners move forward, TSG remains focused on the expansion of the team.
Executive Search (Multiple)
After a decade of rapid change across the clinical, regulatory, and commercial landscape, our top 5 biopharmaceutical client brought in a new Executive Vice President of Global R&D to sharpen their focus on fundamental research as the primary engine of future growth. To address the rapid growth of biotech and the patent expiry of blockbusters across the industry, R&D resources were realigned against programs designed to simultaneously move the company into a stronger position in biologics and to maximize the strong legacy portfolio of small molecule medicines. As an initial step, the new EVP launched a major restructuring initiative focused on trimming the multibillion-dollar R&D budget and accelerating the development and approval of the company’s breakthrough biologic, a pioneering immunotherapy asset.
The Clinical Safety and Risk Management (CSRM) group within the research organization would play a crucial role in the company-wide initiative to boost R&D productivity. As heightened regulation escalated the scale and complexity of pharmacovigilance compliance, CSRM had been carrying a heavy operational burden across the product portfolio in all therapeutic areas. It was of paramount importance to improve both drug safety outcomes and regulatory compliance by making the process more cost-efficient, effective, and productive. A paradigm shift away from the legacy model (which separated clinical safety from post-marketing safety and risk management) was required.
With patient safety as their number one priority, the decision was made to realign CSRM by therapeutic cluster to mirror the broader R&D structure. The new Safety team would be an end-to-end pharmacovigilance organization resourced to support the businesses throughout the product life cycle regardless of commercial status, from the investigational stage to post-marketing risk management and safety surveillance.
The Stevenson Group was already deeply networked in Clinical Safety and Risk Management (CSRM) across therapeutic areas and had built out Safety teams for other clients as well as Clinical Development, Medical Affairs, and Commercial teams for this client over the course of our ten-year partnership.
In the context of this build-out, TSG’s deep, current knowledge of our client’s business gave us the credibility in the CSRM market to attract and retain executives with not only the medical expertise to make urgent judgment calls on patient care but also the business acumen to optimize R&D decision-making and influence key commercial and medical opinion leaders.
Prior to launching a comprehensive mapping of the Clinical Safety and Risk Management (CSRM) talent pool across the industry, The Stevenson Group worked directly with the Chief Safety Officer and the business leads to gain alignment from all internal stakeholders on the build-out strategy and the candidate selection criteria. To ensure that CSRM was optimally resourced to drive R&D productivity, the new team would be aligned with the businesses by therapeutic area cluster and structured as an end-to-end pharmacovigilance organization across all operational and strategic functions that drive drug safety governance, risk management, and proactive post-market safety surveillance.
Target candidates were scientific and clinical leaders with deep pharmacovigilance and risk management experience from companies with both marketed and development products in the relevant therapeutic areas. With a mandate to balance cost containment with the increasing pressure to innovate, ideal candidates would also need the domain expertise to become strategic consultants, not only on the CSRM function but also on their assigned therapeutic areas. Also essential to the success of the build-out were the leadership skills to serve as the face of the CSRM organization to government regulators and cross-functional governance committees as well as the development and commercial teams.
Over the course of 18 months, more than 15 executive searches were completed across therapeutic areas at the Executive Director, Senior Director, and Director levels in both CSRM and Clinical Trial Medical Review. The new CSRM team is a flexible and scalable consultative organization with end-to-end pharmacovigilance expertise, positioned to respond rapidly as our client builds their business globally in a demanding regulatory environment.
Biologics Subsidiary of Global Biopharmaceutical Company
Over the course of its 25-year history, our biologics client evolved into a leading global biotech by driving organic growth and a series of key acquisitions focused on developing and commercializing products across therapeutic areas (infectious disease, respiratory disease, inflammation, autoimmunity, oncology, cardiovascular/gastrointestinal, and neuroscience). When our client was ultimately acquired in one of the largest biotech deals of the decade, they became the biologics arm of a large, multi-national biopharmaceutical.
With generic competition hammering revenue across the industry, the UK-based parent turned to highly profitable specialty drugs to drive revenue. The decision was made at the corporate level to expand their biologics manufacturing capabilities by investing $200 million in the expansion of one of our client’s existing US-based biologics facilities. In addition to being a global leader in cell culture manufacturing, this site was the largest biologics manufacturing facility within the corporate parent’s global network. It was imperative to identify best-in-class industry executives to build scalable enterprise operations to keep pace with a projected growth rate that would triple their manufacturing capacity by 2020.
By the time of the plant expansion, TSG had been partnering with this client on leadership initiatives for over a decade, throughout their evolution into a world-class biologics manufacturer. When the CEO initiated a global expansion of production capacity for one of the largest pipelines in the industry, our client approached TSG to map best-in-class executives with both large-scale biologics manufacturing experience and the strategic mindset to manage the global scale of the corporate relationship.
As a first step, TSG launched a comprehensive industry mapping of executives with extensive experience in engineering and biologics manufacturing (both clinical and commercial) as well as the management of large teams and large-scale operations. To keep our client on the leading edge, TSG also maximized the diversity of the candidate slate with the outside perspectives that drive innovation. Once we had mapped the talent pool, we began to pipeline the candidates most qualified to lead the build-out of the manufacturing and operations facility. As we continued to prioritize the target candidates, TSG played an active role in relationship management to ensure decisive decision-making as the project progressed.
iologics Subsidiary of Global Biopharmaceutical Company
As soon as the search for the leader of the biologics facility was prioritized, TSG was able to hit the ground running with our comprehensive industry mapping of executives capable of stepping up to the full operational scope of the facility, from the commercial-scale manufacturing of marketed products to the production of clinical trial materials for an advancing pipeline of products. Target candidates were global leaders with strong track records of navigating the complex organizational hurdles of large-scale biologics manufacturing facilities as well as demonstrated change management expertise and impeccable relationships with regulatory bodies.
In addition to the search for the imminent expansion of the manufacturing facility, a key focus from the outset of the initial talent mapping and pipelining was to identify executives with the potential to grow within the organization, in order to have a long-term succession plan in place for the incumbent Executive Vice President of Operations.
Our placed candidate is a leading biologics executive with the requisite clinical and commercial manufacturing expertise and the large-scale operational and team management experience to scale the facility to hit corporate targets. In his current role, he is responsible for driving the development of scalable enterprise systems that ensure the consistent execution of production plans and the on-time delivery of high quality products to market. As potential successor to the Executive Vice President of Operations, he also has the competencies to lead on an enterprise level across all operations of a multi-site, global manufacturing organization (quality assurance/control; manufacturing/clinical/laboratory best practices; supply chain; IT; engineering; government programs; employee health and safety). In the EVP role, our placed candidate would be a key member of the executive team, with responsibility for the development and execution of long-range strategy and operating plans at the corporate level as well.
Biologics are considered to be the future of the pharmaceutical industry, projected to generate over 50% of sales within the next few years. By building capacity for critical launches, our placed candidate will play a vital role in maximizing the product portfolio that will cement our client’s position as the leading global biologics manufacturer.