Speaker 1:
Welcome to TD Cowen Insights, a space that brings leading thinkers together to share insights and ideas shaping the world around us. Join us as we converse with the top minds who are influencing our global sectors.
Ritu Baral:
Hi, I'm Ritu Baral, Senior Biotech Analyst at TD Cowen. I'm here at the 45th annual TD Cowen Healthcare Conference, here with Sarah Boyce, CEO of Avidity Bioscience. Thanks for joining us, Sarah.
Sarah Boyce:
It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Ritu Baral:
Can you tell us of the event or series of events that led you to knowing that you wanted to become a biotech CEO? It's an exhausting, if rewarding, commitment and one that doesn't happen without intent.
Sarah Boyce:
You know, it's a great question, and in terms of, I think for me, I didn't start out my career with this intent. I had a seminal moment where I saw the first patient ever to receive commercial drug of a product called Rituxan, and that was in the UK. And at that time, I had this aspect of, "Now I understand what I do. I can actually make an impact."
And then probably for the large part of my career, I lived in four different countries, have got to launch some incredible drugs, and then it was really only in the last 10 years, 10 years prior to becoming a CEO, that I really started to feel like, "I can do this job." And actually working with other CEOs and as a member of the executive team and feeling, "I can do this job, and I actually think I can do it better." And then I started to get super intentional about it and super intentional about that journey to become a CEO. Part of it was actually moving out of the commercial world and becoming a Chief Business Officer and doing something completely different but actually getting the experience of raising money and actually having that Wall Street exposure to then round off to where I am today now as the CEO of Avidity.
Ritu Baral:
So why a startup? What are the character strengths or flaws that a good startup CEO needs to have that may just not be as important for leadership in a more established company?
Sarah Boyce:
Yeah, so for me, when I was very intentional about picking a CEO role, I wanted a platform technology company. I wanted a company that was small, that was private, and where I could really see a link as to what the company could do. So that led me to start. At the time, I think Avidity, we were 19 employees. I was employee number 20. It was also about realizing that the thing I got most excited about and what I really am at my core is I'm a builder, and I wanted to build, and I wanted to shape a company.
Coming from a commercial background, I've had many times where I'd launched drugs and wished certain things had been done earlier, so it was the opportunity to build a company with real intent around where we were going. I think one of the key characteristics or one of the key things you need in a startup is one, that aspect to have a vision, but also to have a lot of resilience because a lot of things happen that you don't expect along the way and being able to move quickly and adapt as you learn.
Ritu Baral:
What value do you find yourself having to keep really mindfully front and center in the face of the day-to-day conflicting charges, challenges of being a CEO?
Sarah Boyce:
I think for me, the most important one that I keep front and center is around why I do what I do and that I have an incredibly privileged opportunity to lead the company that I lead, and we're looking to make a profound impact in thousands, in tens of thousands, in hundreds of thousands of people's lives and keeping that why and the purpose around what we're doing front and center in my mind.
Ritu Baral:
And your extensive background in commercial is quite unique amongst founding CEOs. How has it shaped Avidity's strategy pre-commercialization?
Sarah Boyce:
So certainly pre-commercialization, it's been something we've been thinking about for a long time, so we have had patient advocacy at Avidity for five years. We established a patient advocacy function before we'd even entered the clinic, and that was patient advocacy also linked with early thinking about market access. And from when we designed our phase one study, we were also designing what we thought a pivotal study could look like, so we had a good map of from getting from the start to the next phase of getting into a pivotal study and then obviously moving into commercialization. So a lot of that thinking came in really early.
Ritu Baral:
And then how do you balance your input, given your background, your input into the commercial team versus being able to step back and delegate once, for instance, your DMD drug does launch?
Sarah Boyce:
That's a really good question because I love the commercial side, but I also have an incredible Chief Commercial Officer with Eric Mosbrooker, who actually sat on our board for 18 months before he became our Chief Commercial Officer, so Eric and I actually got to know each other really well.
Because it was one of those roles for me, I have an amazing executive team, and as a CEO, you're only as good as the team of people that you have around you. Many of the roles I actually can't do. I can't be a Chief Scientific Officer, I can't be a CFO, but I have done the CCO role. So for me, it's one where there's a great deal of trust, of mutual respect between myself and Eric, and also for me, it's, I'm not the Chief Commercial Officer, he is, and he's building the team, and he's building his team to get to launch these incredible drugs.
We also have an aspect of knowing sort of when to check in. I also know that I'm not really interested in the things that are happening on the day-to-day. I'm really interested in what are the insights that we're learning. It's not about what's at the bottom of the funnel, it's about what's at the top of the funnel. It's about patient identification, how we're mapping the marketplace, how that informs our strategy. So they're the types of things that I focus on, so a lot less operational in nature and a lot more strategic from a commercial discussion.
Ritu Baral:
Great. Thank you for joining us today, Sarah. That was really interesting in how you tie your background into what you're doing right now and Avidity's path forward.
Sarah Boyce:
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode of TD Cowen Insights.
