Kristina Cutter

The best career advice I ever received came from a friend of mine when we were talking about careers and different positions. Her advice to me was, always ask yourself, why can't it be you? Or why not you? Instead of limiting ourselves, I feel like a lot of times women in particular, but I'm sure men as well, look at who has the role ahead of them and don't believe they measure up. Her advice was, why not you, and take a chance. I've kind of always thought about that, so when I get scared, I think about it. I think about, why not me? When opportunities arise, I'm much more open to them, and I see the possibility. So far, it's worked out. I've had a lot of fun in my career. I've learned a lot. It's been terrific, made lots of great connections. I feel really fortunate.

See every opportunity and every role as a way to learn. I'm a big advocate of everyone in pharma, at least once in their career, working in a big biotech or big pharma company. The reason is that you learn what it takes to have longevity. They're doing everything essentially right. They might be doing it with overkill, or a little bit more robustly than you would in a small biotech, but they are doing it right, because they're able to stay for the long haul. Sometimes when you take a role, what you're there for is not only to do your role, but also to learn more about that ecosystem and why. Always bring your head up and look at what are the connectors, and how does the organization work. Because if you have an understanding of how an organization operates, you start to understand where an organization needs to go to get a product to market, and you also become a visionary and a strategist, because you're raising your head out of your role and trying to understand what makes that organization successful. My biggest advice is sometimes embrace your role, and look up, and out to learn. Not necessarily to get there, but to learn. Be a good teammate, good listener, and good corporate citizen from the perspective of always watch out for what's going on around you. And also, be fearless in raising your hand when you see something that is an issue.

While AI is certainly a new challenge we have to deal with, I don't think it's fundamentally different from other industry-changing technologies we've faced. I've been in the industry long enough to remember when we didn't have computer systems that allowed us to collaborate on documents. We had to write things and hand them sequentially to people. When we were able to collaborate on a document, that was mind-blowing. AI is definitely far beyond that, but we're just seeing a new problem, and we have to apply some of the same pragmatism to AI that we did to all of these other things. What I really worry about is that in biotech, particularly these small biotech companies, we don't necessarily have the rigor that might be required. I worry that when someone who's not as seasoned comes in, they can't appreciate or be able to identify those potential pitfalls. So it's okay to be lean, but you have to know that you're lean, and know what you might need to look out for so that you can course correct quickly if you're too lean. There's a lot of things about the way business operates that you can't find in a document. You actually have to live and breathe it, and pay attention to it.

I value transparency. I value integrity. I value follow-through. And I also value kindness. I think you have to be kind, even if you're giving a hard message. You can still be kind.