Introduction:

Stephanie Sousa, Senior Vice President of Operations at a Stealth Company, who recently joined Transcend Therapeutics as Senior Vice President of Operations. Stephanie has worked in life sciences her whole career for various well known firms in Greater Boston like Novartis, Agios Pharmaceuticals, Odyssey Therapeutics, and now Transcend.

Outline:

How and what made you get into the life science industry?

Did you know ‘Operations’ was what you wanted to do?

You spent over 15 years at Novartis as Director of Operations, Global Discovery Chemistry, Director of Scientific Operations, then Global Head of Scientific Operations...tell us about how your roles and responsibilities evolved and what the experience meant for you working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

What motivated your move over to Agios? How large was the firm at the time you joined then

by the time you left?

As the VP of Facilities Operations, how was it managing a 200k sf footprint across multiple building at University Park?

Agios is not a small company, but what was different in your day to day going from large pharma to a company under 1k employees?

Taking us to the present, did the relationships you made earlier in your career present the opportunity to join Odyssey and Transcend?

What is keeping you busy today and how exciting is it helping a company grow during its earlier stages?

In your experience, what are the most important aspects for an earlier-mid stage company to successfully grow and attract the right talent?

How much of the science do you have to understand when building out a lab facility? Is it important having flexible infrastructure to accommodate the potential future therapeutic areas your firm may get into? There must be many, many considerations that go into the strategy of what you need to ensure the team can build their science?

Structurally, what does your department team typically look like?

Did Covid affect the operational process for a life science company with in-house lab? Do you think anything changed for the long-term and not only the short-term?

What excites you most about the journey ahead for you and your team?

Produced by Slice of Media, Inc.