Why caring is winning in the CRO space

Raman Sehgal (0:10)

Hey guys and girls, welcome back to Molecule to Market, where we go inside the outsourcing space of pharma and bio-pharma services, covering every stage of the global drug development and commercialization life cycle. I am your host, Raman Sehgal, and in today's episode, I'll be speaking with Kevin Jones, who is the CEO at Aliri Bioanalysis. What a tremendous guest I have in store for you today.

Lovely, lovely guy and incredibly experienced, three decades in the sector, predominantly in the CRO space, and very generous and honest with his views on the space as well. You are in for a treat. A bit of background about Kevin, he's the CEO of Aliri, as I mentioned, a contract research organization, supporting drug developers with regulated bioanalysis and PKTK testing. Kevin began his career running labs and spent three decades leading large multi-disciplinary scientific teams across both GMP and GLP clinical environments and led global bioanalysis at Covance, now Labcorp, and served as VP and GM of Bioanalytical ADME Vaccine and Discovery Labs at Q2 Solutions, which became Iqvia, where his work spanned lab operations, global integration, and strategic growth. And he's known for driving operational excellence in building service organizations at scale without compromising quality and client experience. And that is something that really, really comes across today. You'll hear it in the kind of way he talks about clients and delivering work. He has a really, really caring vibe to the way that he delivers work and cares about culture as well, which I think is fantastic. I hope you enjoyed today. I hope you enjoy today's show. Don't forget to subscribe and rate wherever you're listening. Enjoy.

This episode is brought to you by Bora Pharmaceuticals. I've got a real soft spot for Bora. I first met Bobby Sheng, CEO, back in 2017, and it's been amazing to watch the business grow and expand to become truly top tier global CDMO. Bobby was in fact one of our first ever guests on Molecule to Market. A great, great guy. Bora now supports many of the biggest pharma companies across the globe. Bora has become known as the CDMO that brings a genuine partnership to clients. As shown through their shared risk promise, their white glove service, and their peerless on-time info delivery record. If you want to feel more confident about your CDMO, then I suggest you head to boracdmo.com.

Hey Kevin, welcome to Molecule to Market.

Kevin Jones (2:50)

Hi Raman, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Raman Sehgal (2:53)

Great to have you as well. I've been looking forward to this interview for some weeks since we first met because you have quite an incredible career in the sector. I'm obviously super keen to get your thoughts on the CRO space as well and give us an updated view on that market as well. I suppose just to start off with Kevin, maybe just give our listener a bit of the backstory, like your journey into the industry and some of the roles that you've done on the way. Obviously, you've worked at some of the largest CROs in the industry. Maybe just give us a chronicle of your backstory and how you got to where you are today.

Kevin Jones (3:34)

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the time and appreciate you asking that question.

You know, I basically started even before I graduated college working in the CRO lab services environment. So my last semester of college, I actually started working for a local contract testing lab at that time was called AAI Pharma. I think it's called Alchemy these days. I started working in the lab at night and I got my career started there and then slowly moved up in the ranks there. And, you know, did GMP type services, formulation support, manufacturing support, excipients, you know, those types of things, but really kind of got my roots in that contract services business and really loved supporting the customers and driving the science and seeing the business side, as well as the science and the blend of the two.

And then from there, I later moved on into bioanalysis in the GLP world and GCP, GCLP, et cetera, with Covance, which became LabCorp and worked my way through that organization, actually through the ranks all the way to leading the global bioanalysis business for LabCorp Covance for about 10 years, which was an exciting opportunity there. I had about nine sites and, you know, a lot of opportunities to travel and meet different people and truly support some of the bigger studies in the world out there, and it was very rewarding. And then the opportunity to join Q² Solutions, which later became Iqvia. And again, that was more on the bioanalysis side, but also drug metabolism, ADME services, vaccine clinical trial support, and then drug discovery. So a very broad breadth there at Iqvia Labs, and I really loved my time there. And then I wanted to make some different changes as far as size and scope. I had done corporate world for a number of years, about 25 years at that point of doing just corporate support, and wanted to work with some of the smaller organizations out there and have the opportunity to help them build and grow and develop and create the systems that they needed to make it to their next chapter. So I set out kind of on my own there to look for some of those opportunities. I had gotten some M&A experience when I was at Iqvia, and this gave me the opportunity to work with some private equity groups and investor groups and do a lot of the global integrations for acquired assets. And I understood a lot of those challenges, but I had seen it from the buyer side at Iqvia. I wanted to then see it from the seller side. So it gave me an opportunity to go out, and I started working with some smaller organizations, and eventually landing at Aliri, where I am today, and really enjoying my time, and truly fulfilling what I saw as that dream of helping these smaller organizations to really come to fruition in systems, processes, cultures, team dynamics, integrations, operational excellence, commercial excellence. You know, really bringing all of those principles to bear to help people really become the company that they can be for the future. And then also that goal of working with the equity guys and some of the investors and board members from a different point of view. You know, instead of being the buyer, I'm more on the seller side and working from the inside out instead of the outside in. So throughout my career, it's always been in lab operations and operational excellence, global strategy development, you know, business dynamics around the commercials and negotiating, you know, NSAs and alliance agreements and governance of relationships. So truly enjoy my time doing that, but not too many things I haven't seen.