You Might Also Like: Clinical Trialblazers

**Alberto Grignolo** (0:01)
Welcome to Clinical Trial Blazers, a podcast by Paracel Biotech, where we dive deep into the journeys of the industry leaders who are shaping clinical research and biotech innovation. I am your host, Alberto Grignolo. If you enjoy these conversations, please take a moment to rate, review, and follow the podcast on your favorite platform. It really helps more listeners discover the show. My guest today is Jay Roberts, a healthcare executive and leader with more than 30 years of experience, across biotechnology, diagnostics, healthcare technology, and life sciences. Jay has served as the CEO, COO, and CFO of multiple public and private companies. Among them, Bio and Bio, Cancer Genetics, Vermedica, Advantage Healthcare Solutions, Infologics, and Clarient. He has also led more than 50 mergers, acquisitions, and capital transactions, and serves on several boards of directors, including the US Pharmacopeia. Jay has also been a member of the Board of Directors and past chair of the Drug Information Association, DIA, where he and I are both fellows and where we have collaborated on numerous projects. What makes Jay's story particularly compelling is his transition from finance and operations into becoming a successful CEO. Jay Roberts, welcome.

**Jay Roberts** (1:19)
Hello, Alberto. So great to see you, as always.

**Alberto Grignolo** (1:23)
My first question is very simple. You have served as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Executive Officer in multiple life science companies. What was it like to move from focusing on finance to leading operations and eventually to steering the whole ship?

**Jay Roberts** (1:38)
The finance background actually turned out to be foundational for me.
And, you know, I have to say that I started my career as an entrepreneur, but I also found that I was very comfortable working inside of companies that were backed by private equity investors. And ultimately, I had a great opportunity about 15 years ago to join a publicly traded company, which I have to tell you I enjoyed mostly over the years in terms of the different types of ways companies can capitalize themselves.

**Alberto Grignolo** (2:08)
Is executive leadership something you felt called to early on in your career, or did you grow into that ambition? Were you born a CEO or did you gradually evolve into being a CEO?

**Jay Roberts** (2:19)
It was there in terms of desire and where I had vision in terms of what I wanted to do across my career. Oftentimes, my colleagues would say things to me like, boy, I wish you were our CEO.
So hearing that from other people validated my view of what I really wanted to be able to do in my career. Part of the reason that I was able to insert a Chief Operating Officer role in between gave me that, I think, that added credibility to be able to bring a finance brain into much more of a strategic way to think about running companies, leading people across any and many, many levels across organizations. Having leadership skill is something that I think is something I cherished. I know I've talked to my kids about it often in terms of how to mentor and coach them about how important it is. But I would say to your listeners, tuning up and being skilled and a student of a leader, I think goes a long way and it certainly helped me over my career. But I can tell you that the skill set that I learned, the network that I built, the sort of understanding of corporate finance had always been deep in my DNA and certainly deep in my passion.

**Alberto Grignolo** (3:35)
Some of my previous guests and other people I know in various industries have said, I had never thought of being a CEO until my boss told me or asked me, would I consider being the CEO? And some people say, oh, I never thought about it. I'll need to think about it. That wasn't the case with you, was it?

**Jay Roberts** (3:51)
Not really. Although I have to tell you, there is a person that stands out. And a number of years ago, I had the good fortune of being hired by a very experienced CEO. This was my first opportunity that I was given to join a public company.
And so as a CFO with no public company experience, he took a bit of a risk, I think, in bringing somebody in that didn't have that requisite experience or expertise. But at the same time, he immediately became my CEO mentor. And so I watched him, and I have to say from that experience, I knew that that was a place that I needed to be at some point in my career.

**Alberto Grignolo** (4:29)