Skills I Learned That Have Helped Me As A Public Pharma CEO

By Neil McFarlane

On the first page of my CV, you see a relatively traditional path up the career ladder in biopharma with various roles of increasing responsibility in companies such as SangStat, Genzyme, UCB, and Retrophin, which ultimately led to my appointment as the CEO of Adamas. The second page reveals a less traditional beginning.

The better part of my early career and formative years was shaped by the care of people and the criticality of effective teams. While I learned a great deal about the industry in the latter part of my career, as a leader, my foundation was molded by the valuable lessons learned in two very different spaces — the U.S. Army Reserve and nursing.