In this episode Sam McElroy sits down with David McErlane, Group President of the Biologics Division at Catalent, to discuss his career, craft and his read on where the industry is heading.

Recorded in San Diego, David talks through 30 years in large molecule manufacturing, the patient story in 2002 that set the direction of his career, and the advice that made him stop taking opportunities as they came and start building deliberately.

We cover:

The T-shaped career and the three things you need to run a business

Why he hires builders, not operators, and the cost of getting that wrong

What he looks for beyond the CV: values-based decisions, judgment, change agility

Where the CDMO talent constraint really sits, and why it is people not capital

AI as augmentation, Catalent's QAI deviation tool, and what it means for hiring

CDMO Career Stories is part of the Metric Podcast Network.

Welcome to CDMO Career Stories, part of the Metric Podcast Network.

The careers that shape the CDMO and biopharma industry rarely follow a straight line.

This show is about the people behind them.

Every episode, we sit down with senior leaders and commercial practitioners who talk about the decisions that define them, how they build and lead high performing teams, how they win business, and where the talent landscape is heading next.

We're here in San Diego with David McErlane, Group President for the Biologics Division at Catalent.

David, thanks very much for meeting with us today.

Great to have you here.

It's great to be here.

Thanks for the invite.

Appreciate it.

Oh, good.

I guess for those that perhaps aren't aware of you, just give us a little introduction to yourself.

Yeah, I'm David McErlane.

I am the Group President of Biologics at Catalent.

So Catalent, people will probably be aware of Catalent as a large global CDMO.

We have more than 40 facilities in four continents and biologics is one of three segments in the business.

So we have the pharma consumer health business.

That's really the legacy.

Catalent is the biggest part of Catalent.

It's, you know, oral solids,

key technologies like Softgel and Zydis.

It's really what Catalent's been known for and what it's great at over the years.

We have another segment that's clinical supply specialties and that segments everything that customers need to get their therapies to patients and clinical centers.

So manufacturing and packaging and supply and distribution of clinical materials to clinical centers to patients.

And that's a global network again that can support clinical trials all over the place.

And they also have some specialty capabilities like micronization, spray dry for nasal inhalation types of delivery systems.

And then biologics, everything large molecule in the business.

We develop and manufacture things like iPSCs, plasmid cell therapy, gene therapy, mRNA, all manner of proteins from

regular monoclonal antibodies to more exotic and complex multi-specifics.

We also have a drug product formulate fill finish business and we have a complex analytics business.

So we can support our customers across many parts of the value chain, across many modalities.

And I've been at Catalent there for 2 1/2 years, been in the industry for 30 and most of that has been in large molecules.

And most of that has been pharma services companies like Catalent.

And for you, I guess, how did that journey begin?

How did you get into pharma and what was the sort of reason behind that?

It's a long and complicated story.

I actually started or got into industry.

Actually out of school, I got the opportunity to do an apprenticeship with a large company.

So they would send you to college for four years and when you weren't in class at college, you would be working at the sites.

So it was a really great experience or it was a great grounding because as you're learning things at college, and I did engineering, so as you're learning to be an engineer academically in college,

When you went in college at the summer break or whatever it was, you were in the plants and you were on site, you're learning how to apply that in very practical ways.

And it was, you got the opportunity to rotate around different disciplines and different types of engineering.

And that started me in industry and it was, I think, a good way and probably very fortunate.

I think to have that level of grounding and the combination of getting the academic education but also the practical experience really, really quickly and early in my career.

And it being a big company, there were lots of opportunities to work in different modalities or different parts of industry.

And I just found myself kind of gravitating towards

the pharma side of that.

And I managed at some point after working different rotations around different plants and different parts of engineering, I ended up in the Capital Projects Group.

So this was designing and building assets, manufacturing assets and laboratories.

And I ended up my first real kind of foray into pharma was actually in

in DNA and peptide medicines and getting involved in designing and building a facility for those types of modalities.

And this was a long time ago and I think, we've gone through the pandemic where, everyone's talking about mRNA and mRNA vaccines and I was working on nucleic acids many, many years before people could figure out how to get them to work.

So I ended up coming to this big company

you know, this great grounding from, you know, academics plus experience getting to, you know, rotate around different roles and just ended up through capital projects, getting involved in the pharma side and thinking about what it takes to design and build pharma manufacturing plants.

And then we started to get, you know, you start to get more involved in what that means and what it's for.

I just thought being more involved in the pharma side appealed to me because it had a real impact for me, and I think being involved in pharma, that was the start of the journey of being involved in making pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, because I thought it was important.

And I thought that, you know, there's a million ways you can pay your mortgage.

You can do, you know, go in many different directions in your career.

I've always been attracted to pharma and biopharma because I think the work that we do is important and it matters.

And that really started really from an early point in my career.

And really from that point, I think this was in the late 90s at that point, thinking about what we were doing, what those manufacturing assets were for,

what they were possibly doing for patients.

In the DNA peptide side, these were antisense oligos and a lot of those projects were for different cancers.

And I remember being in one of our US facilities at that time around the business.

I think this was maybe a couple of years later, maybe 2002.

And that was the first time I'd experienced a patient story.

where in these assets they brought a patient in to talk about the impact that what we had built and what we were making in the assets that we built had had on them and their family and their lives.

And that was it.

If I wasn't convinced before, that was it.

All I wanted to do was work in biopharma and do more and more of that.

Yeah, I guess something like that must be incredibly rewarding and probably easy to lose sight of in terms of viewing it as a business, as an industry.

it's often, I guess, you're removed from the end user, I suppose.

So.

Yeah, I mean, I think that was probably one of the most profound experiences in my career.

I remember it very vividly.

But this lady coming in to talk about, you know, our cancer treatment and what this, again, antisense oligo that we had manufactured and the plan that I'd been involved in and what had done for her.

And it was just like, it was, you know, the impact of that was

was quite something.

And it's something Catalent today is really good at.

we've arranged a number of different patient days at sites where we bring patients or our customers, patients, patient families, advocacy groups to talk about the impact of the things that we make around our facilities.

And, you know, there's

few things in life that are more inspirational than that for people in this industry.

And it's one of our values at Catalent is patient first and having contact, direct contact and interaction with some of the patients at the site.

There's just, again, there's a few things that will motivate you and your team more than hearing about the impact that what you do has on people's lives.

It's just, it's

It's what gets you out of bed in the morning and what motivates you to, persevere in a somewhat challenging environment.

Yeah, And is there anything within that led you down the path?

Obviously, as you mentioned, you've got significant experience in pharma services in terms of your time at BioReliance and then on to Lonza and now Catalent.

So

Was there anything specific in those initial sort of grounding years that made you think the pharma services world is exactly where you want to be?

Or was that just a sort of byproduct of being in pharma?

No, I think that's a great question.

I mean, I think for me, you know, again, I'm an engineer.

I'm not really an engineer.

It's been I started as an engineer.

I've forgotten most of what I've learned, learned new stuff.

But I think what attracted me into engineering and to be an engineer, because you're solving problems.

And I think that satisfaction of getting a problem, coming up with a solution, it works.

It's very satisfying to solve problems.

And what I found in my experience in pharma services

is you just have the opportunity to solve a lot more problems than you otherwise would in other parts of the industry.

Maybe if you work in pharma, you see a handful of molecules at a time.

In pharma services, you see hundreds.

And it's a very dynamic environment, but the experience you get and the amount of challenges that you're asked to overcome

It's just very exciting, it's very engaging, it's a real test of your problem solving skills.

test of your resilience and perseverance.

But I just found that when stepping into that environment, I just found that really engaging and rewarding and exciting because every week is different.

You're working with so many different molecules, so many different innovators.

You get to meet just a whole range of really cool people doing amazing science.

And you get the opportunity to support all this.

And as I say, as a problem solver, as an engineer, you just get the opportunity to solve so many problems.

And that's, again, very, very rewarding.

Yeah, I think that's been a really interesting part of, obviously, I speak to a lot of people in the industry, but specifically doing this podcast with other CDMO leaders, it's really striking, I think, how invested people are and just genuinely

interested in the work and sort of passionate about the work, I think that really comes through with a lot of leaders in the industry.

Just in terms of location, obviously you started in the UK, started in Scotland, and you are now based in the US.

At what point did you make that transition and was that led by your career in pharma or what, I guess, what came first there?

No, it was.

I think there was a point in my career, I was very fortunate to get different opportunities and I worked in engineering, different parts of engineering, worked in capital projects, project management, shut down planning and all of these different roles, but more engineering and operations, and then

You know, at one point I kind of segued in kind of maybe a weird segue, but I got an opportunity to work in quality again in a GMP environment.

So I moved like from project management into quality management.

I think that was again because project management skills, you're designing and building the plants, you understand, you know, validation and things like that.

So

It might seem like a bit of a leap, but it felt quite a natural progression at the time to go again from project management into quality, and it's part of that from a quality point of view, get exposed to different parts of where the quality system goes, and

Again, with my background in engineering, ended up working on things like systems, so quality management systems, LIMS systems, ERP systems, and that type of activity.

And then, again, with my engineering background and now quality background and project management experience, I moved from the quality and engineering piece actually into project management.

And I found that these all seem natural.

It was just really opportunistic.

There was no grand plan behind this.

It was just opportunities came up and someone says, well, you've got a kind of skill set that would work here.

Could you come in, you know, how do you, how would you fancy doing this?

And for me, it was just, yeah, that sounds interesting.

Again, new problems to solve, you know, new way of looking at things.

And I found myself at some point in my career

where I kind of took stock and I thought, well, I've worked across all these different parts of the business.

And then in project management, and this is customer facing project management, you're kind of more involved in the commercial side and contracting side and the business side.

And I found myself sitting in leadership team meetings and I knew a bit about everything because I was involved in a bit about everything.

And

I said to my boss, who was the general manager of the business at the time, I said, I really like this view of project management.

I'm more involved in all of these different things.

What does it take to get your job?

Because I want to sit in that chair because ultimately that's, I'm really enjoying seeing all of those different parts of the business and getting involved in all parts of the business.

But ultimately, the way to do that most completely

is to be the general manager.

So how did I get from where I am to be a general manager?

And that was, I think that was 2010.

I mean, it's not as if it was a long time ago.

So I've spent most of my career just bouncing from one opportunity to the next.

And I think I'm in my early 30s at this point.

And you think, well, wait a minute, what is it that I want to do?

And ultimately, where would I get the best opportunity to solve the most problems?

And I thought, well, be a general manager.

I've built this view of how to solve problems across most of the business.

So that's why I asked, how did I get your job?

And he said, well, I said, his advice was,

If you want to go into general management and you want to run a business, particularly today in the modern world, he said you've got to have a few things, like three things to think of that you need to build.

He says one, you need to show and demonstrate that you can run a big organization or a big team.

He said the best place to do that is in operations.

It's where most of the organization sits.

And you need to show that you can get results, not

as an individual contributor and not even as a manager of a team, but can you get results as the manager of managers who manage people?

So it's like, how can you make sure that you can drive consistent results through a distributed organization where it's not you yourself or it's not you kind of directly with a team, but it's maybe three or four levels?

And really, so you need to think about operations experience because that's where you can demonstrate that you can deliver results in a big organization.

The second thing he said is you need to show that you understand the commercial reality of the business.

So you need some commercial experience and get involved in the business side of the business rather than just the operational side of the business.

And then the third thing, which is my getting actually to answer the question you asked, was he said you need international experience.

you need to show that in today's very global and connected marketplace that you can manage organizations and drive results across different locations and geographies.

So if you really want to be a general manager or the head of a business in today's world, you've got to have those three things.

You know, some commercial experience, track record of managing a big team, an international experience.

So, you know, at that point,

He gave me an opportunity to start running operations and I started running operations in the UK and I think a couple of years later I was asked to move to the US to run operations in the US within the business I was in, which was BioReliance at the time.

It had just been acquired by Sigma Aldrich and they were looking at some restructuring and I had already

if you like, worked for the couple of years before that on the operational piece and running pretty much most of the operations in the UK at that time.

So I thought I had kind of checked that box and the relocation to the US was again being able to demonstrate that international experience and checking that next box off.

And that was

That was the thing that took me to the US.

Sounds like whoever that was really invested in your career and your development.

Sounds like really sort of comprehensive advice.

Would you say that's kind of impacted the way that you operate and the way that you kind of, I guess, try to help people manoeuvre their careers in the direction that

I've given many people the same advice when they've come to speak to me in many organizations because I just think it's great advice.

It's a great way to think about your profile, particularly if you want to be head of a business, a CEO at some point.

It's great advice.

And the other way this leader articulated it to me, he said, you want to build a profile that's a T-shape.

So the capital T, you've got the vertical piece, that's your education, that's your background, that's where you start, that's where you've got deep knowledge.

So for me it was engineering, you've gone to college, you've learned the theory, you've applied it in many different ways, and it's the first five, 10 years of your working life.

So that's the depth, and then the crossbar of the T,

as all of the other parts of the value chain in the business is learning all those other things.

So for me, I had engineering, but then I had quality and I had systems and I had project management and then operations.

So that's how he had me think about starting to make conscious career choices.

if I wanted to be a general manager or head of a business.

Everyone starts with the upright part.

But again, he was thinking about being intentional about how you build that crossbar across the value chain.

And again, he gave me the opportunity again to think about operations, get involved in operations.

But I think that advice from that point on, I started to be intentional about how I made career decisions and the opportunities that I wanted to take.

And again, that's why I ended up in the US.

because it was that international experience.

But then after that, taking various other operational roles, getting into strategy and business development, and then getting into general management was again ticking the commercial box to show that I understood the market, I understood customer needs.

I understood the commercial processes and that was for me at that point where I felt I'd completed my T-shape and I'd done the other three things that we were part of.

the advice that was given and I was lucky enough to get an opportunity in general management to run a business at the end of that.

That's really interesting I've never actually heard of it being referred to in that way and kind of fascinating to hear of the intentional way that you

you develop that.

Would you say, so from that moment on, would you say that it was you that sort of drove that and you actively went out to add those bits to sort of develop your tier?

That was, I mean, as I said, I was lucky enough to get lots of really interesting opportunities throughout my career to work in different functions, work in different businesses, solve different problems, look at the business through a different lens.

But it was after that conversation with my manager at the time, again, general manager of the business of BioReliance in Scotland.

And it was again, one of the most impactful conversations from a career point of view that I'd had.

And again, that was the change for me, is not just to take the opportunities as they come,

but start to make decisions that shaped your career, make intentional decisions to do different things, which meant saying no to some opportunities because they weren't putting that T-shape together in the right way or they weren't checking the three things that I needed to become a general manager in a big organization in today's environment.

So every decision from that point, from that conversation onwards,

That's where it started to be intentional.

Up until that point, it was just opportunistic and I was just very happy-go-lucky about the opportunities I was getting.

And yeah, that was again, probably one of the most consequential conversations I had in my career.

And again, it was fairly recently, that conversation was, I think I said 2010, 2011.

It's not like a, it wasn't early in my career, it was, you know,

It was probably halfway there.

But I probably wouldn't be in the job that I'm in now.

I probably wouldn't have the journey that I would have had if I didn't have that conversation at that moment in time.

It was pretty consequential.

And look, it's not that I haven't had other amazing career conversations and it's not that I haven't had a series of really

support of people that have driven, that believed in me and have supported my career decisions.

You know, that's obviously happened and I've been fortunate enough to have that and, you know, in the past few years.

But yeah, that was the start of really being deliberate about how I drove my career.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Like the conversation that sort of shaped.

Yeah.

what you then did.

I remember it.

I mean, I don't know if I can say the guy his name, but it was a leader, an American guy called Darryl Goss.

Again, he was the general manager of the BioReliance business in the UK at the time.

Just fantastic guy, just again, very strategic thinker, great, great with people, great with development.

I wasn't the only person that

he supported and advised, and he kept in touch with them in the years after that, when I moved on, and again, he's always a guy that's given me great advice, but again, I've been fortunate enough to have, leaders after that have also given me great advice and have given me a great opportunity.

So, you've spoken there a lot about your own personal journey, and I guess the leaders and the opportunities that sort of shaped you in terms of

yourself and the way that you then develop and build the teams that operate under you, what is it that you look for perhaps beyond a CV?

As we said earlier on, being a CDMO or pharma services, it's a very dynamic environment.

I think the only thing you can expect is the unexpected.

So I think you want people

Beyond having great qualifications, beyond being very smart people, I think there's kind of four things that I look for.

I think more than just the drive to execute, it's about how people are kind of grounding their decision making during that execution.

So I think the first thing I would think about is being do they make values-based decisions?

Because when, as we said earlier, you know, what we do matters is a big impact on patients.

And, you know, at Catalent, we have this patient first value.

So we start every meeting talking about, you know, what it is that needs to ground the decision making.

It's not just, hey, look, we've got a slogan because a lot of companies will have, you know, their company values on their website and they'll talk about it, but it doesn't really translate to anything practical.

At Catalent, we're very, very determined that our values kind of come off of the page into real life.

So from patient first is a value.

So we try and instill in our leaders and into the organization that as a frame for decision making.

So if you're on the shop floor, something happens, you have to make a decision in the heat of the moment.

Are you going to make the decision based on a set of values?

Are you going to make that decision based on what's right for the patient and what's going to impact the patient in a positive way?

So again, it's more than just, hey, look, let's get this done.

It's more about the tasks.

And this really starts with leadership.

So when I'm hiring leaders, it's like, can that leader connect their judgment, their decision making to a series of values?

can they frame it up, just look beyond the task and look at the context of what it is we do, why it's important and why it's important that we make decisions with the patient in mind.

I think that's the first thing, those value-based decisions.

I think very closely tied to that is judgment.

I mean, we live in a complex, volatile world.

Can people and can leaders connect

you know, the head, the heart, the gut to use good judgment and again, make decisions in the heat of the moment that again is right for the patients, it's right for the customers, it's right for our organization.

So it's more than just being, you know, academic or, you know, we don't live in a black and white world.

So can people use good judgment?

Can they combine head, heart and gut, I think to make good decisions when it really matters?

I think the third thing is change agility.

I mean, again, the thing that's the only thing that's certain in the world is that things are going to change.

And do we have leaders that can adapt to the environment as it changes around us?

Customer expectations constantly change.

Our competitors keep improving.

you know, macro factors are uncertain and volatile and evolving.

So it's one thing to be able to lead an organization in, you know, one specific context or one environment, but can you do it, you know, as everything around you is constantly shifting?

Do you have that ability to drive change?

Because we know what works today won't work tomorrow.

You know, what's right for the business today is going to be something different tomorrow.

And you need leaders that can adapt and you need leaders that can lead an organization to be able to adapt, not just ones, but constantly.

And I think those things are, I think, really, really important.

So I've seen a lot of resumes, I've hired a lot of people, got a lot of it right and got a lot of it wrong.

I think, on paper, people could have amazing track records, work for blue chip companies of great roles, have generated great results, have gone to great universities.

But when I'm talking to people and trying to list out, you know, what's really special about them, those are the things, are the type of things that I'm really looking for.

You know, are they going to make decisions based on a values framework?

You know, are they going to

be able to exercise good judgment consistently?

are they going to really be able to navigate very complex and uncertain environment that we continue to work in?

And I think the combination of those three things, it will give me a sense in whether this person is really solution orientated.

Will this person run towards the problems that other people will run away from?

That to me is the quality of the leader that I'm looking for that you don't really get from the resume on its own.

No.

And would you say that's the case across the business?

Is that sort of a is that function agnostic in terms of that approach?

I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's just this is about the quality of the leader.

And these are qualities for me

that would espouse what a good leader should aspire to, whether you're in operations, whether you're in business development, whether you're in commercial operations, whether you're in project management, whether you're in quality.

So for me, it's not function specific or that's what I'm looking for in a general manager or that's what I'm looking for in a VP of operations or a head of sales.

For me, that's I think the quality, the character of the leader that I think I want in the organization because

I think if you get a critical mass of people like that, you're going to set those things that I mentioned.

That's the culture you're going to set in the organization.

So it doesn't matter.

Actually, you want it in all functions as much as you can get.

You want that critical mass because really that's how you want your culture to be in the organization, particularly on the values-based decision making.

As we say, that's patient-first is our prime value at Catalent, so that decision-making and values-based.

decision making is what we expect of leaders across the organization, whether it's the CEO who would hold himself accountable to that and hold me accountable to that too, down to people on the shop floor, first level supervisors.

It's just we want everyone to be able to make those value-based decisions.

And then again, wherever you are in the organization, value-based decisions, judgment, change agility, it's just so important because

Again, if you get that all across the organization, you're going to set the right, you know, you're going to set the right culture.

You're going to give your customers fantastic service.

You're going to be very competitive.

That's why we think it's, you know, it's important to have those kind of qualities all across the organization.

And so then I guess sort of related to that or on the opposite end in terms of the

the lessons that you've learned and kind of what's brought you to this point in terms of your decision making and what you'd look for in a good hire.

Are there any specific examples of sort of mistakes that you've made in a hiring process?

I'd like to say I never make mistakes and I'm perfect, but that wouldn't be true.

I mean, I think like everyone, I think you make a lot of mistakes along the journey.

I think the most profound

lesson for me in hiring.

I guess my biggest mistake as a leader.

I'll probably need to explain what I mean there, but certainly in the context of as you're trying to grow a business, as you're trying to scale a business, and particularly if you've built that business inorganically, I think

You know, there's an important context because I've worked in a lot of businesses.

I think the thing that this lesson applies to most is if you're in a, you know, if you're growing aggressively, if you've got quite a lot of growth, you might not have the most mature business.

I think the lesson for me is to hire leaders that are builders, not operators.

And I made the mistake, I think, of hiring

you know, great operators.

I'll qualify what I mean by that.

So people have got a great resume, have worked for great companies, but you know, they've been in fairly well established environments.

They're mature companies, mature systems, and they might be growing well, but well controlled.

And those people are great leaders in those environments because they can operate well established and effective systems for business.

And they're usually very professional, they're usually very organized, they're usually very structured, which is great and makes them great professionals for the right environment.

But the mistake I've made is when you transplant those people into a less mature environment, particularly if you've acquired a number of companies,

and there's not a lot of structure and infrastructure because they've been small companies.

You don't have the maturity of systems there.

And then if you put really rapid growth on top of that, the reason these guys fail is they fall into the trap of they're always trying to fix and operate and fix the system that they have.

So you imagine people find themselves on this hamster wheel of reacting to things all of the time because

they're trying to operate the system and they don't realize quick enough that they need a completely new system.

And then by the time they realize that, they're trying to fix the system and solve for what the business needs today.

But the time they put that solution in place, the business has already moved on and they just continue reactive.

And I really focus in that environment, which, you know, fits a lot of pharma services organization.

We're expected to grow.

there's, if you're successful, there's a lot of pipeline there to support and to service.

I think we want to grow above market.

we want to be successful.

We want to do that because, growing above market means more molecules, more programs, more customers, more patients impacted.

So that's why you want to grow and you want to grow rapidly.

But if you want to grow rapidly and scale the business,

then you need to make sure that you've got leaders that are builders, leaders that understand not what the business needs today, but what the business is going to need in five years time.

Leaders that have a better vision and I think the discipline to be able to build a plane as you're flying it, has the discipline not just to get completely absorbed in the tactical of today's problems,

but also make sure that you're steadily making progress to what you're going to need in five years time.

And that's a certain skill set.

I think the vision requires having some experience of going through that journey before, because you've got to know what good looks like.

You've got to know kind of where you're going and how that is different.

You've got to be able to articulate that to the rest of the organization.

And you've got to have a structured way of implementing that while all of the day-to-day and week to week of your current business and what that looks like and ways of working has to be executed and delivered.

So for me, it's again, making sure that you go beyond someone that's got a great track record of just operating in a great environment.

and focus on people who, again, have vision and the ability to build ahead of when it's needed.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think that's I guess that the CDMO world almost dictates that and particularly when you're operating at that size.

And as you say, there's this kind of an acquisition growth model and it means that a lot of things

sometimes need to be stitched together almost.

So it makes sense that somebody needs to think ahead as opposed to sort of fix exactly what's in front.

Every process and every system has its limits.

It has its design limits.

And if you're going rapidly, I mean, naturally there's going to be a time where every system and every process is going to be outgrown.

And you've got to have the leaderships that understand that, understand the limits of the process or system.

That even extends to the capabilities of the organization.

So it's, the world we existed in five years ago, the skills that we needed, the talent we needed in the organization is different then than it is to today and will be different again in five years time.

So again, having that strategic mindset, not just that, hey, look, we're going to outgrow this system, we're going to outgrow that process because

Hey, look, once you get to a billion dollars, that system won't cope, so you need to make sure you build a system for $2 billion.

It's pervasive.

It's the structure of the organization and the skill set and the capabilities of the leaders that applies to that too, because there'll be some people that are great for your business today.

But again, everybody, everything has got its limits and maybe the people that you've got today don't have the right skill set for the business that you need tomorrow and you've got to make a decision of whether you can develop those people that they can learn those skills organically or whether you need to go and get outside expertise.

I think where we are just now, I mean, this is particularly profoundly felt.

We think about

how are we going to deploy different technologies, AI, to really accelerate how we run the business, to really transform how we support our customers.

And, you know, having people that have a skill set in digitalization and automation and AI, I think it's just, it's essential now where it might have been a nice to have five years ago.

It's just not.

It's going to be the difference between

being successful and not if you have those skills in the organization and you've got to have the vision to make sure that you understand that you understand how the market is changing, the customer needs are changing, and make sure that, again, you've got leaders that have that vision and can build ahead of when something, when a capability, when talent is actually needed.

So you mentioned there in terms of kind of developing internal talent versus them recognizing when you have to look externally and bring people into the business.

So I guess how do you do that and how do you balance the two?

I mean, it's not this binary thing that it's either or it's and, right?

You've got, I think, a place for internal development.

You've got a place where you need to go external.

I think you've got to find the blend that's right for your business.

So I think, from an internal development point of view, I think there are good examples.

I think where internal development makes the most sense.

I think where you want to, again, preserve culture, operational leadership roles, for example, where you've got someone who understands the organization and how the organization thinks.

And you want to preserve that, you want to preserve that again, the values based decision making, you know, what makes the company, you know, it gives it its compass, if you like.

I think those are the right opportunities to develop internal talent, you know, just develop more of that internal talent.

throughout the organization so that again you can preserve those values, you can drive the culture.

Again, you can retain talent, you can build that loyalty, you've got that certain ethos within the company that you want to preserve.

And I think that's where internal talent I think is the better choice.

I think external, I think it links to what I was saying in the last question.

If you've got something where you're going to a new frontier or you need to drive a transformation, I think that's where external talent is needed.

If you need a different vision for what the future needs to look like, you need different skill sets.

If you're going to say you're building a new capability or a new modality or

you're building a new technology.

So again, if it's digitalization, automation, if you haven't developed that organically, you're going to want to get some external expertise in, I think, to bring those new skills in.

Or if you need to drive a transformation in the business,

Again, you want to get fresh pair of eyes, different perspective, different vision.

I think that's important to go externally.

So I think for any business and for our business, we're always going to use both.

And I think where it's important for us, again, to drive culture, to retain the best talent, we're going to give internal people those opportunities.

And again, when you've got an operations where you've got a big organization, there's lots of opportunity to do that.

Obviously you've got to be intentional about it and you've got to have a good strong framework for talent development and making sure that you're intentional about creating opportunities or making sure you're putting people that you've identified as talent towards those opportunities.

But at the same time when you've got that transformation, that step change, that fresh perspective, that new expertise is critically important and for us it's just about

again, making a keeping a healthy balance of when it's right to go external and when it's right to retain internal.

And I think, you know, that's always going to be, I think the way is to balance that, you know, it's just right.

What is the right balance for a company of internal versus external?

Sure.

And I guess to touch upon your previous point in terms of the way that you

the things that you look for that perhaps aren't on a CV.

I guess the idea is that even when you go external, you find the right characters that still maintain and sort of add to the culture that you've already built.

Yeah, that's a great point actually, because yeah, you don't want to run the risk that you're going to dilute what's the most important for you.

So you've got to get someone who's compatible, I think, with your values.

but has that fresh perspective.

So yeah, you don't want someone who's like a rogue operator.

You want someone who's maybe a disruptive thinker.

But you know, all within, you have to think, you know, not stray too far from the values of the company and the values of, you know, what we're, you know, what we're looking for in leadership and, you know, the culture that we want to set in the company.

So you've got to find that balance of someone who's compatible

but someone who will bring, I think, a new, again, that new skill set or a new frame of mind with it.

Yeah, that's a really important kind of distinction to make, that you want the fresh ideas, but you don't want to dilute what's important to you.

There still has to be a recognition of what got you to that point, yeah.

I mean, there's, again, there's things that you need to develop and evolve and improve, but you know, your values are your values.

And for us, you know, particularly patient first at Catalent, it's non-negotiable.

You know, that's a value today.

It's always going to be a value because it's what we do and it's that's not and what we who we do it for, you know, our customers, but ultimately the patients that's not going to change.

So that's a value that won't change.

And that's if you like, that's a North Star.

That's the thing that we'll always hold on to.

you know, other things are more fungible and other things will need to evolve.

But I think, you know, patient first today will be patient first tomorrow.

So I guess to continue the theme of sort of looking external and bringing people in to Catalent, what is your view on the current talent landscape?

How do you think things have changed?

Yes, it's competitive for sure, I think.

I think I hear a lot, and this is our experience as well, that talent is a key constraint in CDMO, more so than capital.

I think you can build plants, you can make investments, but if you don't have the capabilities and the talent to run the business well, you've just got a shell of an asset.

So it's much easier to build new assets and new facilities than it is to turn them into a successful business.

a well-run operation.

So I think we see in CDMO, getting the right talent, the right general managers and new sites.

So that is the key constraint for growth.

Again, capital, we can build plants, but if you don't have the people there, that's going to translate that into business growth and successful outcomes for our customers, the patients for our business.

it's not going to be, it's not going to give great returns on that investment.

I think that's certainly a key one for us.

I think as we see ways of working evolve, I think we're also seeing the need for roles to become more hybrid.

So it's looking for scientists who understand the commercial reality.

great operations leaders who are comfortable in front of clients and client facing roles.

people in operations or manufacturing that are capable and adept, with digital tools or again with, AI solutions.

Those are really the evolving needs of what our organization requires to be successful.

It's not

just what it used to be, where you're looking for someone who's one thing.

You need people that can, I think, be somewhat agile and adaptable to different environments.

You know, it's not easy to find.

I mean, it's not easy to find great scientists, admittedly.

It's harder to find great scientists that understand, I think, the commercial impact of what it is they're doing.

That's really, really valuable.

At the same time, it's hard to find great operations leaders, but great operations leaders that are articulate and good communicators with customers and are customer intimate and understand that.

Again, that's really, really hard to find.

And I think for me, those are the kind of current battlegrounds for talent, is those really capable people, those really adaptable people.

and people that are not just one thing that can convey that across different parts of the business.

I think that's the interesting piece.

I think the third thing is, despite all of the ups and downs that we've seen in biotech and funding and we've seen a bit of consolidation and we've seen, I think, a lot of layoffs, still talent is hard to come by and good talent

is something you need to work hard at.

I think, across our space, I think probably 80% of pharma services companies are still, competing for talent.

It's not as if, these great people with these great skills are growing in trees.

So even though we've been going through a period of change, there's still, I think,

a need to focus on getting the right people with the right skills.

They're still, particularly in maybe more novel modalities or in newer technology fronts, those resources are still really scarce.

So you have to be competitive.

It's not gone any easier.

People might think it has because you think, well, you've got all these companies that have maybe restructured and you've got all these people that might be available.

But

The reality is it's still tough to get, I think, the right leadership or the right skill set, the right type of people, which means that I think the important thing for us is we need to be fast.

I think people that have these skills, the scientist that understands the commercial reality, what you do, those are valuable people.

They're going to be attractive for many pharma services companies.

you have to be decisive and fast, otherwise you're not going to get the right talent.

You can't necessarily just take this linear process and you can't take your sweet old time to make decisions about whether the person is right.

I think you've got to be aggressive, you've got to be fast, you've got to be decisive, otherwise you'll just lose that talent to plenty of other competing offers.

So I think it's really taught us to be

I think a little bit more disruptive about how we're hiring and a little bit more aggressive in how we're hiring from a moving faster point of view.

But we understand that some of these talented people, I mean, they're few and far between.

So, they're still very competitive out there and you've got to be decisive.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's definitely something that obviously we see on our side of it.

Speed often is a decisive factor and I think decisions are often made on that basis alone at times.

One thing that I'm interested to get your thoughts on, you sort of referenced it in a previous point in terms of AI and the impact that it has on every industry, obviously not just the pharma industry, but

but specifically within talent and recruitment, what is your view on AI's impact, I guess, in the immediate term and what that will mean for the industry moving forward?

I mean, I think I think AI, it's the next industrial revolution.

I think it's

It's probably going to be, you know, the single most transformative technology of a generation.

And, you know, I think we are very committed to understanding how AI can help us transform the experience for our customers and help us potentially impact the economics of biologics, which are still very complex.

and therefore very expensive technologies to be able to get them to patients faster, but get them to patients in a way where the economics improves access to more and more people who need those therapies.

And certainly, you know, as a executive team at Catalent, you know, we're very, very, very much committed to developing different technologies with AI

to augment our organization, to leverage data and translate data into insight that we can use to support our customers, that we can use to increase the velocity of how we provide our services and how we get product to patients.

And it's one of the key pillars of our strategy.

And our CEO, Alessandro, is

is very much the driver.

So this is driven from the top of the company.

And, we've already developed and validated and implemented some AI tools.

We've just launched our QAI tool for deviation classification and management.

And this thing is amazing.

I mean, the good thing about, you know, CDMOs is you generate lots of data, particularly big CDMOs like Catalent that have been around.

You generate so much data from so many processes and so many deviations, and you've got this huge data lake of what would otherwise be just random unstructured data that you can build, you know, large language models and use AI to translate that data into insight.

And we have done this with the QAI tool and

You know, it's just it's got the potential to be transformative.

We've already seen amazing results in terms of the not just the speed of, you know, how we can work and how we can again solve problems, but, you know, the quality and the consistency is just it's remarkable.

And it's not like, you know, it's there's still a human element.

You're still got the human to make final decision and disposition and I think to, you know, to decide

the way things are and what the root cause is and what the action is.

But the ability of AI to augment that and just, it's incredible.

And I think with these new technologies, I think there's a lot of fear about, you know, what that will mean and what that will mean for talent.

And, you know, our CEO had a great quote at our leadership team meeting.

It's like, no one should worry that AI is going to take their job because that's not the case.

That's not what's going to happen.

What you should worry about is the person who understands how to leverage AI better than you.

That's what you should be worried about.

And that's what we're worried about.

So we're invested to build the best tools to augment our talent and our people in the right way.

Because look, we've got what makes us a great organization, what allows us to deliver value for our customers and ultimately the patients.

is having a group of really, a big group of really talented people, great scientists and great engineers.

But you know, what we want is we want our scientists doing science.

So what we want to use, you know, AI is to develop tools that allow our scientists to focus on science, to have our engineers focus on engineers or in engineering, because that's what those guys create value for our customers.

So there are other things, the administrative things, the things that are not science and engineering is build AI tools that allow us to automate workflows to take care of administrative tasks so that we can focus the talented people that we've got in the organization on real value creation where it matters and augment them with AI tools, AI insight or data insight.

that allow them to do their job more effectively.

I think that's a really interesting point and I guess a really important distinction in terms of augmentation versus replacement, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, again, pharma pipeline, the biologics pipeline continues to grow.

There are more and more therapies to support.

There are

hundreds and thousands of disease states and where patients are underserved.

So there's plenty of opportunity for the people that we have to be able to solve problems for those customers and those patients on those therapies.

What AI will allow us to do is allow us to do more with the people that we have.

is allow us to service customers faster.

So it's not about replacing people.

It's allowing people to be more productive.

It's allowing people, the people that we have to create more value and to be able to do more as we grow.

And look, ultimately, you're still going to have to grow the organization and grow the organization as we grow.

But we'll just grow the organization differently.

We'll invest in different talent with different skills.

And I think that's the reality of what AI is going to mean.

I think again, I think when you look back through history and different industrial revolutions, every time a new transformative technology is introduced, lots of people will catastrophize about it and, my goodness, this is going to be terrible.

I mean, I'm pretty sure when the motor car was invented, all these people that were where their living was kind of horses and carts were probably saying, the motor car is a terrible thing.

But society, human beings adapted and we moved on and we moved forward.

And it's going to be the same with AI.

There's going to be some fear of the unknown.

But we're going to figure out how to build these tools.

We're going to figure out how to best augment the talent that we have and we'll move on and adapt and we'll use it to be successful.

And as I say, there are plenty of therapies in the pipeline.

There's plenty of patients to be helped and supported who don't have good options today.

where there's solutions in the pipeline for them.

And I think AI tools can help us get to those solutions faster than we otherwise could.

So you've obviously had a long and very successful career in the industry.

What is it that motivates you to continue?

I mean, I'll tie it back to what I said earlier.

I just years and years ago, again, when I was working in antisense oligos and having that lady come in and tell us about her story.

as a patient and what we were working on had affected her.

That's still with me today.

And as I said earlier, there's a million ways you can pay your mortgage.

And I choose to be here in pharma services because I think what we do matters.

I guess you could call it my, I think this is my purpose in life is to be involved in this sector because again,

you're able to have an impact on hundreds if not thousands of therapies.

So for me it's just being able to continue in this space, continue to get the opportunity to work in more therapies that impact more and more patients because that's what I think matters and that's the little bit of good that I can contribute to the world with my team.

I think that's why we're all in this industry is because you feel that you're making people's lives better.

And again, we had actually about a year ago, we had a patient day in our gene therapy facility.

We had patient days around the facility.

Again, it connects people with what they're working on.

And when you're working on amazing technologies like

transformational technologies like gene therapy and cell therapies, which could be curative.

And particularly with cell and gene therapy, you tend to work on more programs that are rare diseases.

Not a huge amount of research on them because they're rare diseases.

And people with these conditions, there's rare diseases, they don't have a lot of options.

So, you know, to be able to continue to work on these new technologies that are potentially curative

is amazing.

And this patient day that we had in our gene therapy site, one of the patient's family members is telling us, you don't just make therapy, you're making, you're giving us hope.

And it was, that was, again, pretty motivational because you're helping serve people that are otherwise kind of underserved and don't have many options.

And I've got, quite difficult, sometimes degenerative diseases that are only going to get worse.

And I think for me, I choose to be in this space because, I mean, the ability to help these people and, help make their lives a little bit better and the lives of their families a little bit better is just, incredible motivation.

And I think it's consistent when I talk to the people in the organization, it's consistently the things that motivates the team most.

So there's definitely that.

There's definitely the purpose.

And again, I'll go back to my roots as an engineer.

I like to solve problems, to be able to solve complex problems at scale in an organization like Catalent is pretty cool.

Great.

And I guess to touch upon.

what may come next or if you had to put a succession plan in place for yourself and I know we've obviously touched upon your route and the fact that you were very intentional about building that sort of T structure for yourself.

What would you say a successor would look like for you?

I mean I think I would give the person the same advice that someone gave me.

You know you want to have that T-shaped structure so

Again, you want to show that you can reliably and consistently deliver results in a large distributed organization.

So be able to, you know, manage managers of managers who manage because that's not easy, you know, to have international experience and to understand, I think, the commercial needs of the business.

I think, again, those three things

I think are, fundamentals of today's leader. And I think, those are very practical and tangible, kind of, let's call it hard skills. And I think you would need to complement that by, again, someone who has values-based decision making, someone who's got great judgment and can exercise great judgment. Again, that balance of heart, head, heart and gut, someone who can adapt to change. I think

That's what my succession plan has been built towards. I mean, I just firmly believe that, again, those three things as necessary for a leader in terms of the ability to manage a big organization, international experience, commercial experience are just necessary kind of grounding to get the practical things right. But again, having someone that's making decisions based on values

can exercise good judgment, can adapt and drive change. Those are the things that will make a person successful beyond the hard skills. And that's what my succession plan looks like. And certainly the people in my succession plan and the succession plan that I want to build, those are the archetypes of people that I'm looking at. With that in mind, and obviously on this podcast, we speak with

senior leaders across all sort of functions within the industry. Is there anyone that you would recommend that we speak to next? Oh, I haven't thought about that. I may have to get back to you on that. I mean, certainly within my organization, I can think of, you know, some really, you know, amazing leaders. But, you know, around the industry, I need to think about that.

I wouldn't want to overconnect someone or put someone in the spotlight if they don't want to be in the spotlight. Oh, good. Oh, good. And then to end, we always, we have a rapid fire, three rapid fire closing questions. I'm ready. I'll step forward for that. I think you've, I mean, if you can top the advice that you've mentioned so far, then fair enough. But I think you've kind of answered this one. But what's the best career advice you've ever had?

I have a lot of good advice from a lot of really great leaders. I think one of the most important pieces of advice that I've been given is the worst decision you can make is not to make a decision at all. And I think again, scientists and engineers, we like data and we like certainty and we like the full algorithm to be available. The reality is it's just not what real life is and you have to get yourself comfortable.

to be able to make decisions and move forward with incomplete data. And again, it goes back to the judgment piece. So, you know, you've just got to make sure, you don't want to be reckless, but you've got to make sure you've got a good, I think, process for decision making, that you want to get, you know, a diverse set of inputs. You know, you've got to, I think, make sure that

you understand maybe the risks in it, but then you just want to commit because something's going to happen and you're going to generate an outcome and that outcome might not be what you anticipated, but you've got something tangible and then you can learn, you can measure, you can learn, you can adapt, you can continue.

To me, that's the way that we should operate and that was that advice. the worst decision that you can make is not to make a decision at all. And all too often we get slowed down, we get bogged down because we have incomplete data. And look, that's just the way the world works. Most of the time you're going to have incomplete data and you just need to build a frame of reference based on your values that help you navigate through that and move forward.

Yeah, that's something that I really resonate with and we resonate with at Metric. It's something that we often say to our managers and kind of, I guess, people that are newer to management is that's always kind of a framework that we look to work by. So second, in terms of the rapid fire, one trait that you think every manager needs to have or every leader needs to have in 2026 and beyond? We're going through, you know, I think a period of transformation and change.

whether it's, macro factors, whether it's technology, whether it's, new tools and new ways of working. I think, your bet, your, all of your leaders, I think, need the ability to navigate that change, need to be agile, need to be able to adapt, need to be able to learn.

as I say, everything is constantly changing and you just need people that can adapt to that reality. Okay, and then final question, is there a book or podcast or an individual that has influenced your decision making or kind of, I guess, your general thought process recently? Yeah, I mean,

The book that I've probably read the most and particularly about decision making is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I think it's a well, you know, a well-known book, but it's again, it's about, for me, I took away is again, you're going to make better decisions if you have a strong process for decision making, that you've got diverse points of view because we all have our cognitive biases.

and the worst thing you can do is just, confirm those biases and just jump into things. And I think, being a leader in CDMO, again, you're faced with uncertainty. You've got to make, long term investment decisions and assets and talent and technology and making sure that, again, you don't have kind of confirmation bias, making sure that you've got a decision making process that puts a structure in that, challenges assumptions.

I think is really, really important. And I think that book is great at kind of walking you through how you should think about, I think, some of these strategic decisions that I think is particularly pertinent in pharma services. And I think, from that book, you would say that, bad strategic decisions doesn't come from a lack of intelligence. It can come from a lack of process and untested assumptions.

And I think if you want to make consistently good decisions, it doesn't mean you'll always be right, but if you want to have a good decision making process, I think make sure that you've got a structure for it and make sure that you really challenge your assumptions. And I think that was for me the main takeaway from Thinking Fast and Slow. And it's a book I've revisited a couple of times and I think it's really, I think, relevant to leaders in pharma services because

Those are the decisions that, again, we're faced with in a complex and uncertain and fast-moving environment. Yeah, I think that's kind of in keeping with a lot of the themes of this conversation, really. So yeah, great place to finish. I really appreciate you coming on. Really interesting conversation. So thanks very much for your time, David. Thanks, Sam. Really appreciate it. And yeah, look forward to our next conversation.