“In the Know” features conversations with the people and personalities in biopharma.
Azita Saleki-Gerhardt is used to simultaneously navigating divergent cultures. At the University of Wisconsin, she slowly adapted to American life while struggling to dispel her fellow students’ stereotypes about Iran, her home country. After earning a doctorate in pharmaceutics, she spent the 1990s as a scientist developing and tweaking drug formulas in Abbott’s labs, and later overseeing technical aspects of the company’s manufacturing process.
Here are the cardinal rules for scientists presenting to CEO’s:
1) CEOs are optimists by nature.
2) their mind is 95% made up before you enter the room.
3) your job is to “close the deal”.
4) forget about fair and balanced.
5) the probability of success is always 95%.
You may as well be optimistic since it’s your neck that will be first on the chopping block when your studies fail.