“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.”

In this interview we speak with Kirsten Searle, who recently joined the Nanopharm family as Head of Pharmaceutical Development & Project Management.

Starting at the beginning…
Having graduated from Kings College, London, with a BSc in Neuropharmacology, I embarked on a 12-year career with GSK. This role was varied both in terms of responsibility and geography, rapidly graduating from Associate Scientist to Pharmacology Discipline Lead. It also involved moving from the UK to an exciting new life in Singapore, a somewhat daunting but exhilarating move for a single woman in her early twenties!

It was while at GSK that I discovered my interest in Operations Management, having built a laboratory capability while leading the pharmacological strategy for Neural Pathway DPU projects. This experience sparked my further moves to MSD (Merck) and BBI Solutions where I continued to move away from purely scientific roles into strategic program and operational management.

And onto Nanopharm…
Living in Wales and finding a great company within the pharma field is not necessarily easy, so when this opportunity came along, I jumped at it. That, coupled with the dynamism of working in fast moving a preclinical CRO environment, made Nanopharm a really interesting and exciting opportunity. The business has grown from first principles into a global market leader and the chance to work with such an expansive, innovative and supportive business is a unique one.My business philosophy…

Quality and compliance needs to be a cultural commitment, not an operational checkbox, particularly in highly regulated environments such as pharmaceuticals. Scientists are by their nature innovative, intelligent and inquisitive people – and the projects we work on at Nanopharm mean that plans can have to change very quickly based on new data that comes to light. We cannot hinder their creativity or flexibility, and we need to be able to make decisions to change direction if that’s what enables the project to progress, and so any process must be pragmatically applied, enabling agile innovation within a framework that embraces creativity while capturing it for robust, repeatable results later down the line.

My first 90 days…
With so much going well and business booming, with more projects than we can shake a stick at, my role really is to identify and build upon those strengths while identifying areas for operational improvement. Already we have deepened the well-established culture of collaboration between teams, while better aligning workflows so we continue to optimize the right balance between process and productivity.

Nanopharm is genuinely in a great place from both a science and compliance perspective, as evidenced by the positive outcomes of recent external audits, alongside impressive growth, continued recruitment, and the breadth of new projects coming through the door; and so my job really is to maintain the momentum and help shape us to be ready for the future success that will inevitably come.

To connect with Kirsten, click here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-searle-485181a/