Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Sounds of Science is a monthly podcast about beginnings: how a molecule becomes a drug, how a rodent elucidates a disease pathway, how a horseshoe crab morphs into an infection fighter. The podcast is produced by Eureka, the scientific blog of Charles River, a contract research organization for drug discovery and development. Tune in and begin the journey.
Mary Parker:
I'm Mary Parker, and welcome to this episode of Eureka's Sounds of Science. Starting this month, Charles River has a new CEO, Birgit Girshick. Birgit has been with Charles River for over 30 years and has a hand in almost every aspect of the business in her impressive career. She brings the accumulated experience of an employee turned executive, bringing a fresh perspective to an industry that feels at a crossroads. She joins me to share her story, her insights, and her vision for the future. Welcome, Birgit.
Birgit Girshick:
Hi, Mary. How are you?
Mary Parker:
I'm great. I'm so happy to have you here. Let's dive right in. So let's start with a massive question. What do you consider the biggest challenges facing the biomedical research field today?
Birgit Girshick:
Definitely a massive question. I would say the biggest challenge for the industry today and in the future is the really fast-advancing technology, changing environment, how science is being done, how data is being transferred between each other, how AI and other digital technologies providing insights. Drug development is really, really complex and all those new technologies will help us, but it's going to be really interesting on how we as an industry, we as an organization supporting our clients and bringing drugs to market, can use them. How we will use them to advance timelines in drug development is really the big question, and I think really a question of revolutionizing what the industry is going to do.
Mary Parker:
Well, obviously the whole industry, including Charles River, could benefit from a more modernized approach. So when you think about a modernized life science industry and a modernized Charles River, what does it look like to you?
Birgit Girshick:
Yeah, I mean, there's so many things that I believe will change, but maybe let me take a step back. So drug development is as complex as anything in the world. Drug development is literally more complex than rocket science. And thinking about that, really looking into this and how we can make drug development more efficient, how we can create processes and technologies and platform to help our clients to bring drugs to the patients who really need them in a much faster time. That's how I look at modernizing using technology in the industry and for Charles River. So how we create data. How we enable the data to move faster to our clients. How we create insights using that data. How new platforms and technologies and automation will help us to do the work faster, getting reports and insights back to our clients in a fast way. And then just really how we can allow our employees to do the work they're currently doing, maybe in an easier and more streamlined fashion.
So those are all kinds of things that I think will modernize life sciences, and with that, modernize how Charles River works as well.
Mary Parker:
I mean, you also bring the benefit of having been with Charles River for over 30 years. So can you walk us through your journey at Charles River and share how your wide range of roles and experiences has helped position you for success?
Birgit Girshick:
Yeah, it's quite a bit of a story. I started with Charles River roughly 35 years ago, and I started where I grew up in Germany in a small organization that Charles River had acquired a few years prior. And since then, I've worked in multiple different divisions, really all the divisions of Charles River in many, many, many different roles, and really have learned what Charles River is about, learned how our culture and how we support our clients day in and day out. Learned about our employees and how they're engaged and supportive and how their science is second to none and really helps to bring drugs to market. As you know, more than 80% of drugs approved by the FDA are drugs that we worked on. And really have created an atmosphere and an environment at Charles River where our clients rely on us.
If I would look at definition of success and how I got there, I think this is a journey that you can do at Charles River. Any one of you can do at Charles River. Continue to learn, continue to do more, ask for more things. Develop yourself and just be engaged, be motivated, and help Charles River to be successful, and with that, you will be successful.
Mary Parker:
That's good advice. So switching gears a little bit, NAMs, or new approach methodologies, are a major focus of Charles River and have been for a while. How do you envision the company leading this revolution going forward, and what will the challenges to the industry acceptance of NAMs be?
Birgit Girshick:
Yeah, so I'm personally very, very, very committed on having NAMs, or new alternative methods, become more and more part of this organization, but also part of the industry. NAMs integration, development, bringing it into the toxicology space will be an evolution, not a revolution. It will take time. First of all, the technologies have to be refined. We have to define the context of use. We have to make sure they work for what the answers and the questions are that we want the NAMs to answer for us. So I believe NAMs will help us to be more successful in drug development and will eventually give us really good insights that we maybe even currently don't have, but it will take time.
There's 78 organs in a body, and we have to make sure that when these drugs are given to human beings, your mother, your father, your children, they have to be safe and we have to know and understand how to give them safely, what's the dosage and how to manage that. And that's what we do. And I see NAMs as a really good hybrid approach going forward, where we can use that for additional information and additional insights.
Mary Parker:
I think that's a good point, and I think that that is the takeaway from any new technology, whether it be NAMs or AI or anything, is that it's never going to be a complete replacement. There's some things that some technology can't do, but adding more to our repertoire is always going to be a good thing.
Birgit Girshick:
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I do believe that as we explore this field more and more and as we develop NAMs ourselves, there is a lot to benefit from, both for the reduction of animals, but also for bringing us more and new insights. So as I said, I'm personally committed to drive this forward.
Mary Parker:
So stepping away from work for a minute, what are you passionate about outside of work? How do you spend your time?
Birgit Girshick:
Oh my God, interesting question. What I'm passionate about is my family, my friends, and really my pets. I have two horses. So I will make sure that I have time to give and provide to my family and friends. Relationships are very, very important to me and they're important to everybody, and they give you a really good balance in life. And then, I spend probably too much time with my horses. My horses are Cole and Kitty. I have a thoroughbred I ride a lot, and I have a little miniature horse which I actually bought just so my thoroughbred has a friend. But I now drive her in a little carriage. So a lot of fun. Really good to find your balance in life and to reduce your stress in life. And I would just tell everybody, find some kind of passion, spend time with friends and family and with your pets, or any other hobbies you have.
Mary Parker:
Now the most important question of all, what color are your horses?
Birgit Girshick:
My thoroughbred is a bay and my miniature horse is a Palomino horse. So she's a cute little blonde and she acts like it sometimes.
Mary Parker:
Oh, sounds beautiful. So what would you say frustrates you about modern communication or modern society just in general, not even just at work?
Birgit Girshick:
I just got back from travel, so I wanted to tell you it's traveling. But I think what I really have a tough time with is a lack of transparency, either intentional or unintentional. So what that means for people working with me, I'm a little impatient if I don't know what's going on, what's the information? Is somebody working on it? What's going on? Well, what's the right information? And for me personally, that also means that I'm constantly looking for the real reason behind something. I'm constantly online looking for information. I want to understand what I'm talking about. I want to understand what's going on in the world, but I also have a problem with sometimes intentional lack of transparency. I want the world to understand what good work we are doing, why what we are doing is so necessary and important. And sometimes people are out there and they're trying to come up with other stories, and that really is something that frustrates me and I'm here to help alleviate.
Mary Parker:
And what advice would you give to women who are aspiring to leadership roles in any field?
Birgit Girshick:
Good question, Mary. So first of all, you're in the absolutely right company to make a career. Not that we are the only company. But I was very, very fortunate having a career at Charles River with amazing mentors and coaches. Our CEO, Jim Foster, has helped me for many, many years, developed me. Always gave me the visibility and new challenges. And so I would say my advice to everybody is, just voice that you would like to make a career, offer to do new things, different things, develop yourself, learn, and just create that visibility. And you will have a great career at Charles River and probably somewhere else as well if you follow that advice.
Mary Parker:
And finally, there is a lot happening in the biomedical research industry. What excites you the most?
Birgit Girshick:
God, yeah, there's so much new happening and exciting happening. So the one thing about drug development is that it's changing all the time. Biology is better understood, new diseases show up. So I would say what excites me most at the current time is really the advances we are making in understanding particular rare diseases and finding new and maybe more personalized ways of treating those diseases. Taking timelines from what used to be 10 to 12 years with a personalized medicine to a year or two, and really finding ways, helping people that don't have any other options. There's no other treatments for them. There's no drugs for them to use and alleviate their diseases or their pains. That is really exciting to me and I want to see more of that. And I certainly would like to have Charles River spend, and continue to spend time on this and help the industry develop those therapies.
Mary Parker:
Well, I don't know about you, but one of the things I really like about working at Charles River is seeing the direct impact that our drugs can have. For example, several episodes ago, I interviewed Felicia Samuels, whose daughter is going to be getting the sickle cell gene therapy treatment very soon. She is an employee at Charles River, and it's so wonderful to think about our work contributing so directly to someone that we know and someone that we can talk to on a daily basis. How do you feel about that?
Birgit Girshick:
Yes, this is great to hear. This is a perfect example how our work helps our friends, our family, our colleagues every single day. To me, our purpose is personal. The drugs that we have worked on helped to really provide my parents with a much longer life they otherwise would've had. And to me, this is why we're here. This is our purpose. Together we create healthier lives.
Mary Parker:
So what excites you most about taking over as CEO?
Birgit Girshick:
Yeah, that's a interesting question. There's so many different things that excite me about taking on as a CEO. And first of all, I think we have an amazing legacy and an amazing foundation on Charles River. We are a company that, without us none of the drugs would be on the market. So we are essential and critical to what our clients are doing, and for patients getting the therapies and drugs they need to prolong their lives or save their lives. And what I want to do is really take this strong foundation and that platform we have and accelerate it. We have developed a strategy, a strategy that I envision will take Charles River to the next horizon of its being, and we called it Pathway to Purpose.
And what is Pathway to Purpose? Pathway to Purpose is a strategic initiative that will allow us to continue refine our portfolio, providing our clients the services and solutions they need to get drugs to market and to the patients who need them. It will allow us to refine where we work in strategic locations that our clients need us to be there. It will allow us to customize more and more how we work with our clients. So every drug program is different. Every company is structured differently. The scientific advice they need, the support they need is differently. And I want to make sure that how we work with our clients is in a customized high-end, high-quality approach.
What it also does, another strategic initiative in there is modernizing Charles River. We talked a little bit already about digital technologies and AI and providing data insights, but also automation. So our labs in a few years will probably look a little bit different. There will be more automation and more direct data capture that we'll use to create insights for our clients to make decisions faster. Those are just a couple different examples for modernizing Charles River, but a really important part of our strategic initiatives.
And then not any different than now, but continuing to work on it, what we need to do is have really good oversight of animal welfare. This is a number one priority for us and it is something that we need to continue to work on for the animals in our care, may that be different housing or different handling techniques. We have a lot of research going on in this space, and this, just like regulatory, compliance and biosecurity, is of utmost important to us as a company, utmost important to us as people, but also to our clients and the drug programs that they have.
And then last but not least, I want to have an exceptional employee experience for our employees. I want them to come to work and have tools at their hands that are modern, that are easy to work with, that they have benefits and other things that they're satisfied with, and that they're just here to get development and have a career like we talked about. So a lot of different things, but I think that executing and delivering on Pathway to Purpose, again, our strategic initiative, is something that really will engage everybody, but then also excites me a lot.
Mary Parker:
Thank you so much for joining me, Birgit. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Birgit Girshick:
Thanks, Mary. It's a real pleasure talking to you.