How Trauma Informs Purpose: Building Biotech Success | Sandra Shpilberg (1/4)

Intro - 00:00:06: Welcome to the Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr.

Jon Chee - 00:00:08: Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee.

Intro - 00:00:23: Our guest today is Sandra Shpilberg, co-founder and COO at Adnexi, an AI-powered platform that profiles and evaluates patient advocacy groups by therapeutic area to enable biopharma patient-centric strategies from clinical trials to treatment launch. Sandra is an accomplished life science executive and serial entrepreneur. Prior to Adnexi, she founded and led multiple ventures, including Sanib Health, a special purpose acquisition company focused on accelerating healthcare innovation, and CICA Health, a digital patient-finding platform that improved clinical trial recruitment. She has held executive roles at leading biopharmaceutical companies, including Nora Therapeutics and BioMarin Pharmaceutical, where she led the commercial launches of multiple drug therapies. With deep experience across biotech, digital health, and patient engagement, Sandra brings a grounded founder-operator perspective on building innovation that actually reaches patients, making this a series you won't want to miss. Over the next four episodes, Sandra shares how she built a career at the intersection of biotech, entrepreneurship, and patient advocacy, founding ventures that helped reshape clinical trial recruitment and healthcare innovation. She also reflects on the lessons she's learned along the way, the importance of leading with purpose, and why values-driven execution is essential in long-term success. Today, we'll hear about Sandra's early life in Uruguay, her family's escape from the Holocaust, and how growing up in a small Jewish immigrant community shaped her worldview. We'll also hear how a childhood accident sparked a belief in healing, how immigrating to the US at 16 tested her resilience, and how she learned to adapt to a new environment without knowing the language or the rules. Whether stocking shelves in her father's store or studying late to catch up at school, Sandra learned early that progress comes from showing up, working hard, and holding yourself to a high standard. Without further ado, let's dive into part one of our conversation with Sandra Shpilberg.

Jon Chee - 00:02:57: Sandra, so good to see you. Thanks again for coming on the podcast.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:03:01: Great. I'm so glad to be here, Jon.

Jon Chee - 00:03:03: So, leading up to this conversation, we've been excited. You know, I know we put this on the calendar months ago, before we had even recorded. So, it's been in anticipation up until now. We've been really excited to dig into your earliest days and figure out what influenced your leadership and business philosophy, and how you got into business and science. So, take us all the way back. What was kid Sandra like?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:03:28: Yeah, let's start from the beginning. So I was born in Uruguay in South America to a family of Jewish people. My grandparents were Polish and Romanian Jews, and they escaped the Second World War; they escaped the Holocaust. They basically left with nothing to start from zero in a country that they had never heard of, and they didn't even know the language. But this was sort of the impetus, right? "I must save my life, and therefore, I have to leave what I know and start from zero somewhere else." And so they moved to Uruguay in the 1920s and 1930s. They set up brand new lives. My parents were born there, and I am a second-generation Uruguayan. By the time I'm born, I'm born into this small Jewish community that is part of the larger community in Uruguay. But I already know from a very early age a couple of things. One, we're not afraid to start from zero. We can start from zero. We move countries. We learn new languages. We start new communities. So that was imprinted very, very early. And I think from that very early age, the lives that I was seeing were already very entrepreneurial. People who had started from zero. So I think that that was part of what was happening there. And then my mom and dad, they were very interesting people. My dad had two small businesses. One was a hardware store where he literally sold pliers and pots and pans and all of these things. Some of the things were consumable, some would last forever. And he operated this mom-and-pop hardware store. And then he also had a furniture-making facility where he made tables and beds and chairs—basically, very simple furniture that would be sold, but not at a very high price. And so he operated these two stores within the economy of Uruguay, which is generally, I would say, a struggling economy. And so I watched them do this, and I think that that was my first experience in entrepreneurship, watching somebody work through external market forces, his internal state, trying to delight customers, trying to retain customers. And I worked at his store, you know, basically from the time that I was born.

Jon Chee - 00:05:45: Yeah.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:05:45: The hardware store was our babysitter. So, like, after school, we'd go to the hardware store and we would stay there. And my grandmother would live in the back, and she would give us tea and sandwiches. And then after that, eventually, we would get home. My mom also worked. So she worked at various banks, but she was generally helping people set up accounts and invest their money. So I grew up in that kind of dynamic of seeing my father operate in these small entrepreneurial pursuits, and then my mom worked for bigger, more stable companies. And both of them were collaborating to make ends meet and to provide for our education. Education was incredibly important in my family, as it is in many immigrant families. It was really seen as the path to getting ahead, to growing. That learning was connected to growing, and then growing was connected to eventually having more abundance and more financial stability. So education was paramount. From a very early age, my mom would put an incredible amount of emphasis on doing the best that you can and getting A's and getting a 100 and taking studying seriously and taking learning seriously. And I have a couple of funny memories around that that I still share with her. One time, I brought a 98 home. So I took a test in third grade. I get a 98. It's the highest grade in the class, and I am so happy. I'm taking this test home to my mom, and I'm like, "She's gonna be so happy I got a 98." And she sits down, and she looks at the test, and she says, "Where are the other two points?"

Jon Chee - 00:07:38: Oh, intense.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:07:42: "Just sit down and figure out where you lost the two points so that next time, you can get a 100." It wasn't until many years later that I learned the concept of a "tiger mother." But, definitely, I was doubly afraid of that. So there was this thing in the family of, "We must get ahead. We must find a way to be good at what we do, try to be the best that we can and get ahead." So that's where I grew up. And then I think that there were two early experiences that were really defining. One is that when I was four years old, I had an accident at home and I got burnt with boiling water. My mom was the person that was the caretaker responsible at that time. And, basically, what happened is I tripped over this homemade humidifier that she set up, that was a pot of water boiling with eucalyptus leaves. I was sleeping in the other room. I woke up. I went to this room where the pot was, without knowing that it had been set up in the middle of the room. I tripped over it, fell on top of the whole thing, and got burnt. And so this was obviously a very traumatic incident for a four-year-old, and I've done tons of therapy on it. I am completely on the other side of it now, which I really recommend for people who've had traumatic experiences like this. But at the end of the day, this experience, what it enabled is for me to understand that healing is possible. Like, I walk around the world wanting to tell everyone that healing is possible. All types of healing are possible: physical healing, mental healing, spiritual healing. Healing is possible. We know how to do it. We can do it. Sometimes we need lots of resources to do it. But I think that very early experience set me on this path of really being interested in healthcare, being interested in innovations in healthcare, tools that can help people heal body and mind. And so that really set me on a path. When I look back, it's really that very foundational experience when I am experiencing in my body, I know that healing is possible because I am doing it. I am healing at the age of four; that that is possible. So that was one experience. And then the other early experience is at age 16, my family immigrated from Uruguay to the United States of America. Now, my father had come to visit five years before. He had a brother here, and he fell in love with America. And I think what he fell in love with was that America is really the land of opportunity. Like, you can come here and you can work hard and there are paths for upward mobility. There are paths to create companies to do things that are amazing. He fell in love with that and then went through the process of applying for us to legally immigrate to the United States. That process took five years, and he was able to get a sponsor to come to the United States in 1992 to work as a machine man, as a person in a manufacturing facility operating machines. So I think that what's really interesting about the story is that, generally, we think of sponsorship as for very high education. You know, like, a PhD from somewhere is going to get sponsored to come here or somebody who has these very detailed high-level skills. But in the case of my family, it was my father's ability to work with machines that actually got him a sponsor here. And so we went through that process. And then in 1992, when I was 16 years old, the papers came through. And, you know, I still remember the day as if it was today. My father is coming in with this yellow envelope that reads, you know, "US Embassy in Uruguay." And the papers had come through and we had green cards and we could come to the United States of America. And so this was a very interesting experience. Again, I've had to do a lot of therapy on it because it's a very, very layered situation. First of all, I have my father who is feeling like he just won the lottery. And he did. He basically won the lottery. There are only just a few people that get to come from South American countries into the United States legally, and he and his family were the winners of these lottery tickets. Then I have my mom who's showing a different side. She doesn't want to leave. She has a job. She has friends. She has her sister. She has lots of things in Uruguay. Her community is in Uruguay. She doesn't want to leave. Then I have my two younger brothers. One is three years younger, one is nine years younger. And they're kind of young, so they're sort of like, "Well, what am I gonna do? Like, my parents are moving, so I'm moving." And then you have me kind of in the middle of this whole thing, sort of being old enough to be able to make my own decisions, and yet I am also not old enough to stay by myself here in Uruguay. And so instead of in this middle of, "Well, I don't have the agency to decide to stay, I have to go," and I'm also losing everything that I know. I'm losing my school, the community that I had there, the wonderful teachers that were part of that. I had a boyfriend there. I had tons of friends. Everything that I knew, one day is left behind, and I moved to the United States sight unseen to start a new life. So this was an incredibly defining experience.

Jon Chee - 00:13:11: I'm sure.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:13:12: In the sense that at an age where I could understand what was happening, I had to basically take this leap of faith of, "Well, I guess this is where we're going, and I have to start from zero," and then begin the process of actually starting from zero of learning English and learning how high school worked in the United States and figuring out how to apply to college and making new friends from scratch. All of these things were all happening at the same time. But, again, looking back, it made me very resilient, you know, very resilient to, one, understanding that sometimes life happens, and we have to ideally flow with what's happening and not resist it too much. And then, two, not being afraid to start from zero and taking these leaps of faith, which, obviously, I will continue to do. But that was the first leap of faith of going somewhere sight unseen and starting from zero.

Jon Chee - 00:14:12: Wow. Juan, thank you for sharing. And something I see is, at the moment, there are some commonalities. Like, your dad is very entrepreneurial, and it's a very entrepreneurial thing to be like, "I'm just gonna go. I'm just gonna go to the United States and just do this thing." And I think entrepreneurship is often, like you said, a leap of faith, and it's something that entrepreneurs tend to just gravitate to. It's kind of like catnip for anyone who's considering entrepreneurship to tune into that. Like, if you find this affinity to that kind of lifestyle, listen to that. But also, inversely, if that is something that really rubs you the wrong way, also listen to that because the last thing you'd want is to take that leap of faith only to be like, "This is an absolute nightmare." Kinda like, you know, you talk about your mom having stability in larger organizations. That is also okay.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:15:08: Totally okay.

Jon Chee - 00:15:09: That's totally okay. My mom and dad are that way. And I'm like, if that meshes with your personal style, that is ultimately right. It's a personal thing. And also, I can't imagine, at 16 years old, you're a teenager. You're like, "I just set up my friend group. I'm just starting to hit my stride," and now you're like, "Oh, man. I have to go all the way back and restart." I can't imagine how you're feeling. I guess, where did you end up, and how was that? You touched down, you're starting from the proverbial zero. How was that experience for you?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:15:44: Yeah, it was very intense. You know, I came in February 1992. So, just a little bit of background, Uruguay has the mildest weather you can think of. It's like a beach town, basically. The beach city has the mildest weather. I didn't even have a thick jacket that I owned. And then we land here, and it's February 1992, JFK, Brooklyn, New York is where my father rented a house, and it's snowing, you know, maybe 29 degrees. I think that the whole weather is a very good description of what those days felt like. It felt like we went from the warmth to the tundra, you know, from being full of community to basically knowing no one, from knowing the language and how things worked to not knowing the language and how anything worked. And so it was pretty rough, I have to say. It was not an easy time. Initially, for many days, the question was, "Why did we do this? Like, why are we suffering like this?" I think the great thing that we had going for us is that we did this as a family. It was five of us. It was my father, my mother, my brothers, and I. And it was the five of us that were together, and we were doing it together. So at least we had that initial family of origin. Rules changed within the family to accommodate this. Obviously, as a young person, I was picking up English faster, so I had to be put in these positions where I am speaking on behalf of the family. You know, my mom still speaks with an accent. Her English is still somewhat limited. So even though we've been here for a very long time now, the roles in the family shifted. But, you know, what I have to say is the first year was all about, "Are my parents employed?" And they were at some point, and they were not at some others. And then number two, "Am I going to school and figuring out what it is that needs to happen there?" And then number three, I have these two little brothers that sort of look to me for some care and assistance. So how are they doing? Are they getting on with life? And it was pretty rough that first year for sure. After the first year, I think things became easier in all regards. You know, one example that I think made things a lot easier is my mom, because she had worked at banks in Uruguay, her hope was that she could work at a bank here. That somehow she would be able to manifest some kind of transfer or some connections that would yield to that. But when we first landed, she needed a job, so she went to fold sweaters at a sweatshop. And that's what she did, like, for eight hours a day, folding sweaters. She would come home exhausted. But at the same time, she didn't give up hope that this transfer could work to a bank and kept working at it in whichever way she could. And, you know, about three months later, it worked. It happened. She was able to transfer. And so she goes from one day folding sweaters for eight hours at a sweatshop, coming home exhausted, to the next day dressing up in a suit to take the train to Wall Street to go work at a bank and start to level up her career. And I think once she was able to do that, then the family also felt more stable because now she had a job. She had benefits. She had medical. She had dental. And then my father, at the same time, was sort of figuring his way out. He had come here with a sponsor, but that sponsor got sick and that business did not continue. So he didn't have an actual job because from the time the sponsorship was offered until the papers came through, it was five years. So a lot of things changed.

Jon Chee - 00:19:18: Wow.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:19:18: And so he had to work his way through and primarily ended up working blue-collar jobs. And so that's what those years were like. They were very, very intense.

Jon Chee - 00:19:27: Yeah.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:19:28: And for me, I think, you know, looking back, it sort of felt like we all had to kind of put on this armor and go fight. Right? Go fight to have a life. And the beauty of life, I think, has been to get to take off the armor and sort of be like, "Okay. We can breathe. We're safe now."

Jon Chee - 00:19:48: Absolutely. And you bringing that up is really interesting because I think I'm also from a family of immigrants, and it's really, I don't think I've taken it off, which is hard. And my wife reminds me, like, sometimes you have to. Because it almost sometimes feels like your fight or flight is always on. And there's a physiological problem if you're always in fight or flight mode. It's actually physically bad for you to be in that state.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:20:15: Yeah. High cortisol, high adrenaline. These are not things you want to sustain for very long periods of time.

Jon Chee - 00:20:19: Yeah. Right. For certain situations, important. But for your everyday life, probably not so good. But I think what really stood out to me is you have a front-row seat at seeing resilience in action, which is awesome. Because you saw your mom just not give up and just got it done. Like, was able, got it done, and that's freaking awesome. Also, you know, moving to a new country is already hard, but I can imagine moving to New York is ultra hard because there's so much going on. And I can imagine, this is me just trying to imagine myself in that position, just feeling overwhelmed.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:20:56: Incredibly overwhelming.

Jon Chee - 00:20:58: I go there just to visit friends, and I'm like, "Oh my god. I spent the weekend here, and I feel overwhelmed." I can't imagine going to New York, and then you're just like, "Alright. I need to, one, learn the country, but I also need to, two, learn New York, specifically." It's on super hard mode.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:21:18: Yeah. It was very intense. And, actually, the house that my father could afford to rent for us happened to be under the elevated train. So when you go very deep into Brooklyn and you get to Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, that kind of area, the subway runs elevated, and it goes behind a certain number of houses. Now, this is the house that my parents could afford. So talk about overwhelm. Talk about nervous system regulation. Now here's the thing for me. I am a sensitive person. I was burned at the age of four, and I have incredible sensitivity in my body. Then I have to come to New York and be put in this situation where the city is not only a lot, the immigration is a lot, but also we live in a house that is under the train.

Jon Chee - 00:22:02: Yeah. It's just piling on.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:22:05: Yeah. Just piling on. Yeah. So, obviously, that's kind of the life experience that I've had, but I think the good part has been that a lot of this can be undone. Like, probably, if I can impart any message, it is that anything that is not for you can be undone. And, eventually, you can get to a place where you don't live under the train. You're not in this city that is completely overwhelming if it is to you. And you get to build some peace and stability and ideally begin to take off this armor.

Jon Chee - 00:22:35: Yeah. I love that. That's something that I need to hear, to be quite honest, because I think I personally do struggle with that, especially as it's just been a lot of pressure over time. And I think there are benefits to it as well, where the intensity, like, entrepreneurship requires a kind of intensity to it, but that intensity should not be on all the time. And so it's kind of like, when can you find more balance? And I love to hear that. And as you're starting to get acclimated, like, you're not feeling tectonic shifts underneath you the whole time and you're starting to approach university and thinking about going to college. Take us back then. What was going through your mind then where you're like, you got to figure out the university system, how to do the applications? Yeah, like, how was that?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:23:22: It was a whole thing. So I came to finish junior year at a public high school, Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, New York. They had a wonderful college counselor. I still remember her name, Mrs. Concila. She was very sweet, and I think she felt really bad for me because I was coming in really at the last hour. I ended up working at that college office as a part-time job, and she was very helpful. And, also, at that time, I met a young man who would eventually become my husband, and he was very helpful in basically explaining to me—I mean, he had to explain to me, Phil is his name. Phil had to explain to me that you have to take the SAT.

Jon Chee - 00:24:00: Oh, yeah. The SAT. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:24:05: And he's like, "And you probably should also take the TOEFL because you've been here for three minutes. So you should take the TOEFL just for foreign speakers so that you could show that you know English at a good enough level to go to college." And you have to actually apply to every college, and Uruguay didn't work that way. There's a public university that is the university of Uruguay, and you don't really apply, you register. So if you want a spot, you have it. And then if at the end of the day, it doesn't work out for you, it sorts itself out that you will not finish. So all of it was new. The fact that you had to apply, that you had to pay to apply to college, that you had to take the SAT, that you needed these letters of recommendation, you needed to write essays. So at the end of the day, you know, I did probably the maximum that I could do for my situation, which was the minimum for anybody else that would have had an opportunity to actually apply to college. I applied to NYU. I applied to CUNY, the City University of New York that had Baruch College in it. And then as Phil looked at this setup, he said NYU is too expensive. CUNY is a public university, you need to apply to something in the middle that is like a private university that is not expensive, but that is, you know, maybe good enough. And so we came up with Pace University as that middle ground. And so I applied. I actually got into all of these places, and he was right. NYU was gonna be too expensive. It's still too expensive.

Jon Chee - 00:25:32: Still very expensive. Yeah.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:25:34: I don't know. I think maybe back in that day, it was maybe like $40,000 a year, and Pace was like $13,000 a year. And then City University of New York was maybe like $5,000 a year. And, you know, my parents didn't have money. They hadn't put together a 529 that was richly funded. There was none of that. And in Uruguay, also, the university was public, so you didn't have to pay a significant amount of fees to go there. So, basically, Pace ended up being the place that I chose to go. They gave me some scholarships, and then I thought that I was going to figure out a way to maybe get more scholarships or maybe work for credits and not end up with some very significant amount of debt. But as you see, the financial consideration was really the first consideration in going to college for me. I need to go to college somewhere where I can get trained to get a job, but I also need to make sure I don't walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that are going to set me back. And so I ended up going to Pace University. One other thing, all the schools were local, so all of them implied that I was going to live with my parents while going to college. And, obviously, it would have been a great experience to leave home, but I think I didn't even consider it. I was so fresh to the country. I did not even consider being away from my parents. I had already left everything once. And at this point, what seemed okay was I was home in Brooklyn. I will take the subway up to Manhattan, go to college as a commuter student, basically, and most students at Pace were commuter students anyway, and then go back home. So that's what happened. And Pace was a wonderful place to be. Really, I felt the professors were very caring. The classes were small, and the entire university was set up really for people like me. It was about opening up to opportunities and taking advantage of the fact that the school was in New York, was very close to Wall Street, it had good connections, had a great accounting program. And so that's what I did. I studied accounting. And after my first year, I went to career services. During this time, I am holding a job for $4.25 at a store, a very iconic store in Brooklyn, in Brighton Beach called Bergust. Now, this thing has gone out of business, but it was there, I think, for thirty to forty years. And, you know, they employed young immigrants like me at minimum wage to sell things and work the register. So I was looking to uplevel. So I went to career services and I said, "I want a job that, one, is related to accounting so I can learn something, and then, two, that pays me more than $4.25 an hour."

Jon Chee - 00:28:18: Totally.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:28:18: And so the career services was excellent at Pace. They had really good relationships with a lot of the companies that were nearby, and so they sent me into JPMorgan to interview for a financial accounting intern position. And the concept was that I could go to Pace and then I could walk a couple of blocks. It was about six blocks to Wall Street and then go work there for a couple of hours a few times a week. And I could also maybe rearrange my schedule so I had Fridays off and could work the whole day on Friday. So anyway, I got this job, and the job paid $10 an hour.

Jon Chee - 00:28:52: There we go. More than double.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:28:54: I more than doubled my initial income. And more than anything, I was now working at JPMorgan, you know, one of the oldest, biggest, most reputable banks. I was working in financial control, so my job was a little bit like an audit job, you know, ticking numbers and checking numbers and that sort of thing, doing a lot of reconciliations. But the best thing was the exposure to the people that were working there, which were at another level. Right? Like, my boss, for example, was an American woman who was working this job, and she had a big influence on me and sort of, like, starting to think bigger. Like, "Where is my career going?" And she was the first one that started planting seeds that maybe after Pace, there was something else educational for me. There was perhaps an MBA or a law degree or something like that. She was the first one that was planting these ideas. So that was really important to be exposed to that, and I loved that job. I did it for three years, and then I stayed on after I graduated into their analyst program. I switched to audit for their analyst program and then did that for about a year.

Jon Chee - 00:30:02: Very cool. And I love to highlight how important it is to just put yourself in these rooms and positions as best as you can. Like, you talked about going to Pace, just utilizing the career resource that's available to the university. That boom opened a massive door. And then while at JPMorgan, not wasting a moment to find these particular mentors, colleagues who can open your eyes to what's possible. Because for me, there's so many times throughout my career journey where I can look back and be like, "Oh, that person, if I had not met that person..." And sometimes it's random. It's completely serendipity, but you can't really manufacture that without just putting yourself out there.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:30:48: Completely.

Jon Chee - 00:30:49: Like, sometimes you can look at it. It comes to you. But if you're trying to manufacture it, you have to go out there. And it is not always the most comfortable thing to do, but you've gotta go pursue it. And what a great opportunity, you know, to be at JPMorgan because, like, talk about exactly what you said, being connected to everything and everyone. And so, you know, as you're wrapping up your time at JPMorgan, did you know what was next after that?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:31:15: Yeah. So at JPMorgan, I worked there for about a year in this full-time job after college. And I wanted to say one more thing about that because I think in the JPMorgan job and how I sort of maneuvered through the career services and the JPMorgan job, you were seeing my two parental units having this impact on me. My mother being the very practical person that generally believes the resources are out there and you need to find them. Right? So if there's a career services, you go to it. If there's a professor you need to talk to because you didn't get the grade you wanted, you go talk to them. If they overcharged you on your tuition, you go check it. So, like, it comes to this very proactive, very, like, "You gotta go get what is yours and it's out there and you gotta go get it." And then my father's perspective, which was a bit more spiritually dominated, that you are in the right place and there's a path in front of you and it will always appear and it will always take you to where you need to go. So I'm integrating those two things. For me, I feel like it's been really good to have these two parents that are very different because it's like the spiritual that everything's gonna work out, everything's gonna turn out fine, and then the more practical, "Yes, and you have to show up to it." It may land in your lap. I'm not saying it may not. It can. But, generally, you kinda have to put yourself in the place where it is going to show up.

Jon Chee - 00:32:40: Yep.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:32:41: So balancing those two things. So JPMorgan, about a year in, I just got a call from a recruiter, and the recruiter said, "Hey. I have a job for you at Citigroup. They're looking to hire new people. It's a financial control job. Do you want to go interview? They're gonna pay you double what you're making now." And I was like, "Sure."

Jon Chee - 00:33:01: That's where it kind of fell into your lap. It can happen.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:33:05: Yes. Exactly. And here's a recruiter doing her job. Right? Like, she's going through a roster of analysts at JPMorgan who have either audit or financial control experience and just calling each single one of them saying there's a job open. And, actually, the job was just down the block, so nothing was really gonna change. Like, instead of going to 23 Wall Street, I'm going to 111 Wall Street.

Jon Chee - 00:33:27: Yeah.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:33:28: And so she's like, "You wanna go interview?" And I'm like, "Sure. I'll go interview." So I went to interview, and that job was paying double because it was a bigger job. There was a person to manage. It was more of a global financial control role where there were many countries involved. So I thought, "Yeah. This is a good opportunity. I wanna keep moving up." And so I took the job, doubled my salary, and then the recruiter gave a dinner at the Rainbow Room to thank me for taking the job.

Jon Chee - 00:33:58: Sweet.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:33:59: With a date.

Jon Chee - 00:34:00: Sweet. Sweet. Amazing.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:34:02: You know, and New York has so many good restaurants. At that time, that was a very nice restaurant to go to for a 24-year-old.

Jon Chee - 00:34:09: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so now, I mean, it sounds like you're managing someone now, and you're stepping up into a kind of a global role. What was that experience at Citigroup like?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:34:21: It was very interesting, this experience. This was a very dynamic group. We're doing financial control for these products called global custody, global clearing. So the products weren't necessarily exciting, but the good thing about them is that they were products that were being used all across the world and pretty much all across the organization. And so the way this stepped me up is that, one, it gave me this really global view of business. Like, we were no longer just checking and ticking US things. Like, now we're working across, you know, twenty, thirty different countries, and we were in contact with the country sometimes, whoever was the contact there, and really turned me into a global perspective. Like, business is global. And then the managing people was also very important. I actually had this very great opportunity managing a person because I happened to manage somebody who was struggling with infertility and was trying to have a baby in the time that I was managing her, and I had to support that. And, of course, it was great for me to support it, but I was younger than her.

Jon Chee - 00:35:26: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like your first time managing as well.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:35:29: Exactly. And so supporting her as she is going also through this very personal and somewhat challenging process that also had implications for how available she was going to be during work. But that was honestly a great experience. We became very good friends. She ended up coming to my wedding. So I actually have very, very good experiences. And then what ended up happening was that when I was at JPMorgan, there was a seed that was planted that basically said, "I should probably go get an MBA, and I should probably go get the best MBA that I can get according to the rankings," because what happened was that I got to see that there was a next level. Right? There was another level. There was a level where people were graduating with MBAs from Wharton and Harvard and Stanford, and then that was opening a new level for them. And so instead of this upward forward motion that sort of defines, I think, most of my life, about a year into the job at Citigroup, this MBA thing is percolating in my mind, and I say, "You know what? I should apply. I should apply and see." And my deal with myself was, "I'm only going to apply and go if I can get into one of these places." Otherwise, I'm okay kind of staying in this job, and then I can go a little bit later. Anyway, I applied to the schools that I mentioned. I got into Wharton. So then about three years after leaving college, I started my MBA at Wharton, and I was really proud of myself, and I was really happy.

Jon Chee - 00:37:04: That's badass.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:37:04: You know? Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:37:06: That's badass. You were just trying to figure out what the SAT was.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:37:10: Yes.

Jon Chee - 00:37:10: And now you're at Wharton, which is freaking awesome. So props to you. Like, you should be very proud of that. Oh, I'm like, you're just like, "SAT? What the heck?" And then you're at Wharton. And how was that experience? You're back in school now. You saw, you know, JPMorgan and Citigroup, both massive, highly productive operations. Now you're back at school. It's probably a little bit of a shock.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:37:37: Yeah. I mean, I actually love school. So the school part was fine. You know, working on the case studies and working with learning teams. All of that, I think, was perfectly fine. And in Wharton, in particular, was very applied knowledge. You know, we were always working with local companies to help increase profitability or think of new innovative ways to approach the market. So the education actually felt less didactic and more applied. So it was very applied education. And then also between the first year and the second year, we have an internship where we have to go and get a job. And that internship was very defining for me. Because by the time I get to Wharton, I'm like, "Okay. Well, I went into accounting because that was a good way to get a job, because I was an immigrant. But now I'm, like, seven years out of that experience, and what I really should be focusing on is what is it that I want to do with my career?" And that's when healthcare came back into the picture. And it said, "Well, if I had to do it all over again, if I wasn't an immigrant, I would be working somewhere in health. Maybe I would have even been a doctor or something." And today, I'm kinda glad I'm not a doctor, and I'm in the path that I am because it's very entrepreneurial and there's a lot of innovation in it. But at Wharton, I get that chance to basically take off a little bit of armor and say, "I no longer need to get a job just because it's available to me and it's going to pay the bills. Now I should be shifting. I should be doing something I actually want to do, that I actually feel called and I feel purpose around," and that's how I switched into healthcare. And so between my first year and my second year, I had an internship at Genentech, the mother of all biotech companies. And this internship was completely defining. It confirmed for me a few things. One, that there was a great place to be in biotech where you could be a business person that is helping these products come to market and helping the products reach the patients that needed them. Of course, in biotech, there is incredible impact being made by the scientists, by the researchers, by the doctors, by the clinical operations people. That is great. That's all necessary. And also what's necessary are the business people that are going to actually move this product along and make it accessible to the patients that actually need it. So that was really important to confirm. Two, it was really important to confirm that there was a thriving industry, that Genentech was the mothership, but then there were all the biopharma companies that had been there for hundreds of years. The Mercks, the Johnson & Johnsons. And then there were smaller companies that were popping up and getting venture funding. So what it confirmed for me is, this is a massive, productive place to be, and I want to be in it.

Jon Chee - 00:40:25: That's very cool. And I guess going from the East Coast, and I'm assuming you spent some time in California, how was that personally for you?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:40:34: Oh my god. Amazing. It was my first time in California.

Jon Chee - 00:40:37: Yeah.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:40:38: And I get here and, you know, it's like San Francisco in the summer. So it was sunny, and there's beautiful nature, and everything's just feeling more airy for me, more open. Well, so I had fallen in love with California sooner than that. So Genentech was the first time that I was coming to live here for a significant amount of time, like, three months. But I had come here before because after Pace, I took my savings and went on a trip to Europe, one of these Contiki tours to Europe, for a week. And there, I met these two girls from California, and they just looked different. They were people that were lit from the inside. They were happy and cheery. They had not gone through any of the darkness that I had to go through, and we became really good friends. And then after the trip, they invited me to come and do a trip where we drove the entire California Coast.

Jon Chee - 00:41:36: Cool.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:41:36: And so at that point is when I fell in love with California. And my friend, Amy, I would tell her, "I'm gonna move here. I'm gonna move here." And, you know, I did the internship at Genentech, but then I didn't move here. I didn't take the job at Genentech. What happened was that after I finished my second year of Wharton, my husband also wanted to get an MBA. So he went to Wharton as well. He went after me. So I decided to get a job locally so that we wouldn't be in a long-distance new marriage.

Jon Chee - 00:42:10: Yep. Absolutely.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:42:12: I got a job instead at Johnson & Johnson, Centocor, and worked there for three years. And in those three years, I remember talking to Amy, and Amy is like, "You haven't moved to California."

Jon Chee - 00:42:25: Yeah. "What's going on?"

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:42:27: "Just a reminder that you haven't moved to California." And I said, "No. I'm gonna move to California. It's going to happen. It's just, you know, Phil is doing his MBA. Now I'm pregnant with our first son. It's going to happen. It's going to happen." And so eventually, it did happen. And it happened actually very similarly to the way that the Citigroup job happened. You know, at J&J, I was a senior product manager on Remicade, a very large brand. I was learning a lot. I was having the opportunity to present resources and tools that salespeople were using to groups of 600 people. I mean, it was a very developmental job. And then one day, about three years after I'm doing that job, a recruiter calls. And at that point, the job that she's offering is not in Pennsylvania. The job is in California. It is at Genentech, actually. And so I was about to turn 30 and I start thinking, "Wait, I'm about to turn 30. Why is it that we're in Philadelphia? How did we end up in Philadelphia?" I'm like, "Well, we ended up in Philadelphia because we went to do two MBAs, but now those MBAs are complete." And so, basically, the full country and world are open. Like, "Where do we want to live?" And our families were in New York. Everybody was still in New York. But, you know, I had this dream of California, and we made it happen.

Jon Chee - 00:43:56: Very cool.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:43:57: Now the recruiter called me with a job at Genentech, and I said, "Well, that sounds great. I'll definitely interview for that. But since I'm crossing the country for this interview, do you have any other companies that are looking?" Just so that I could do maybe Thursday with Genentech and then Friday with another company and have a few things to compare. She's like, "Yeah. Actually, I do. I have a job at this company that you probably never heard of. It's called BioMarin Pharmaceutical." And I said, "No. I actually have heard of it because somebody that I knew, her husband, was working there." And the recruiter said, "I think this could be a good role for you as well. It's gonna be obviously bigger and broader because it's a small company. But, yeah, let's send you in Thursday to Genentech, Friday to BioMarin." And so I came out, interviewed Thursday at Genentech, Friday at BioMarin. And after going through the BioMarin interview, I was so sure that that's the job that I wanted. Because I think in this time, I had found, especially after working at Johnson & Johnson for a while, that in the larger companies, the jobs tend to be very segmented. Right? And you get to do one thing and do it really, really well, and then your counterpart—people early in their careers, the notion is to rotate you every couple of years until you cover all of these different things. And they could be like marketing to doctors, marketing to patients, marketing to payers, marketing whatever it might be, covering the entire thing. And at BioMarin, that's not what was being offered. What was being offered is, "You are the marketing person. You are the director of marketing. You are responsible for everything. You get patients. You get physicians. You get sites. You get publications. You get congresses. You get materials. Everything is under you, and then we'll put some people under you. We'll give you resources. We'll give you agencies, but you are going to be managing everything. And by the way, this product is launching in eighteen months."

Jon Chee - 00:46:02: Oh my god. There's tons of hats on a short timeline. Figure it out. And I grew up in the Bay Area, so every time I think about BioMarin, I think about soul food.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:46:11: Yes. Oh my god. That place is so good.

Jon Chee - 00:46:14: Yeah. I'm always like, love it. I would be eating soul food every day.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:46:20: A lot of soul food. There is amazing Puerto Rican food.

Jon Chee - 00:46:24: Yeah. It's so good.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:46:25: Yeah. And so I took the job at BioMarin. Our little family of three moved to the Bay Area. And, you know, it took us a while to get set up. It was also a leap. It was a big leap for us. We were leaving our family on the East Coast. There was really no one of our family here. And there were honestly a lot of considerations that probably I didn't think through well enough, like, "Will my children have enough access to their grandparents? Will they have enough of a concept of family?" But we tried to do the best we could there. And so then I started the job at BioMarin, and I was there for nine years. It was a long time for someone like me.

Jon Chee - 00:47:01: And I guess, before we dive into your BioMarin journey, there's a couple of things that stood out to me, specifically around your first touchpoint with Genentech that really stood out to me is that people think that science is only done by scientists. But science at large requires so many different stakeholders and disciplines to stand up science. And exactly what you said, business people, finance people, ops people, there's so many stakeholders in making sure, obviously, developing the drug, getting it approved, all critically important, but there's also the downstream of that. Is it, like, what does it take to actually get it into the hands of patients, which is a whole thing, such a massive part. And I love that because it's, for anyone out there who wants to get into science but may not have a scientific background, I encourage you. Don't feel like that precludes you from entering science. You can definitely get into science without having a scientific background. You have a part to play. You know, I'm clearly biased because we're in science, but it gets you out of bed just knowing, you know, we're all fighting to improve health outcomes for patients. There's nothing better, in my opinion, so come on in. The water is warm. But, you know, that really stood out to me. But when you reflect back on the Genentech experience and the J&J experience, what were some key lessons from each of those experiences, and were there any mentors or colleagues that took you under their wing kind of similar to when you were at JPMorgan?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:48:33: Yes. Yes. Excellent. So Genentech was a great place in terms of mentorship. The people were very friendly and very much about developing the new talent. So there were two people there that stood out. One was my first boss there, Claudia Estrin. She was just a great boss. She was so dynamic. She was running this whole department called decision analysis and basically helping make some of the key strategic decisions for each one of the products. She was a great boss, as an intern, and really connected me to a lot of people, exposed me to a lot of people so that I could begin to learn what careers look like. And I think that that's what you need early on, somebody who's willing to introduce you to different people that have made their way through a path. And then that person is willing to tell you, "Well, this is what this path looks like." And there are so many paths, even just within commercial operations. You could be in market research, in marketing, in medical affairs, in sales operations, in sales. There's so many different paths, and she did a great job basically pointing me to the different people that were willing to talk to me about that. The other thing that she did was she demonstrated to me how important it was to have close relationships at work. Because I could see that the reason why she was so successful is because she had very close relationships with a few people that were so devoted to helping her accomplish whatever it was that was on her plate at that time. And that, you know, business wasn't just about the content. It wasn't just about the analysis and the precision and getting a 100. It wasn't just about getting a 100. It was about how you got that 100. It was about, "Did you have people that trusted you, that wanted to collaborate with you, that wanted to help you," and that that relationship component was really important. The other person that became incredibly important in that role was Amy Burroughs. She initially came to my final presentation as an intern that I had made at that point in which we were deciding whether or not Genentech should use direct-to-consumer advertising for any of their products. And the answer was mixed. They had some products that were not going to be a good fit for consumer advertising, like their cardiovascular products that are administered in an ER setting. And then they had other products that were an excellent fit for consumer advertising, like the asthma franchise with Xolair and other products. So she came to my presentation. And then after that, contacted me about staying on board and helping her with this commercial operation system that she was putting together. Genentech was getting ready to launch an incredible number of products in a very short sequence, and they wanted to come up with, "What is our playbook? How do we approach the launch of each product?" And so the year after my internship, I worked part-time at Wharton. So I was at Wharton, and I was working part-time in one of the first remote jobs out there helping Amy with this commercial operations system, and we stayed close for a very long time. She's now the CEO of a biotech company, and we've been close. But I think these are the people that sort of leave an imprint because they really make a difference. They sort of see something in you, and they see something in them, and it's resonating, and we can create something together.

Jon Chee - 00:51:56: Absolutely. I mean, I think a saying comes to mind. It's just like, people don't often remember what you do, but they remember how you make them feel.

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:52:04: Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:52:04: And that's not to say that the what you do doesn't matter. It absolutely does. But it's just like these relationships and the feelings also are very important and the relationships that you build. And I used to think too that I couldn't neglect that aspect of it and just get the 100. Like, "Get the 100, and everything else solves itself." Not the case. Not the case. People have to enjoy working with you because at the end of the day, you wake up and you're together in an office. You have eight hours a day working with each other. You can't not be pleasant. Because then they just, you know, you'll repel people and you need to build alliances and make sure people have that trust, that underlying trust, which is ultimately a feeling thing. So really, you know, I think an astute observation and something that learning early is important. And at J&J, a much larger organization, what were some key lessons from J&J and, you know, were there folks—obviously, it sounds like it was a bit more specific and domain-siloed—but were there any people that took you under their wing there? And what did you learn there?

Sandra Shpilberg - 00:53:14: Yeah. I would say that also at J&J, the managers were very caring for their people. Even though it was such a large company, it felt that your managers were there to help you. And, you know, they were there to help you develop. They were there to help you grow. And then, obviously, because it was J&J, growth was basically unlimited. And I had the opportunity to witness that, to see certain people that had grown through the organization to become the president of a division. So I think with J&J, it was more about seeing this very large company with an incredible number of upward mobility and opportunities and sort of seeing proof that that was possible. And one of the other things that was interesting at Johnson & Johnson, at least in the area that I was in, was that there were a lot of women leaders. So it also was messaging to me that you did not need to be a man to be the president of the division. That you could be a woman with children and be the president of the division of Johnson & Johnson. And I think that that was a very good message for me to see early on. And these are very large companies where they're managing lots of people underneath, very large budgets, very large P&L, profit and loss statements for the division. So that was very encouraging to see that at Johnson & Johnson.

Jon Chee - 00:54:35: Very cool.

Outro - 00:54:38: That's all for this episode of the Biotech Startups Podcast featuring Sandra Shpilberg. Join us next time for part two of our four-part series where we'll hear how Sandra helped launch multiple first-in-class therapies at BioMarin and what it was like to build a rare disease playbook from scratch while staying deeply connected to the patients she served. She'll also share how a bold career pivot gave her a front-row seat to startup risk, the lessons she took with her, and the moment she realized a big unmet need could become her next venture. If you're enjoying the podcast, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening. The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for the Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or its sponsors. No reference to any product, service, or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.