David Southwell

But my mother was American, so I had two passports.

And as soon as I got out of school in England, I realized that I wanted to kind of control my own life as opposed to

doing what English schoolboys do and go and work in the city or whatever.

And so I went to Texas and got a job in the oil industry for my gap year.

And I wound up going to Rice because the oil industry was booming in the early 80s.

So I didn't want to go home and I wanted to be able to control my life.

And so I went to Rice and then I wound up going to Wall Street

And I really enjoyed Wall Street.

I thought the, I was in the M&A group at Lehman Brothers and it was, it was just a, a, a rollicking time to be in that.

And there were people who are now very senior, being the founder of Blackstone was a managing director when I was there as well as his number two.

And really working with very intelligent people, but at the end of the day,

I was doing deals for people who are often making, you know, a making a lot of money, but they were very proud of the companies that they built and they were proud of the deals that they were doing.

And I was stepping in, making it happen and stepping away.

So I just kind of every every time I wanted to be the client and I thought sort of this is sort of what you have to do.

So I think the main theme

from being a kid was i wanted to gain control of my own life and biotech you know wall street is a way to do that biotech is also a way to do it because there are lots of different ways to skin a cat as it were in a biotech company and you know two different ceos in a company will operate them in very different ways so you better be right or you better be operating it in a way that will

keep your employees keep a culture of a company and kind of keep the plates spinning i think everyone does that in a different way and that's what i like about this business is that to some extent i can be myself if i were to speak with you know your teammates people who report to you uh people who know you well maybe even members of the board and ask what what's what's david's management approach what do you think they would say

Well, I know what I hope they would say.

It's, you know, one never sees the bullet that hits one.

And so, you know, I think you would really have to ask them.