Stacy Lindborg: CEO of Imunon
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What leadership philosophy does Stacy Lindborg emphasize?
What resonates really deeply with me, and it's been a central part of how I've led across my entire career, is more servant leadership. That really is ultimately ground and humility.
That's the voice of Stacey Lindborg, CEO of Immunon, headquartered in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Listen in to hear insights from Amy about leadership in biopharma and how Immunon is working to develop medicines that harness the building blocks of life to work in harmony with the body's immune system. I'm John Simboli. You're listening to BioBoss. Welcome to BioBoss, Stacey.
Thank you. It's a delight to be here.
What led you to your role as CEO at Immunon?
I really step back and I think about where the journey began. It really started with a phenomenal company. So Eli Lilly and Company. I was there for almost half my career. And I think that where you start and who you're exposed to is really can set you off on a different course. And I was given the opportunity very early in my career. And I think as you leave great companies, you also see how different they are. So Lilly is, I think, phenomenal in thinking about people and development and really setting perhaps expectations long beyond you can expect, especially earlier in your career. And they gave me just a series of opportunities that taught me that I had formal training, I had industry knowledge that I was accumulating, and I had the ability to really think at a macro level, as well as really getting to know drug development.
And I really think that's what started it. I was very early given an opportunity to step into more of a leadership capacity for a blockbuster that was a product that took Uh, the lead revenue driving for Lilly after Prozac went off patent and was asked to take over the schizophrenia brand for Zyprexa. This is, you know, a product that reached, I think 4.7 billion in peak sales and we were languishing in schizophrenia sales. So as a young PhD, I found myself with marketing staff, really talented commercial guys reporting to me, the manufacturing. capacity and then R&D and developing new indications. And I think it really taught me how much I loved that intersection between business and science. And then another pivotal role was really getting to look at the portfolio and be accountable for R&D strategy and actually sit with
John Lechleiter at the time was CEO. And I sat at their executive leadership in a week-long, long-range plan where we were plotting the years, what we called YZ, which was when we would lose a lot of patents of drugs that had Y's and Z's in their names. And actually talking about how we would reinvigorate the company and the investments and how we would survive that. And those are really formative experiences early in my career that caused me to be open then to future opportunities.
At what point did you think to yourself, I'm ready to take that step, I'm ready to become the leader of the biopharma company?
I looked at every job that I was offered at Lilly, which, again, a real strength for them was that they, unsolicited, would come and give new opportunities. I never found that I had to go advocate and ask for ways that I could grow and contribute. And so I really kind of looked at every opportunity, again, first half of my career. Can I learn? Can I contribute? And will I grow? I think that that really just continued to open, you know, different doors. And I went from Lilly to Biogen. So every company got smaller and smaller. You know, it's interesting. My time at Biogen offered, you know, insights into broader, bigger teams, lots of functions.
What experiences shaped Stacy's career in biopharma?
When I joined my previous company, Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics, You know, I was getting exposed to different modalities. We had an autologous cell therapy. This was a microcap company. It was a very different understanding of, you know, really our existence and how we continue to advance an amazing product. I went there as head of global clinical development and then was asked to step in as, as co-CEO in advance to that. And I, I think it really gave me familiarity with the breadth of stakeholders.
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