A decade at Alacrita

Today is my ten-year anniversary at Alacrita Consulting , and a time of reflection for me. For the first time, I’m going to post something that’s more personal rather than professional.

I reluctantly joined the workforce at the age of 27, quite late, after running out of degrees I could earn and realizing I had to actually get a job. I knew fairly quickly that I wanted to be a Consultant because back then, all the ‘Ivy league' students looked up to them. They wore nice suits (all the young ones looked like Barbie and Ken in a suit), they flew around the world in business class from meeting to meeting; they just seemed so important and really cool. So I thought, ‘that’s what I’ll do’. While I’m sure I wrote things like ‘I want to help biotech companies succeed’ in my personal statement when applying for Consulting roles, I can assure you that’s not really why I wanted the job at the time…that bit came later. ?Then one day I interviewed with a man called Anthony Walker . The first thing I noticed was his 1980s-era moustache, and the second was how cheerful he was. His office wasn’t fancy and surrounded by glass walls like all the other offices I’d interviewed in, and he wasn’t stern and serious like people at other Consulting firms. Part of me liked him and was intrigued, but the other part of me wondered if this was a real Consulting firm! But he gave me a shot for six months as an intern and here we are ten years later.

I honestly hadn’t planned to stay this long, which I guess is testament to the firm and how it operates. Indeed, the fashionable thing to do in my cohort was move around every couple of years, and certainly in Consulting the phrase ‘sink or swim’ was thrown around because it’s no secret the job is tough, and people tend to burn out after a couple of years. Ten years in, I’ve now worked with over 100 biotech/pharma companies and VCs, so I feel like I’ve had 30 years of experience compressed into ten (typing that makes feel exhausted). And I’m not shy to say that I seem to be pretty good at it (yes, you're allowed to say nice things about yourself), probably because of Alacrita’s culture combined with my personality.

I’ve worked with some ridiculously smart people, others that are a little unhinged, and you can only imagine how many novel, interesting technologies I’ve seen. But when I sit and reflect on what I’ve learned the most – it’s that nothing is more interesting and important than people. Absolutely nothing. And that was the one thing I was NOT taught at university. Today, I’m a more empathetic individual than I was when I first joined Alacrita Consulting . I’m more interested in people than I have ever been before. My wardrobe is no longer filled with blue, black and grey suits because I no longer yearn to get into the ‘old boys club’; someone accidentally let me in, I had a look around and realized I’m a better Consultant my way. I thank Alacrita Consulting for letting me work that out.