“I'm not fazed by carving my own path. I never felt that being a woman has held me back in any way”

A willingness to take risks, resilience and a “can-do attitude” are the keys to success for the Johnian woman who became UK president of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca – then walked away to rescue a struggling biotech start-up.

In the latest episode of the new St John’s podcast Souvient, Lisa Anson explains the thrill of working for Redx Pharma, a small cancer drugs developer she joined after it went into administration and has rapidly turned around. “I love the decision making speed and the freedom and agility in a small company: we live and die by our results,” she tells College Master Heather Hancock. “And it's really exciting. In order to do that, I am relying on skills and judgments I've honed in multiple different situations.”

Her time at St John’s, where she studied Natural Sciences, helped prepare her for the challenges of her new role, Lisa says, arguing that today’s students need to take the time to try out a wide range of experiences, academic and otherwise, making mistakes as they go, to help them discover the interests that will build their career and future lives. She chose the College partly for its strong reputation in science, but also because it had only recently begun taking female undergraduates. “I like to take a risk. I'm not fazed by carving my own path. I never felt that being a woman has held me back in any way or form, and therefore it quite appealed to me to be one of the first women… This was going to be an exciting time for women in the College.”

After graduation, she joined KPMG as a management consultant, relishing the opportunity to work in a range of companies and develop her interest in the business side of science. An MBA followed, and then a move to California, where she spent three years and absorbed the “absolutely fantastic can-do attitude that has stayed with me”. Next, she returned to the UK to work for AstraZeneca, staying for 20 years while working her way up through a wide range of roles. “I probably had 10 or 12 different jobs, different teams, different therapeutic areas, slightly different focuses, different challenges. So I was continually learning and that's something that companies at scale can do for you… I do not subscribe to the fact that you can't have innovation, rapid learning and risk taking in large companies.”

“Some of the best innovation doesn't need scale. You can have it in a small company”

For the last four years, she has brought her corporate experience to Redx, and making it her mission as CEO to prove that a small UK company can be a player on the world stage alongside giants such as GSK plc (formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc) and AstraZeneca. The firm now focuses on drugs to treat pancreatic and other cancers with current survival rates of just two or three per cent, with some now in phase two clinical trials. “Small biotechs are really important for early drug discovery,” Lisa notes. “They can take risks and innovate with a speed and agility that you maybe don't get in some of the larger teams. And it is interesting to note that some of the best innovation doesn't need scale. You can have it in a small company.” Nevertheless, too often they face a lack of investment, she observes. “The UK’s really strong science is respected worldwide but sometimes we don’t have the strongest companies. The big companies are all in the US, the success stories of commercialisation are in the US or elsewhere. I do feel that there is a gap there and some of that is to do with the policy framework.”

While she had left AstraZeneca by the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lisa praises the firm’s development of the Oxford vaccine, and its decision to manufacture the drug on a not-for-profit basis. The fast vaccine production was “a massive credit to an ecosystem where everyone is actually ultimately dependent on each other. And that's very important to remember when we're trying to make the UK a science superpower - you can't just have one sector. You need all of them to be thriving, including the commercial sector, and therefore you do need to have people able to make a profit in the sector to make the whole sector thrive.”

“There’s still a long way to go”

Partnership is key in a sector where, often, only the scientists gain credit for their passion and impact, Lisa argues. “In this case, Oxford University made the academic breakthrough, but there isn't any way they could have on their own scaled up and rolled out. That's where AstraZeneca, I think, did a phenomenal job. My colleagues worked night and day to make that happen with a real passion. A lot of people don't always see that passion, commitment and professionalism because they think, ‘Oh, it's a for profit company’. There’s an enormous number of people who really care in that company.”

The pandemic has changed attitudes to the pharmaceutical sector, Lisa believes: conversations in the pub could now be about drug companies and the diseases their products treat alongside sport and entertainment. Covid also shone a light on the number of senior women in the pharmaceutical sector, such as the Oxford vaccine developer and Professor of Vaccinology Dame Sarah Gilbert. However, while Lisa’s company has an even gender split on its board, the vast majority of company bosses in the biotech sector are men. “There’s still a long way to go,” she says.

Listen to the episode featuring Lisa Anson

Published 09/06/2023

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