Clinical operations & sourcing strategy
Start-up acceleration, sourcing design, vendor selection and transition management for sponsors running global trials. Portfolio-level design, not study-by-study firefighting.
Strategic advisory · Life sciences & biotech
Most start-up delays are a design problem, not an effort problem.
Strategy, operations and change work for life sciences and biotech leaders. Twenty years at Stanford and Gilead, on both sides of the table.
Cycle time
The six months nobody plans for.
Study start-up is the longest and least predictable phase of a trial. Most of that time comes from how sourcing is designed. More effort won't fix it.
- Study start-up, common industry range120–180 days
- Clinical trial agreement cycle, designed sourcing45–60 days
- First-patient-in predictability window10–15 days
20+Years in global operations and contracts
8Years at Gilead, Global Head of Clinical Contracts, Pricing and Payments
50 / 8People led across eight countries
$20MSigning authority for the Stanford Board of Trustees
What changes
What's different afterward.
- Timelines you can commit to. Sourcing gets decided at the portfolio level. Cycle times go in the board deck without a caveat.
- Change the organization absorbs. Plans hold up with the people who have to live inside them. Nobody quietly routes around them.
- Decisions that stop circling. Your senior team makes the call, with someone in the room who has sat on both sides of the agreement.
Engagements
Every engagement starts with one question. Is this a design problem or an effort problem?
Change management in regulated environments
Prosci-based change for migrations, vendor transitions, reorganizations and integrations. The plan is the easy part. Adoption is the question.
Executive advisory
Ongoing counsel for senior leaders. Operating decisions, org design, negotiation strategy and the calls you can't make in a staff meeting.
Track record
Large-scale change, delivered without stopping the work.
65Active global studies, none paused
1,650Trial sites moved without a missed payment
6 moFrom competitive tender to full execution
0Days of disruption to trial start-up
Presented at Shaping Our Industry, 2026.
Speaking
Operators want numbers, not frameworks.
“Start-up performance is driven more by sourcing design than execution effort.”Shaping Our Industry, Clinical Trials Sourcing Strategy, 2026
- Sourcing strategy and the start-up problemWhy portfolio-level sourcing design moves start-up further than any amount of execution effort.
- Replacing a vendor without stopping the work65 studies and 1,650 sites in six months. The structure, the real risks and the noise.
- Change nobody routes aroundWhy change fails on adoption, not design, and what leaders can do about the resistance nobody says out loud.
Keynote, panel, workshop or internal leadership session.
Published: Cross Communication: Think AND, Not BUT and What Happens When Priorities Collide.
About
Twenty years on both sides of the table.
I've negotiated for a research university and for a global biotech. I've sat on both sides of the same agreement. I know where the room to move actually is.
Six years at Stanford across medicine, engineering and law, with signing authority for the Board of Trustees. Eight years at Gilead as Global Head of Clinical Contracts, Pricing and Payments, leading 50 people across 8 countries. Before that, semiconductor business development, a security installation division, and two years running operations for the U.S. Air Force at Ramstein, Germany.
The plan is rarely the problem. What breaks is the space between the plan and the people who have to live inside it. People absorb change in their bodies first and explain it later. Knowing how to read that is why my plans hold.
MBA · ICF Professional Certified Coach · Prosci Certified Change Practitioner · Trained in somatic practice
Looking for one-to-one coaching? See how I work with leaders.
Bring the problem you keep carrying into every meeting.
Or the one you haven't said out loud yet. If it's not a fit, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
San Francisco Bay Area · Available globally