Suneer Verma

Suneer Verma received his PhD in Biology from UCSD studying novel regulators of inflammation in the NF-kB pathway in human macrophages, lung and brain cancer cells. During his graduate training, he pursued opportunities to gain skills in consulting and held various leadership positions such as President of APD Consulting Club at UCSD. Upon graduation, he joined L.E.K. Consulting as a Life Sciences Specialist and is currently working as Strategy Manager at Edwards Lifesciences. 

Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field?

I am a biologist. I did my Masters in Bioengineering from India before coming to UCSD for a PhD in Biology. My quest for a faster work pace, more teamwork, and more immediate impact led me to life sciences consulting at LEK. I spent a year there working in teams to advise large pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic companies on their strategies. Due to some immigration challenges, I had to switch companies and that's how I ended up at Edwards Lifesciences, the global leader in medical devices for Structural Heart Disease and Critical Care. Here, I manage the strategy of a division called Advanced Technology, which is essentially the incubator of the company, with an aim to drive the next wave of innovation and growth at Edwards within Structural Heart Disease. 

How did you find this particular position, and what was the hiring process like? Is there a typical structure for this in your field? 

I found my current position via LinkedIn and the hiring process was a couple of conversations with the hiring manager followed by longer interviews with the broader team (including HR). This process was more unstructured and less formal than my process for consulting which started with two case and fit interviews (30 minutes each, over the phone with managers), followed by 3 in-office interviews with partners (senior executives).

Can you tell us about your current responsibilities? What is a typical day or week like in your role? 

My job is to run the annual strategic planning process and drive strategic initiatives for Advanced Technology. This is the process where we present our 7-year strategy to the Executive Leadership Team and Board of Directors every year. As part of it, I identify novel disease areas, patient populations, and device modalities that we should target and build business cases on how we can succeed in these new areas (e.g., what does the novel device need to achieve clinically and economically, what would the reimbursement landscape look like, which type of physicians we would interact with, etc.). In a typical week, I am working on 1-2 such projects where I am gathering information (interviewing leading physicians, reading the latest papers, tracking conferences and databases) and developing powerpoint decks to present to them in a coherent story that drives our business unit towards a recommendation. I lead a team of two to drive this process and also partner with other teams e.g., clinical affairs, marketing on strategy execution.

What do you enjoy about your current job and work environment?

I love the ownership and responsibility that I am given in my role. The problems that we are trying to solve are the cutting-edge of medical device innovation and the built-in ambiguity makes it a challenge that I love to take on. Edwards has extremely smart and talented people and it's always a pleasure to share and debate insights with them. Overall, the work that I am doing will hopefully impact patient lives in the next decade and that feeling itself is extremely rewarding.

What are some of the challenging aspects of your job? Is there anything you wish you had known about your job or industry before joining?

The rapid pace of the job combined with the deep clinical expertise required made the first few months particularly challenging. As I have grown into this role, I am learning more on how to manage people (at all levels) and that is challenging for now but Edwards does have a lot of helpful resources to help with that.

Do you have any professional plans for the future? What are some future career paths that could open up for someone in your position, 5-10 years down the road?

I imagine doing some version of "life sciences strategy" as my long-term career. My aim would be to be in a company that is driven by innovation and is challenging itself to be more disruptive than iterative. Typical long-term roles for someone in my position may look like "Director / VP of Strategy / Upstream Marketing / Business Development".

What’s changing in your industry? Are there any future trends we should be aware of?

COVID has had a negative impact on the industry in general. I know that Edwards hasn't had a hiring freeze and we are still expanding which is our commitment to innovation and patients. 

What activities, internships, or organizations would you recommend someone get involved with to help them break into this field?

During my PhD and postdoc, some things that really helped me include: 1) Having a leadership position in the Consulting Club - helps you prepare for consulting, looks good in your resume, and helps build contacts within consulting firms; 2) Networking via LinkedIn - I would typically message alumni of UCSD in whichever firm I was applying to to learn firm-specific insights on recruitment / type of work.

Is it common for people in your field to have a scientific/academic background (i.e. have PhDs)? Can you think of any advantages or disadvantages someone with a PhD might experience while pursuing or working in your field?

Yes, there are a few PhDs in our group at Edwards and they are some of the smartest and most respected people out here. Combining a PhD with some sort of business experience (e.g., consulting) really helps you take your depth of knowledge to high impact work in a corporate setting. Consulting firms are also avidly recruiting PhDs (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain, LEK, ClearView, and others - they also have PhD specific immersion programs like McKinsey Insight, Connect with Clearview, Bridge to BCG that are very competitive but extremely helpful). 

Do you have any final words of advice for those navigating these career questions? Is there anything you would have done differently given what you know now?

1) Find people with interesting careers that have similar backgrounds and reach out to them about their journey.

2) Put yourself out there in terms of going beyond the lab in terms of organizations, networking, internships - that really helps you standout, at least in the more corporate / consulting settings.

3) Please don't hesitate to reach out to me for further questions! (You can find me on LinkedIn).