Episode #35 – Dr. Alexis Nahama

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today?

Hi, everyone. I’m Stacey Pursell, the founder and CEO of The Vet Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States, and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche. For the past 25-plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health podcast highlights the incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guests, you’ll be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to The People of Animal Health podcast. On today’s show, we’re talking with Dr. Alexis Nahama. Alexis Nahama is a seasoned life sciences executive with more than 20 years of experience spanning both animal and human health sectors. Trained as a veterinarian, he quickly transitioned into pharmaceuticals, excelling in research and development before assuming senior roles in business operations. Notable achievements include leading marketing efforts at VCA during challenging economic periods and spearheading the human pain business unit at Sorrento therapeutics, overseeing the successful progression of programs from preclinical stages to phase 2 clinical studies targeting osteoarthritis. He pioneered a multi-species clinical development approach, accelerating drug development timelines by leveraging naturally occurring diseases in companion animals. Beyond corporate endeavors, Alexis is committed to advancing veterinary care and education through nonprofit board positions. A high intensity individual at heart, outside of work he’s logged more than 800 skydives and now channels his passion into aerobatic airplane competitions. I want to hear more about that.

Well, welcome onto The People of Animal Health podcast, and how are you, Alexis?

Very good, thank you, Stacy. Thank you for having me.

Well, I’m so glad you’re here today because we’ve known each other for many years and I know that you’ve had tremendous success up to this point in your career. But I would like to start off at the bottom in the very beginning of your career. I’d love to learn more about what was your life like growing up and where did you grow up, Alexis?

Oh, I was the child of an expatriate engineer from France, and so I grew up all over South America having been raised … My sister was born in Brazil. I spent the first seven years of my life in Brazil, and my dad used to be, yeah, relocated every two to three years. We got to travel a lot and I got to be in lots of different places, learn lots of different languages until the teenage years where I had the opportunity to come back to France with them and go to vet school in Paris.

Well, when did you first figure out what you wanted to do professionally?

Well, I think very early on I had two paths. One would have been to go into the military to become a fighter pilot, but I think that maybe the structure wouldn’t be really my thing. But now my eyes at the time, being nearsighted, made the choice for me and the other choice was biology. I was always fascinated with how the bodies work and all the mechanisms and physiology in particular. Veterinary medicine was a good approach overall because it’s so broad and veterinarians can do anything. That’s what I found very, very attractive in the training in how to become a veterinarian, is that you can go into science, you can be a surgeon, you can do an internal medicine person, you can get into business. It doesn’t close doors like many other choices make.

Yeah, that is so true. Well, tell us about the beginning of your veterinary career. How did you first get started in veterinary medicine?

Oh, at the end of my years in vet school, I took additional training in statistical analysis and clinical methodology, so animal experimentation, clinical studies, clinical studies design, and fell in love with the methodology and everything associated with that and got my first job at Vetoquinol soon after graduating. I did a little bit of emergency care and surgery, but very, very quickly I went straight into R&D and clinical drug development for animal health.

Well, walk me through your career. You worked in ER and then you went to go work for Vetoquinol, and then walk us through your career after that.

Oh, after that, I had the opportunity to be expatriated by Vetoquinol to work on their diagnostic program in Florida. I moved to the US and then from that point on, stayed more on the business side with increasing responsibilities at CEVA. Started my own company in 1999 in the tech field managing medical clinical records and data, and sold that company to a telecom group a couple of years later. At that point decided to move back to the US and found a great opportunity in e-business development at Hill’s Pet Nutrition, and then just follow the career path wherever it leads. That’s one of the things is seizing opportunities one after the other. Went from Topeka, Kansas to Greensboro, Greensboro to New York City and then now in California with seven years at VCA, then a couple of years in stem cells, and the last decade in human healthcare.

Well, you said to seize opportunities and take the career path where it leads you. I can’t remember if you and I first met when you were at Hill’s or when you were at Novartis, it was at one of those companies, but you did relocate, you have relocated throughout your career. I’m curious, what would you say to somebody who wants to grow in their career and they want to take it to where they leads, but relocation is not something that they’ve thought of. What advice would you give to them? Because some people are reluctant to move, but sometimes those can be career-limiting moves if you’re not open to moving. What would you say about that?

I would say just do it. Very straightforward. There are times of, obviously personal circumstances are different if you have a family, if you have kids, if your wife has a career, there’s lots of parameters. But I would recommend early on on your career is just go anywhere and everywhere that you have great opportunities for growth because one, it will show you dedication and your commitment. But two, and that’s just my personal opinion, it’s very, very important to be really close to your colleagues and get to know them on a personal basis. I see very, very big limitations today on working remotely. It’s great. There’s great efficiencies of course, but it doesn’t replace personal. It doesn’t replace going after work, have a glass of wine or beer with colleagues and just put things on the table and manage interpersonal relationships on the direct basis. Unfortunately, I think that we’re still haven’t found the right equilibrium in our life-work balances and with modern technology on how to keep the human aspect. We are a social species. We shouldn’t forget that.

I would agree with you about that. I’m going to of throw this at you. We haven’t really talked about this yet, but just going off of what you just said, I just read an email yesterday that the federal government is considering mandating a four-day work week. I’m curious your thoughts about that.

Well, let’s put it this way. I left France when the government was mandating a four-day work week, but as a reduction of time and imposing people how much to work, I personally think the government should stay out of how much time people should or are allowed or not to work. Obviously, a good government puts protections so there’s no abuse and that people have freedoms and don’t get into situations where they don’t have a choice. Nonetheless, let’s not remove the people’s choice. If I want to work 80 hours a week to advance my career and why would I be imposed 40? The same way if I want to make the choice of working less, why should I not have the opportunities knowing that I’ll make less income and progress slower in my career?

Yeah, because what if you want to work five or six days a week? Because some people, they do that. I’ve certainly done that throughout my career working six and occasionally seven days a week just when you have things that you’re interested in and things that you have to do. Well, you’ve certainly taken advantage of all these opportunities that have come at you throughout your career. You talked about the different moves France, to Topeka, to Greensboro, to California. Was there a point in time where you felt like you were truly beginning to gain traction with your career, and if so, when was that point?

I think unfortunately, I wish, but I think I’ve always had a little bit of an imposter syndrome hanging the back of my head is that every time things get a little too comfortable, something in life happens that throws you back into an area of discomfort. Maybe I was lucky that I never got comfortable and that’s what forced me to evolve rapidly in my career. But looking back, I wish I had some more comfortable times.

Well, that’s a good point. Don’t get too comfortable. Because I think sometimes when you are at that place where you’re feeling really comfortable, it’s easy to get complacent, and then it’s easy to kind of get stuck in a rut or the status quo. I think sometimes that keeps us from being able to move forward and continue to grow and learn new things. Well, I know that successful people often have some highs and some lows. Everything can’t be just perfect all the time. Tell me about the highest high and the lowest low that you’ve experienced throughout your career up to this point.

Well, life is a roller coaster so I’ve had lots of highs and memorable times. I remember from the days at Novartis, we still remember the ProHeart 6 recall where our team at Novartis worked day and night for five days, and we were the first ones to go out and help veterinarians manage through the recall, which was great for our customers, but also led to a lot of market share gain. But the most fun part was everybody thought we had everything prepared in advance, which we didn’t. We just worked our buttocks off over a Labor Day weekend.

On a personal basis, I think one of the biggest highs I’ve had, which can get addictive, was three, four years ago when we had a intrathecal epidural pain management trial on the human side. We got feedback from one of our patients on using a new drug overall and we asked, it’s a pain management drug, and it was a terminal cancer patient, and we asked the person if they would do it again, and they said, “In a heartbeat.” We asked why, and it was a grandmother with colorectal cancer, and she said, “Thanks to your drug, I can now feel comfortable babysitting my grandchildren. Before I was loaded up with such high doses of opioids that I couldn’t really function.”

Wow.

On a personal basis, that’s the absolute best high you can get, the person lived another two years after that, but they lived without the excruciating pain. When you have the blessing to be able to work on innovation and bringing new therapies to market that can make that type of a difference in someone’s life, it never gets old, you never get used to it. It’s a real high.

Now you’re talk about the low, when the company where you work with for other reasons than your program goes into a bankruptcy and you see seven years of your life and the potential of such a drug being wiped out, that emotionally and personally is a very, very low low.

Well, you can see the direct impact that you’re having on people’s quality of life, like the lady with the colorectal cancer, you saw firsthand how that improved her quality of life. What an amazing story about that. Well, I’m curious, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

How incredibly small our industry is and not small as far as a negative. It is a very, very tight industry. We’re very green in the way that we recycle a lot of people, they move along, and we don’t discard, we just put them in other companies. But it’s also … That is an advice to everyone is always keep in mind that our industry is very, very small. You never know who you’re going to be working with, you never know where someone will be five or 10 years in the future. If they don’t leave the industry, they will be around, so just remember to don’t burn bridges.

Yeah, they could be your boss at the next company.

Absolutely.

Well, Alexis, how have you seen the profession change over the years?

Well, I’ve seen the profession change both in positive and negative, and I’ve been around for long enough. I think that the very, very positive, and I know some people think that it’s not enough yet, and there’s still work to be done, but I think that our profession, at least on the industry side more than on the field and veterinary medicine side, has finally gotten, I think, a lot of traction for women in senior positions and for hopefully we get to the point where gender inequalities becomes a conversation of the past. It’s just becomes the normal and the new normal. I know that in my teams, for example, I joke that I’m always been given direction from all kinds of different people, and we have as much feedback and career opportunities and possibles for men, women, however people identify themselves nowadays. That I think is a very, very good and positive.

I also think that with highs and lows and some pullback lately, but in general, I see a lot more energy going into investment towards innovation and new startups and helping startups in animal health be successful. I think that that’s a very, very strong positive because it still is, but has always been a huge challenge for new companies and for small companies to be able to find investors and beef up their infrastructure and hire good people. We haven’t had a healthy environment, and I think it’s changing somewhat.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. Looking forward, what does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

Well, I think the future is bright. I just have one major concern, and that relates a little bit to the prior question on the negatives of the current veterinary profession is I think that the last decade or so we’ve seen what I call the luxurization of pets. We have to remember that people still pay cash and that not being able to afford $10,000 to treat your pet is not being a bad pet owner. Guilt and the humiliation that people have of not being able to provide the best absolute care is something that we need to take into consideration. That indirectly will also, when there is pushback or tensions, will affect the mental health of the healthcare provider because they’re humans. Again, in animal health, I don’t think it’s really a job, I think it’s more a calling. We have to be very careful about how pushing for higher returns, not only efficiencies and everything, and the trends of making everything so expensive for pet owners, how it can massively backfire both on the ability of hospitals to be run efficiently, but also on the mental health of the people that have to provide the care and manage those relationships.

Yeah, I hear a lot more conversation now about the spectrum of care.

Mm-hmm.

What are some of the daily habits that you believe have allowed you to achieve success?

I don’t sleep.

I believe you.

No, seriously, I think that … I don’t have necessarily daily habits. I have daily habits I wish I could implement more, one of which was learn to turn off your electronics at least nowadays, and disconnect from the being always connected. I think that I have always, always been connected and more and more into the instant responses to things. I force myself a little bit of blocking out time, at least for projects. There’s nothing more distracting than having a text in the middle. I’m not talking about blocking three hours in a row. I’m saying block half an hour, just half an hour. There’s nothing in the world that cannot wait 20 minutes today for a response.

Mm-hmm.

We tend to forget that, so that would be my number one habit is try to really carve out time so you can focus on the important things and get them out of the way before you go back and check your electronics. I’m really bad at it, but …

Yeah, it’s hard. It’s a habit like you said, but I like what you said about blocking time and being intentional about that. What mentor has had the biggest impact on your career so far?

Oh, without no hesitation, Paula [inaudible 00:20:41]. She’s the person that hired me at Hill’s Pet Nutrition. She’s also the person that forces me to explain in my resume why I had three jobs in seven years with three different animal health companies. I like to joke that I had three jobs in three different animal health companies, but always worked for the same boss. Every time she moved, she would hire me in the new position. She was a great mentor because had a very, very respectful relationship, and she knew exactly what needed to be done, but we had, in a way developed nonverbal communications. I knew what needed to be done, she knew I could get it done. We joke, you see all the cartoons when you have a father and a son and they talk and it’s just a grunt, and that’s a conversation. Well, we had a little bit the same thing over the years. What I say is when you find someone as a boss or as an employee with whom you have really, really good alignment and things flow, don’t let go of that because it’s really precious. I had the benefit of working through three different companies with Paula and following her lead and learning from her. That did impact my overall career.

Well, and that’s a sign of a good leader and mentor too, to have somebody follow you from company to company. That speaks very well of Paula, and I know Paula.

Well, I know we talked about your beginnings, your childhood, where you grew up, talked about how you got started in the industry. I’d love for you to share with the listeners about the kinds of projects that you’re up to today.

Oh, well, today I helped finalize, never wanted to learn, but you learn from every single experience, I’ve been this last six months helping the company manage through and optimize how to restructure and how to get through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Again, a big part of that is finding potential partners and being able to preserve the value of the pain management program I had been working with because it would break my heart to see it go away versus finding a new home and finally get it to market because it can help so many people.

But then following that experience overall, I have started and working on the pipeline of a new goal that really is leveraging both human and animal health, taking human life sciences assets that companies should not be distracted with, but have great potential and innovation in animal health and taking those through licenses and bringing them to animal health. In a way, we joke with our current potential partners and we’re finalizing our deals that we are going to become the outsourced veterinary division for human life sciences companies.

Wow. Well, so I want to talk about skydiving because I know at the beginning of the conversation I mentioned that. I want to learn more about that. How did you get interested in skydiving?

Well, I learned to fly. My dad was a pilot. I learned to fly in gliders, and you always wear a parachute when you’re fly in gliders over the mountains in the south of France. I also, very early on, got a lot of interest for flying airplanes upside down and aerobatics. You always wear a parachute. One day I realized that maybe the time you need to bail out of an airplane or a glider might not be the best time to learn how a parachute works.

No.

I decided to go to a drop zone and do a couple of jumps just to feel comfortable and be prepared in case I ever had to use a different type of parachute and fell in love with the sport and made a lot of friends. My wife now also got what was getting into the sport, and she has over 1000 jumps and two world records. It’s just became something that became part of our life.

Wow, what’s that experience been like for you?

Well, it’s a very, very, very good experience and it’s also an experience that caters to my ADD-like personality. But it’s also something that people don’t realize that the best people either flying airplanes in aerobatics or skydiving are really risk-averse people. People think of people jumping out of an airplane as risk-takers, but they’re not. If they’re risk-takers, they will die. You have to be a risk-averse person that doesn’t mind putting yourself in an environment that is potentially dangerous, but you take all the precautions and all the proper steps and all the processes to ensure that as much as possible is controlled.

Were you scared the first time that you did it?

No, not really. It’s more excitement. You’re in the altitude, the door opens and it’s like, “Let’s see how it is.”

Wow. That’s not something that I would ever do because I don’t like heights, so I’m amazed. Well, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Be careful with emails.

Be careful with emails.

Yes. Never, never, never, never ever forget that an email is not a conversation. It’s a memo. It’s a document that you’re sending around. If you are unhappy with something or if you just think twice, wait another day before you send that nasty email where you tell everybody how you really think about certain things. It will always 100% of the time backfire.

Do you have any personal stories about that where you’ve seen that happen?

Yeah, I’ve screwed up more than once, and I still do. Now I try very hard to wait before expressing candidly my opinion in an email. Usually the last paragraph of every email that I write gets deleted because it is always the last paragraph where you get yourself in trouble. That’s an advice I would give to people. If you write a four paragraph response on this challenge, on an issue in your company, reread it without your last paragraph.

That’s very good advice.

Because usually people, and we always start very factual, and then we get into the recommendation and then it ends up emotionally saying, “And if we don’t do this, we’re going to do,” and that’s the slippery slope where we get beyond the facts and the recommendation. Remove the last part, stick to the facts and recommendation, and remember, emails are not a conversation.

Hm.

If you want to have a candid heart-to-heart with someone about something, call them, get them to your office, close the door, discuss things. Don’t put it in emails.

Do you feel like some people hide behind emails?

Well, I think some people hide behind emails and I think that sometimes people or organizations culturally dilute responsibilities because when you copy 23 people, then you know everybody should be aware. But when you get 300 emails in which you are copied, you don’t see the information, but it was sent around. No, I think that we should formalize less and communicate more, but communicate on what is important. Again, we had the conversation at the beginning of the podcast, Stacy is, let’s not forget, we’re social species and we’re human. There is interpersonal relationships that are important and unfortunately, you can’t see the frown on someone’s face, you can’t see their pupils dilate if they’re getting furious at something you’re saying, you just can’t … Emojis don’t cut it. Email is too impersonal to be a tool that you use ubiquitously.

No, that makes sense. Face-to-face in my experience is always better, because like you said, you can see facial expressions and pick up on cues that you can’t always pick up with an email.

Well, Alexis, we find that successful people tend to have idiosyncrasies that are actually their superpowers. What idiosyncrasy do you have that is probably a superpower?

I am a borderline ADD. I’ve been told by a therapist long time ago that it was AD not D, because it’s attention deficit or tendency of attention deficit, but not disorder, meaning that once you can manage it and once you control it, it’s not a disorder. Why that is a superpower as well as sometimes a weakness, it’s a superpower in the fact that I think in a way I’m blessed because I can put and connect dots that most people would think or they can’t see the connections or the impact one type of effect has on another one. It’s easy to put strategies or analysis together to look at the bigger picture and the environment and what are the different scenarios and options when you’re putting a business plan together. That’s the positive side where it comes easy to me in a way. I feel very lucky.

But the flip side of that, it comes with its own cost is I have a tendency of talking too much. Because thoughts come to my mind and they have to come out through my vocal cords, otherwise I’m going to forget them and it creates a lot of anxiety. If I have a thought and then I forget and I cannot get back to it, that for a long time in my career, I tended to not only talk too much, but interrupt people in middle of their sentences, which is then seen as disrespectful. That is seen as at times condescending because, “Hey, I have this thoughts,” “Yeah, but I haven’t finished talking and I also had a thought.” Today I’ve learned to have a notebook and write down the questions and wait my turn before that thought so that way I don’t forget the thought, it’s written on paper, and it helps not have to put it out there. But when you talk about superpowers, you also have your kryptonite, right?

That’s right. Well, I’ve heard the ADD about recruiters too, that the best recruiters have ADD. I often feel that about myself, that I probably have ADD too because I have same personality traits like you do there. I have a friend who carries around a clipboard everywhere, like your notebook. She carries her on a clipboard everywhere, every time I see her clipboard, she’s writing down everything, which I think is great.

Well, what message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone?

Learn to know yourself without making yourself the reference on how you look at things. I think that that’s what I’m trying along the way. It’s like we have our strength, we have our weaknesses, we have our ways to interact with people, and it’s important to know yourself, but we also tend, because it’s a normal human behavior, to reference things compared to our own life or our own experiences. We have to really, really, really learn to separate what is us versus what is our acquired experiences and try to manage both sides.

Mm-hmm. Well, some of our guests say that they’ve had a key book that they’ve read that really helped them in their life or in their career. Do you have a key book in your life that has impacted you the most? If so, I’d love to hear about that.

Well, business-wise I have a book that I have absolutely, and you will understand why I connect a line and I thought was absolutely wonderful, it’s called Flawless Execution. I think that people focus way too much in a way on I’m strategic, I’m strategic or on strategy, but if you can’t execute, no company survives overall. I love the approach and the methodology of this book because it’s Jim Murphy, which is also married to a Brazilian, had the opportunity to meet with him and became friends with some of his team members. He came from the US Air Force and so they apply all the aviation and mission preparedness and mission planning, briefing, debriefing to, and he brought that methodology from the military into the business without making it a rigid military-type approach. None of that. It’s really more about the aviation-type methodology where you are going from point A to point B, depending on the distance, you need different resources, a small plane or a big plane, depending on the weather, you’re going to plan differently. You take all those elements in consideration, which is a very, very healthy approach. But also I’ve trained teams on it, and I think it’s a very healthy approach because it aligns people in common language when it comes to project management.

It’s not the only method but I would say if you are managing projects and complex project with multiple people in an organization, doesn’t matter which methodology you use, but have a common language because that really facilitates and helps move and focus on the important things.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. I like, going back to what you said about the execution and the strategy, because you do see that with companies and you see that with people, they have a strategy, but they can’t execute. People have things that they talk about doing, but they don’t actually do them. Yeah, that’s a very good point there.

Well, you’ve got the mic, Alexis. What is one thing that you want to share with the listeners of The People of Animal Health podcast before you drop the mic today?

Don’t be lured into going into the human healthcare side. It’s great, but it’s not as good as animal health.

Well, I hear that often. People that go to the human side, they always want to come back to animal health, always back to their roots. Well, Alexis, like I said, we’ve known each other for a very long time. I really enjoyed hearing your story about how you grew up and how you got started in your career and some of the things that you’ve learned along the way and accomplished and always enjoy talking with you. I really appreciate your being here today.

Thank you, Stacy. It’s an honor and a pleasure, and anytime.