Advisory Board spotlight: Rory Gummerson, Operating Partner at Forbion
Advisory Board spotlight: Rory Gummerson, Operating Partner at Forbion
Rory Gummerson is Operating Partner at Forbion, where he builds leadership and organisational capability across the firm and its portfolio companies. He has more than 13 years’ experience across the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, supporting organisations from early-stage ventures to global pharma in more than 20 countries. Before joining Forbion, he built the talent acquisition function at Achilles Therapeutics as the company scaled from around 60 to 270 employees, and he has also held roles with Autolus, Amphista, Vertex, Gilead, GSK and Novartis.
As a member of the Advisory Board, Rory brings the perspective of building teams across Forbion’s portfolio companies, from formation through to scale-up. In his answers, he explains why rising development costs and the pace of drug development in China mean biotech’s need to be more deliberate in how they build, and why the strongest companies link hiring to key milestones rather than hiring opportunistically.
What attracted you to the Advisory Board?
I am deeply passionate about the talent industry and optimistic about how technology and industry evolution can improve the way life sciences companies scale. Joining BioTalent’s Advisory Board enables me to have an opinion on how we shape this transformational period. I believe we have a real opportunity to align talent models with business strategy.
Why a peer forum rather than a traditional advisory role?
The peer group within BioTalent’s Advisory Board brings together exceptional leaders with incredible backgrounds and perspectives. For me, the value of a peer forum is the opportunity for truly honest discussions.
This improves my own understanding of how others are approaching talent, leadership and organisational challenges, testing my assumptions against their experience. It creates a more practical conversation than a traditional advisor role, where the learning and contribution should flow both ways.
Where’s the biggest challenge and opportunity for life sciences?
The operational cost of developing medicines has risen significantly in recent years, placing greater pressure on company cash runways and requiring organisations to raise larger funding rounds before generating meaningful data. At the same time, the pace at which Chinese companies are developing and advancing medicines represents a huge shift in the global drug development model.
This will require biotech’s to become more capital efficient and deliberate in how they build. The opportunity is to rethink org design by prioritising the most critical capabilities and planning against multiple scenarios. The companies who can access high-quality professionals and execute at speed will be best placed to succeed.
How is the life sciences talent market changing?
The market is definitely becoming more selective. Demand remains strong for proven specialists, particularly those who have a track record of delivering through pivotal clinical, regulatory, technical or commercial milestones. We see that organisations are looking for people who can operate broadly and contribute beyond a narrow remit to create value quickly.
Workforce planning is therefore becoming more important. Rather than building large permanent teams from day one, companies are increasingly combining core internal strategic ownership and partnership with outsourced companies and advisors.
What do organisations get wrong when scaling their teams?
Scaling biotech companies is always challenging. They are often awaiting emerging data which can drastically reshape business strategy and direction. In this environment, companies can fall into one of two traps: building too far ahead of the need or waiting too long and creating delays once a key milestone is reached.
The challenge is ensuring critical capabilities are in place early enough to plan and execute, without adding unnecessary cost or resource if the strategy shifts. Too often, companies hire opportunistically after meeting someone who potentially fills a future need, rather than working to a clearly defined workforce plan, causing problems later on.
In my experience, the strongest companies avoid this by scenario planning and rigorous prioritisation, linking hiring to key milestones.
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