1. Can you tell us about your career journey and what led you to your current role at Essential Pharma?

After completing my PhD at Imperial College London, I began my career in life sciences consulting and financial advisory, working with pharma and biotech companies for five years. I then moved into a business development role at an early-stage oncology biotech in Oxford, before beginning my journey at Essential Pharma.

Most of my experience was in sell-side M&A, recruiting investors and out-licensing the technology the biotech was developing. Over time, I became increasingly interested in the buy-side, looking for new opportunities focused on commercial assessment of new M&A opportunities. So, when this role opened at Essential Pharma, I applied right away.

2. What excites you most about working in M&A, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry?

As a naturally curious person, I like variety, diversity, and learning new things. Pharma M&A is the perfect fit for this mindset as every day is different. Each day revolves around making a commercial assessment of opportunities for acquiring either new products, drugs, or companies, which involves analysing the current treatment landscape and how the target product fits into the bigger picture. The variety is amazing – one day it’s rare cancers, the next, you’re reading medical literature or poring through financial models. It’s intense and requires churning through lots of information but it is incredibly rewarding.

I particularly enjoy being in the middle of the action – going to conferences, meeting people, negotiating. It’s not just desk work. In this role, it feels like your horizon is constantly expanding, allowing you to gradually build a real understanding of the industry, working with people from various backgrounds such as experts in manufacturing, medical or regulatory affairs. You get to appreciate what they do, the roles they play, and how it all fits together to drive the business.

3. What does it mean to your day-to-day role that ‘every patient matters’?

At Essential Pharma, we’re always asking how we can better help patients. ‘Every patient matters’ isn’t just a catchphrase – it’s how we think about growing our business, by helping more patients and delivering more value to each one. This mindset is part of my day-to-day work, especially since a big focus of my role is on rare diseases, where patients often have no treatment options for their conditions, and everyday life can be an immense struggle. Essential Pharma’s mission to help overlooked patients deeply resonates with me, and our team is focused on finding opportunities to help rare disease patients and play an active part in improving their quality of life. To me, there’s nothing more meaningful than that.

4. What do you enjoy most about working at Essential Pharma?

What I like most is how dynamic Essential Pharma is. The leadership is ambitious, and everyone is really focused on delivering results. There’s a strong drive to grow and improve, which keeps me motivated. I also really value the culture here – there is a lot of trust within the teams, and there is flexibility in how you organise your day. While the workload and expectations are high, you can manage your time in a way that suits your working style to maximise your outputs, which really helps with work-life balance.

5. What advice would you give to someone looking to start a career in M&A within the pharmaceutical industry?

The pharmaceutical industry is large, with a lot of different paths you can take. To work in M&A, it is important to develop a business mindset. For someone like me who comes from a pure scientific background, it meant that in my early career as a consultant I had a lot to learn and spent a lot of time self-teaching the foundations of business management and finance.

But knowledge alone isn’t enough, practical experience is essential, and it took several years of real-world experience in consulting and advisory roles to really understand how things work in practice. It is also very important to stay on top of what is happening in the industry. M&A is all about information, so understanding what other companies are doing and how the market landscape is shifting is how you get better at M&A, allowing you to spot opportunities faster.