we’re doing with cell therapies, they are just so new almost nobody in the regulatory consulting space has any experience with them. So they automatically say they are going to be treated like a medical device or a drug. I do believe it will be quite a bit different than most people think.
There is a big risk in lowering the bar on clinical trials; the unintended consequences could be quite severe.
X: Where do you think your drive comes from?
LB: I grew up as an only child. I have a little brother but I was almost 15 when he was born. People would say that that’s pretty lonely, but actually I loved it. My mom and I were really close; we had a close friendship. She gave me a lot of flexibility to be who I was and explore things. We had a ranch in New Mexico; I grew up in West Texas. I was quite a small child, around 10 or 11, and I would go out and catch my horse in the field and be outside all day long. We had people who worked on the ranch and I’d go hang out with them. You had freedom to figure things out on your own. It was not so structured like what everybody goes through today. That [freedom] gave me a different type of confidence and interest in things. I don’t know if that’s the drive, but I know it has to do with my style and how I approach things.
X: What do you wish your 25-year-old self knew?
LB: I probably let myself get worked up by things quite a bit. If you have an intense personality and have to have the top grades and be the president of whatever, you struggle with that. Looking back, that was hard for me. My first few career blips, they felt like traumatic events to me. In hindsight, they were, ‘Eh, whatever. It’s how business goes.’ Yes, unfortunately, it was a problem and you hate for it to go that way … If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. Dealing with your own mistakes makes you stronger; embrace them.
X: Tell me about your early influences.
LB: My mom was very, very influential. We were good friends. I think a lot of moms and daughters are not. She was just so supportive: ‘You can do anything.’ It gave me a lot of flexibility. Living on this ranch with the cowboys, teaching me things about riding horses and doing stuff like that, that gives you a lot of freedom. There were a couple of teachers. One of my math teachers when I was in high school, she said, ‘You’re really good at math and science.’ Her thinking was, it’s only a four-year degree. You’re paid really well. You can go out and start working really fast; you don’t have to have a master’s or a PhD. And I thought, that sounds good. It was a four- or five-minute conversation and it changed the whole direction of my life.
