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Biotech Bytes: Conversations with Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical IT Leaders
Welcome to the Biotech Bytes podcast, where we sit down with Biotech and Pharma IT leaders to learn what's working in our industry.
Steven Swan is the CEO of The Swan Group LLC. He has 20 years of experience working with companies and individuals to make long-term matches. Focusing on Information technology within the Biotech and Pharmaceutical industries has allowed The Swan Group to become a valued partner to many companies.
Staying in constant contact with the marketplace and its trends allow Steve to add valued insight to every conversation. Whether salary levels, technology trends or where the market is heading Steve knows what is important to both the small and large companies.
Tune in every month to hear how Biotech and Pharma IT leaders are preparing for the future and winning today.
Biotech Bytes: Conversations with Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical IT Leaders
How IT is Transforming Biotech with AI | Anthony Murabito on Data, Security & Innovation
How IT is Transforming Biotech with AI | Anthony Murabito on Data, Security & Innovation #biotech #informationtechnology #aiinbiotech
Can IT really revolutionize a biotech company’s success in the AI era?
In this episode, I talk with Anthony Murabito, VP of IT and Head of Data Security at Wave Life Sciences, to uncover how modern biotech companies are using AI to accelerate research, enhance security, and optimize workflows. Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/
We dive into the real-world role of IT in biotech from crafting AI policies to managing data protection and aligning IT with R&D and commercial goals. Whether it’s pharmacology modeling or auto-reporting for sales teams, AI is reshaping everything.
If you're in life sciences, tech, or leadership, this conversation will give you practical tips, a new mindset, and fresh strategies to maximize IT’s impact. Subscribe to hear more on AI in biotech, data governance, and tech-driven leadership.
Links from this episode:
✅ Get to know more about Anthony Murabito: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonymurabito
✅ Learn more about Wave Life Sciences: https://www.wavelifesciences.com
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🔗 Stay Connected With Us.
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🔎 Related Phrases:
How IT is Transforming Biotech with AI, Anthony Murabito on Data, Security & Innovation, How AI Is Transforming Biotech Companies, Role Of IT In Biotech, AI And Data Security In Life Sciences, IT Leadership In Biotech Startups, Crafting AI Policy In Biotech, AI In Drug Discovery Workflows, Biotech Digital Transformation With AI, AI Governance Strategies For Biotech, How IT Supports R&D Teams, Biotech And AI Use Cases, Securing Biotech Data With AI, Commercial AI Tools In Life Sciences
#biotech #informationtechnology #aiinbiotech #datasecurity #anthonymurabito #biotechleadership #wave lifesciences #aiintegration #digitaltransformation #biotechit #techleadership #aipolicies #cybersecurity #biotechresearch #pharmacologyai
Steve Swan [00:00:00]:
Coming up next on Biotech Bytes, a conversation with Tony Murabito, head of technology for Wave Life Sciences. We go through AI, AI security, and the importance of staying in front of business and how technology is not for technology's sake, it's for business. Hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Biotech Bites. I'm your host, Steve Swan. And Biotech Bites is a podcast where we speak with leaders in the biotech industry. And today we have the pleasure being joined by Tony Murabito, who's the VP of IT and chief Data Security Officer for Wave Life Sciences. Tony, thanks for joining us.
Steve Swan [00:00:39]:
Love your background. Glad you could be here.
Anthony Murabito [00:00:43]:
Thank you, Steve, for having me. Yes, this is my office, home away from the office, but as you could see, a Philly sports fan to boot.
Steve Swan [00:00:55]:
Love it. Great stuff, great stuff. We could probably take a tour and take a week on all that stuff. So I won't torture with any of that. So thank you. So, you know, so what I like to usually start with is just to give our listeners, you know, a brief sort of summary on you, you know, so what I like to ask folks is, you know, give me, give me a few minutes on you and how you got to where you are, where you started and how you got to, you know, the position that you're in now just to give a little background.
Tony Murabito [00:01:24]:
Yeah, thanks, Steve. Good question. I've been in biotech pharma for north of 40 years. Came out of pharmacy school in Philadelphia, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and at that point didn't really want to be a pharmacist anymore. I had done an internship at Smith Kline and Drug Information and had a world opened up to me that I didn't realize that was there and started all my career at that stage in a few years was running Drug Information, thought I was in a great position. And then I went to a sales meeting in Atlanta and long story short, got booed off the stage. The reps were saying by the time the doctor gets the letter, he forgets his question. Other reps, he forgets the company.
Tony Murabito [00:02:21]:
And that was my first lesson and know who your customers are, make sure you listen to them. But was definitely an awakening for me and started looking at the activities and knew we could do better. It was taking us 30 days to send out a letter and his letters were usually 20 pages long, didn't say anything. And so there was this company up in Boston as we were looking called Wang Labs and they had this integrated word processing system and sounded good. We worked it out, implemented it and ended up significantly Improving output, decreased cycle time to 15 days to first year, under 10 to second year. Return on investment was quick and positive and all of a sudden management says hey, Tony knows it, let's give them this. Or all of a sudden I'm doing a product safety system and Tony didn't know anything about it. At that point it was 286 or 386 and figured out let me go back to school at night and see if I could figure this out.
Tony Murabito [00:03:37]:
And did that and continue to progress in a role. Was involved in the first candas for Smith Kline and that was fun times as you're developing with your peers electronic templates, standards and approaches to get us where we're at today in terms of submissions. And Dana had an opportunity to run global R and D information management for seven years. So now here's a global position. Lived in the UK for several years so it was a completely new perspective. Previous job most of my customers were external healthcare professionals, regulatory, etc. Now they were all internal customers at this time I had fell in love with it and was clearly wanted to be a CIO at some point. Then at around 2000 there was a rumor of a merger with Galaxo which we couldn't believe.
Tony Murabito [00:04:43]:
They were arch enemy and lo and behold there was and there were these packages called Voluntary reduction in Force which was two year severance pension vesting. Those days you got a pension and wasn't going to take advantage of it. And some of my older colleagues gave me some wisdom and said this doesn't happen and in six months will be the involuntary one and that'll be a lot. So raised my hand, took the package, took some time off.
Steve Swan [00:05:20]:
Who were you with then? Who was merging with.
Tony Murabito [00:05:21]:
I was with Smith Klein in French and we were basically merging with Galaxo. Welcome.
Steve Swan [00:05:27]:
Got it.
Tony Murabito [00:05:28]:
Turn into Galaxo Smith Klein. So raised my hand, took the package, took some time and then started interview for the biotech world. And for the next 20 years have been in various biotech positions up and down the east coast. Spent some time at TKT Transkaryotic therapies, spent eight great years at Cubis where we turned an injectable antibiotic into a billion dollar product. An amazing commercial team there. I was the last CIO at Human Genome Sciences. Actually GSK purchased this again so I got to retire from GSK twice and I've been up in New England for the last six and a half years at Wave Life Sciences in an exciting environment that pretty much takes us to the current day.
Steve Swan [00:06:30]:
That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's, that's funny that, that, you know, back in the day with the Wang labs that you were, you were dubbed the IT guy because you, you figured that whole thing out. It's, it's, it's similar to, so the swan groups. My mom's company, she started this long time ago and initially she did babysitters for me and my brothers. That's what got her into this business. But her, her second wave, if you will, before it was executive assistants and she could figure out the typewriters.
Steve Swan [00:07:02]:
She knew the difference between the different typewriters. That was the technology then typewriters. And so she became the technology person because she could really nail down the differences between those typewriters and who was good at each different typewriter as executive assistants. It's kind of funny how you just kind of fall into that. And that's how we got into doing technology work and technology recruitment because of that, you know, so, and then you had obviously your punch card, your data processing and kept going from there, you know, so, so speaking of which, so that, that's some of the real early technology. What year was that with Wang? Wang's. I mean, that was 1985.
Tony Murabito [00:07:40]:
86.
Steve Swan [00:07:42]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Things move fast. Well, so from there we're here now. So what do you think in today's day and age, because you've seen a bit, and this is going to be some, some wisdom from somebody who's seen a lot of different change, right? I mean, you know, somebody who's younger right now, just, you know, maybe they know AI, I mean, word processors. Who, Not a lot of folks. I remember going to College in the 80s with the word processor. You know, it was like, wow, that's a big thing. And it had a built in printer and all that stuff.
Steve Swan [00:08:10]:
But today, right? Today's a completely different era. What do you think about the technology today and what do you think is going to be, you know, the differentiator? I mean, a lot of folks are talking about AI and some folks are talking about how we're out in front of our skis on that. Some folks are talking about how, you know, data's not ready for it. We got, you know, all sorts of different things, you know, just in general, I guess. Where do you think we are from a technology perspective? And do you think we're about to make some big jumps with some of the new technology coming? And if so, which ones do you think will make the biggest difference?
Tony Murabito [00:08:42]:
Oh, excellent question. Yes, One of the benefits of being old is you have perspective. So there was one point in my career at Smith Kline where I was rolling out the Internet to the company. This was early days of the Internet. And we were playing with browsers, Veronica, Mosaic, and you know, and then there was something called Netscape. And you know, even for me, I could say, okay, I get it, this is it. Yet as we know, there was a period of, as Gartner puts it, disillusionment, where you could see the technology, you could see the benefit, but it wasn't taken off like everyone thought it was. And then boom, kind of did.
Tony Murabito [00:09:30]:
And we're here today where you can't imagine a world. I know my kids and grandkids can't imagine a world without the Internet, but we did and actually worked well and thrived in those pre Internet.
Steve Swan [00:09:46]:
Yeah, my mom talks about when she used to send a resume to a hiring manager, right? She's mailing it, you know, she's sending a piece of paper, you know, or she's getting an interview based on a conversation, you know, not. Not even a resume. So anyway, sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.
Tony Murabito [00:10:01]:
No, not at all. And as we can see by some of the network latency, we're still working on getting that technology a bit better. But no, I, I think today, Steve, at least from my vantage point, I think AI is going to fundamentally change everything we do as individuals, as consumers, as product productivity workers, et cetera. And at wave, we're trying to focus on multiple areas to see where to best apply this technology. You said you have to have your data, right? You have to have good data, but if you do, there are areas you can take advantage of it in terms of discovery, getting insights for your organization, trying to identify better tox profiles for certain compounds. We've been working with our data science team on that one, rolling out packages of the organization to use LLMs based on PubMed US patent office. So again, taking those tools and then looking across the organization at productivity opportunities, you know, the ability to be able to summarize emails, documents, et cetera, seeing a lot of early benefits. We've been at it.
Tony Murabito [00:11:25]:
Basically we kicked off year two that our AI initiative at WAVE yesterday, but again the team reflecting, I've touched on about five or six areas, but we're all seeing big benefits and want to continue and expand our ways forward, being in research, be it in development, medical enterprise, etc.
Steve Swan [00:11:52]:
So you've been letting folks, you know utilize AI. You're going into year two now, right? And a lot of companies, well, some companies were like, well, we don't know what to do. We don't know where we're going. You know, it's. We're kind of, we're in the wild west. Right. Like you said, the first days of the Internet were almost in. Right.
Steve Swan [00:12:10]:
And you know, folks don't know. Well, they don't know what they don't know. They are getting a lot of heat from some of the upper management saying, hey, a lot of people are making money on this. It's in the newspaper. We got to do this. Right. So that's, you know, a lot of pressure coming from that end too. But as far as, you know, AI is concerned and, you know, security and thinking about all that, I, I mean, that's where, that's the first thing that I think bubbles into everybody's brain when they start thinking about AI.
Steve Swan [00:12:42]:
But I mean, it's, it's something we gotta, we gotta deal with because everybody's gonna be using AI anyway, whether you allow them to or not, I think. Right. You know, they're gonna have a site, a machine on the side, or they're gonna be using it in their, in their queries, on their computer or whatever, you know, so it's just a matter of really having the right security structure in place so that either your data can't move from where it is or what have you. Right.
Tony Murabito [00:13:05]:
You're not able to search and get the payroll information for your organization.
Steve Swan [00:13:10]:
Right, exactly.
Tony Murabito [00:13:11]:
So you only have access to the information you've been permitted to have access to.
Steve Swan [00:13:17]:
Right, right, right. Yeah. And you got to think about that all the time, I'm sure.
Tony Murabito [00:13:22]:
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Steve Swan [00:13:23]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tony Murabito [00:13:24]:
Because in a lot of cases, your CEOs also trying the tool and also wanting to see certain results or again, benefits from. Take these four documents and give me a three page summary of them.
Steve Swan [00:13:38]:
Right.
Tony Murabito [00:13:39]:
And boom. It's a way that, you know, they can jumpstart their activities, they can get more informed.
Steve Swan [00:13:47]:
Yeah.
Tony Murabito [00:13:47]:
Get better insights quickly.
Steve Swan [00:13:49]:
Sure, yeah. And help them if they're ever got to give a, you know, a speech or brief on something. Right. You know, it can help them do that as well.
Tony Murabito [00:13:57]:
But no, we wanted to be aggressive last year in terms of rollout. So we developed a policy that got everyone comfortable. We developed a training program that, you know, folks would have to go through the policy attestation, understand it, go through specific training program, take that before we gave them access to the tools. And then we limit where they could take those tools and what information they have access to, but tended to work well, got management comfortable, we had the necessary guardrails and we had enough oversight in place that we felt pretty comfortable. The other thing was, at least for Copilot across our Microsoft domain, we built that from the start. So a lot of us were there when WAVE was just gearing up the first time. So we were comfortable that our security model was strong and it was good that we proved it out over the last year. Yeah, it's pretty tight and we didn't have any people accessing data they didn't have prior permissions for.
Steve Swan [00:15:08]:
And that's you. You're the chief data security officer. So you, you're, you're, you're the guy handling that, which is good, right?
Tony Murabito [00:15:15]:
Yeah. At the end of the day, the buck stops here.
Steve Swan [00:15:18]:
It does. I've had companies come to me and say, can you help me with AI security? I'm like, well, what does that mean? You know? And really, I think, I think what it means, what it's got to mean because it's not the technology, it's the data. Right. We got to protect that data. So I really think it's around more data security than anything else. I think that's what they're saying most of the time. Right. When they come to me with that, because that's really what you're trying to protect, you know, it's, you know, nobody getting access to that.
Steve Swan [00:15:45]:
I had, I had a podcast I did early in 24 where one gentleman said that he was playing around with chat GPT one day. You're going to love this one. Playing around with Chad GPT one day, and all of a sudden up popped information from a competitor. And it was their drug, it was information, you know, and they, they screenshot it and got it over to the CIO of the other company, you know, and said, hey, you got a problem here. You know, and so they, I guess they, they fix whatever they had to fix. But still, that's kind of the, that's the poster trial. That's the nightmare that everybody has, right?
Tony Murabito [00:16:19]:
Oh, yeah, there's quite a few of those stories after now, over the last couple, couple years. The other thing is make sure you have good commercial data protection agreements with your big information providers. Microsoft will work with you on those. Amazon similar, but they're important from a legal aspect to have those in place. Your data, your audit trails, et cetera, aren't going out for products to learn from. So have it locked down completely, even from a contractual basis.
Steve Swan [00:16:53]:
Now, is that on the. You Know, like you just said, is it on a contractual basis or. Some people tell me that that has to do with your settings, your internal settings toggling off, you know, the learning mode or whatever. Is that not true?
Tony Murabito [00:17:07]:
No, that is true.
Steve Swan [00:17:08]:
Oh, it is.
Tony Murabito [00:17:10]:
You, you tend to. And you can't control it.
Steve Swan [00:17:13]:
Okay, okay. Because someone told me once that, you know, if, if data's out there, it's either A, somebody has that toggled in the wrong direction, meaning learn from me, or, or B, it could have just been a previous link, I'm sorry, leak, where a server was open and they didn't know it and it went out onto the Internet or something. But you really do. I mean, again, given the fact that what we do and how important these formulas are and how important this data is, you got to have several layers. You can't just rely on a toggle and, and hope that everything else is, you know. Right. That's not, not a thing, you know, so.
Tony Murabito [00:17:48]:
And the other thing is Microsoft today, these days, gives you excellent visibility into your overall security profile. They have what they call secure score, where they rate you on different security parameters and more importantly, give you the fixes to improve those parameters. And we now have cyber insurance companies asking for where there's, you know, what's your Microsoft Secure score? Data rating? Application rating. Yes.
Steve Swan [00:18:22]:
Wow. That's kind of, it's like, I don't know, a Moody's or an S and P credit rating on a bond. Right. You know, like, what's your security score, Microsoft? So does AWS do the same thing? Do they score as well or just. Just Microsoft?
Tony Murabito [00:18:36]:
Not to that extent, no. Not to that visibility. Nor you having the ability to modify that score. And again, things change every week. So what looks today may be very different in a week or two. That's why you need to constantly stay on top of it. But it's nice that they provide that visibility and tools and insights.
Steve Swan [00:18:57]:
I think that's great. And now I guess you pro, you would probably have to be an Azure customer to at least in one way, shape or form to utilize Microsoft as a security score. Because most people have AWS and Azure. Right? You know, you know, but you'd have to have, I'm sure, you know, and I'm sure that they're not doing that for free. They're going to charge you. So that's not just part of their thing. So.
Tony Murabito [00:19:20]:
No, but they're also pushing you to use more of their products too, to get further visibility. So if you turned on Defender, you would now have access to something Microsoft also does.
Steve Swan [00:19:33]:
Well, yeah, because a lot of folks talk about that with me, you know, like I said, the security around it and trying to figure out how to, you know, how to lock it down or whatever. And, and I think that's great. You know, when they look at this, they can think about Microsoft as somebody that can help them wrap their arms around at least where they're deficient and figure it out. Right. You know, so that's cool. So now as far as, you know, where you think we're going with all this technology, right. I mean, it's going to change everything fundamentally. Right.
Steve Swan [00:20:03]:
As you mentioned early on. And you know, we've got it in the, in the, in the research side, we got it in the commercial side. You know, this newer technology. Do you think that on either end of that, whether it's, you know, the research side of the commercial side, that one side is going to benefit from it more than the other? Have any thoughts on that? You know, I've never really asked anybody that question, but it just kind of came to mind as we were talking about this. You know, I mean, my thought goes to, you know, on the research side, if we can cut certain amounts of time off, right, from the research with this new technology, the more time we cut off, the more we save. Because sometime that that life cycle or that span can be several years. You know, if we can cut off several months or half a year or whatever that may be, that's going to benefit the company. Right? Saving some money.
Steve Swan [00:20:49]:
But I just thought I'd ask you of what your insights might be on something like that.
Tony Murabito [00:20:53]:
No, it's interesting because you have both of those domains kind of push each other. You tend to do most of your custom development in either the research space or the commercial space. And the middle space tends to be more COTs or you know, commercial off the shelf products that you configure and validate because of guidelines, et cetera. You know, in both cases, the benefit's great. I don't know if one area is going to beat the other. I think both areas are where you're seeing the benefit. You know, you have a lot of tools out there helping now on patient identification, patient selection, screening, where you're able to do, you know, better enrollment because you're getting better data, the ability to identify those patient types and discovery. More and more we're doing modeling across the organization now that's even extending into DMPK more and more where we're doing more kinetic modeling, more pharmacology modeling.
Tony Murabito [00:22:04]:
Likewise in the tox group, doing more modeling for indications of certain tox profiles. See that continuing more and more. We're having to give those folks a lot of additional processing power to do what they need to do. It's good that we have it all centralized. Over the last couple of years we moved them off their laptops and onto a more robust central environment. But becoming part of your discovery and development organization.
Steve Swan [00:22:37]:
Right, and you can turn on or they can grab whatever compute power they need. If they need more, they grab it. If they don't, then they don't grab it. Right. Being on, being out on the cloud.
Tony Murabito [00:22:46]:
Like that and that quickly acquiesces because they like to leave things on. So yeah, with inactivity we turn the systems down because it does get expensive quick.
Steve Swan [00:22:58]:
It does, yeah. Well, that's another, I guess thing, you know, that I hear a lot too where folks are talking about going to the cloud. You know, pretty much everybody's gone to the cloud, but they think they're going to save a ton of money. And that's not necessarily the case. Cause like you said, people leave things on, you know, yada yada yada, you know. And so can you save money? Sure you can. You gotta be diligent though, you know, apparently that's what I'm hearing from folks.
Tony Murabito [00:23:23]:
So yeah, have a good administration team. Make sure you're looking at all of your cost metrics monthly. Cause storage all of a sudden can get out of hand and easily move it into a lower end storage. But so now we try to maintain visibility on it. My head of ops puts a lot of effort so we can see exact spends there. And again that's something that went from several hundred thousands of dollars a year for Wave, where we're north of seven figures now just in our AWS box. And we're a small company, less than 300 employees.
Steve Swan [00:24:02]:
Right. But still, you know, big number. But the ROI's got to be there or else you wouldn't be doing it, you know. So now let me ask you a question. This is. You've been around a couple years. Let's say I'm a, a young CIO coming into the industry right now. What would you say to me? You know, either something you didn't know when you came in that you wish you knew, or piece of advice you would give me.
Steve Swan [00:24:26]:
I'm a, I'm a young guy, I've been in my job a couple years, you know, and I'm at a small company that's going to grow you know, what sort of, you know, and I'm a new cio, what sort of advice would you give to me and say, hey, do this, don't do that, whatever it is, you know, I, I don't know any, anything that, that sticks out in your mind that you would say, I wish I had this or this is something you should think about. We learned it along the way or, or any, Anything, Right. If not, then there's not, you know, but no.
Tony Murabito [00:24:52]:
Learn your business. Know your business partners. If you're new going into the job within the first 90 leading, engaging every business leader in the organization, find out what they view as critical. What's the one thing it has to get right this year for you and start developing that. But relationship management is critical these days. It's not in the old days where you had your team down in the basement and if somebody wanted to get something done, they had to put in a ticket or a project request quest. You need to not just yourself, but your teams be out there engaging the business. You know, more and more we try to put our bas in the business.
Tony Murabito [00:25:41]:
The more they understand the business, more they're part of the solutions, the better off we're going to be in terms of an organization. But now engage the business. Find out what they view as your value point.
Steve Swan [00:25:55]:
That's good.
Tony Murabito [00:25:56]:
Basically execute accordingly, right?
Steve Swan [00:25:59]:
Yeah. Because just strict, you know, it for it sake is not going to work. It for business sake works it for it sake it's not going to work.
Tony Murabito [00:26:06]:
Yeah. You have to do all of the blocking and tackling. Well, you know, you have to do the security, you have to have the help desk coming. So when someone puts in a ticket, makes a call, they're getting the service that they need, etc. In order to be able to impact a business in other areas, right?
Steve Swan [00:26:27]:
Yeah, Absolutely. Cool. That's good. I like that. So what would you say? I like asking folks this too. You know, let's say I'm somebody that's interviewing with Tony or somebody in Tony's group. What makes Tony's group different? Why would I want to go to wave and work with your team and with you? Right. Because you, you know, you're the, you're the, you're the head of your team.
Steve Swan [00:26:51]:
Right. So what's different about being there than. Than some of the other. Cause you've been at a few places, right. So how have you sculpted that to make it different or how is it different than. Or how do you do things different maybe than. Than others do that you've Seen?
Tony Murabito [00:27:05]:
Yeah. Excellent questions. Talent management's a critical component of any every leader in an organization. You better manage your talent well, you better grow them, mot, cajole them, understand them if you want to get the best out of them when things heat up, etc. Which is important. I'll answer in the WAVE context first. One of the reasons why I went to WAVE and love being at WAVE is we do everything. We have our own manufacturing plant in Lexington.
Tony Murabito [00:27:43]:
You know, we have a great process development capability. We have an unbelievable research capability. I spend a lot of time with the data science team. They're my best buddies. But again, we can impact the business greatly in those areas. All of those are important components of a learning organization, something we try to espouse. We kind of use our OPS meetings to help each other. In terms of organizational perspective.
Tony Murabito [00:28:17]:
We bring in a voice. The customer, again, want to, you know, at the end of the day, we're a service organization. If we're not delivering that service to all of the customers, we're not doing our base job, which is important. I've always believed, Steve, 30 years, starting with myself, that development plans are critical. At wave, every IT employee has a development plan plan. Even during lean times. We've given our team the time and resources to execute. This is your plan.
Tony Murabito [00:28:54]:
We agreed to it, but it's up to you to execute. And most people love it because, you know, that's music to their ears and they do it well. But we're able to keep growing and developing the team and bringing those new lessons back to the team. If you went to Bio IT World, where I have a couple of people at today. So what did you find out? What did you hear in terms of validated clinical data management components, which we're looking at. So, yeah, you have to create the right environment. You have to have the right leadership team. I'm blessed that I have a couple of solid senior leaders in my organization and.
Tony Murabito [00:29:39]:
But we all try to create that environment. We gotta love what we do, even though we get paid for it.
Steve Swan [00:29:46]:
From a psychology perspective, autonomy, like you just said, is huge. You know, own it, it's yours. Right? You know, and, and, and even going back to Tony, even going back to. I don't know about you, but I coached a lot of kids teams back in the day, you know, and if you think about, you know, when you went from the softball or baseball draft in 24 to 25, which of the kids that are going to want to be on your team when you draft them? The kids that were Learning and the kids that were having fun. That hasn't changed much. I mean, you know, we can frame it a couple different ways, but if you boil it all the way down, that's kind of what we're talking about.
Tony Murabito [00:30:21]:
You know, so that's one of the questions I asked at every interview. How do you learn? What's your approach to aptitude? I mean, how do you grow a new capability? What's your process? Do you network? Do you research?
Steve Swan [00:30:35]:
You Google it, right?
Tony Murabito [00:30:37]:
Tell me about it. And it's interesting to hear all the different approaches that folks have.
Steve Swan [00:30:42]:
I bet the younger they are, it's more, you know, the younger ones are more. I Google it, I YouTube it, you know, then it, then it gets more. I would, this is just me based on everybody that I talk to. And then the older they get or a little bit older, they might figure out about networking. Right. And, and that kind of thing, you know, so it's, it's, it could be generational kind of, you know, answers to that. That's, that's an interesting question. That's great.
Steve Swan [00:31:06]:
Yeah, I like that. Yeah.
Tony Murabito [00:31:09]:
And, but again, it surprised me. And every now and then you get an answer from some of these young ones. Just, my God, they have the wisdom of a 60 year old. I mean, so some of them just. Yeah. And I'm amazed at some of the co ops we get in again, their skill set, viewpoints, enthusiasm, and they always leave something good behind at wave. We always try to have them create a project, create a program process, something that we can use and you can.
Steve Swan [00:31:40]:
Leave behind, well, something that you can use. But again, going back to the ownership, the accountability kind of thing, something they can own too. It makes people feel good. This is my, this is my real estate, this is mine. I own this, you know, and that's, that's a good thing. But the downside of that is you own it, you better make it as good as you can make it because that's your product and that represents you, you know, so. But that's great for, for them and for you, I think, you know, so.
Tony Murabito [00:32:05]:
A lot of times the, they say, you know, if you did it this way, you would get even additional insight. So after a while they're starting to understand your processes, what you're trying to do, and they help you take it the next step.
Steve Swan [00:32:20]:
Right, and they help me unravel it and reverse engineer it and look at it. Yeah, exactly. That's great stuff. I like that. Huh? Cool. Anything else that you want to, that you want to run through because we're, We're. We're running, we're getting towards the end. I do have one final question I ask of everybody, so I'll get to that, but before I get to that, I want to see if there's anything additional that you want to.
Steve Swan [00:32:41]:
You want to add or you want to talk about before I get to that final sort of fun question.
Tony Murabito [00:32:46]:
No, I would. You know, one of the reasons why I'm still working, still love working, love being in our industry is the learning opportunities that each of us find every day. Working in biotech in Boston, you almost couldn't pick a better hotspot to work in, pick a better spot to network, and so ensure you're looking at your portfolio every year. What can I do to enhance my capabilities? What can I do from a technology standpoint, from a soft skill standpoint, from an expertise standpoint over the next year to improve myself, make myself more marketable, more impactful to the business? I think all of us have to take that. Nona. These days, companies less and less take ownership of that like they did in the past. So make sure we do, because again, we're moving so fast, the skills rapidly become obsolete in terms of timing. So you need to stay on top of it.
Tony Murabito [00:33:56]:
And that's my challenge to my team.
Steve Swan [00:33:58]:
And, well, to all of us. Right. We all got to do it. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that's great. Cool. Good. Well, thank you.
Tony Murabito [00:34:04]:
And it keeps me out of trouble, Steve.
Steve Swan [00:34:08]:
That's good. Good. That's good. So do all the sports you're following around, by the. By the looks of everything behind you.
Tony Murabito [00:34:15]:
Yeah. Well, most satisfying super bowl this year with the Eagles. You know, after all the years of pain and misery.
Steve Swan [00:34:25]:
Yeah.
Tony Murabito [00:34:25]:
You know, it was almost too good. But no, I don't really mean that.
Steve Swan [00:34:29]:
Fingers crossed. Let's see what happens. Right? You know?
Tony Murabito [00:34:31]:
Yes.
Steve Swan [00:34:32]:
Yeah.
Tony Murabito [00:34:32]:
Yes. But it's good.
Steve Swan [00:34:34]:
So, final question. I always like asking folks. So you're a sports guy. I, I like seeing live music. I like going to concerts. I like seeing music. So. And I don't know if you, you, you go to concerts, do you like music? And I don't know if any of my guests do, but I always ask the same question anyway because, you know, so as far as concerts or live music's concerned, you know, are there any.
Steve Swan [00:34:56]:
If you've been to any, or you like any. Have there been any at any point in your life that you would, you would say, well, this one concert stands out or this one show stands out as the best one I've ever seen. You know, if. If you're around and you're ever talking to people at a party or whatever, and they're talking about their best concert, you could be like, well, yeah, I saw. I don't know, whatever, XYZ in. In 78, or I saw this one in 97 or whatever, you know, that was your best concert. Anything that comes to mind or sticks out.
Tony Murabito [00:35:25]:
Absolutely. 1978, Glassboro State University. Now Glassboro State College, now Rowan University. Little Feet and Tower of Power. And literally was Little Feet, all the original members. Unbelievable. Lowell George, Bill Payne.
Steve Swan [00:35:48]:
Yeah.
Tony Murabito [00:35:48]:
And it was the Waiting for Columbus tour, if you've ever live album. And I'm getting goosebumps now. So am I. I love music. Been to concerts. You know, when Genesis was going through their final tours, I was making sure my schedule. I could get them in at least three towns. Obviously, they ended in Boston, but no, definitely Little Feet.
Tony Murabito [00:36:15]:
The Glassboro State College Little Feet was.
Steve Swan [00:36:18]:
I remember when they. They came back in the late 80s and I saw him up in Boston. They played in a little place in like, Roxbury or something, you know, and Little George was long gone, right. And then I saw them open up for the Grateful Dead up in Maine in 1988, you know, and. And stuff like that. They were. They were good. I think they're trying to do their thing again now.
Steve Swan [00:36:39]:
But, yeah, Little Feet, that Waiting For Columbus album is probably one of my favorites. You know, it's a great.
Tony Murabito [00:36:44]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Steve Swan [00:36:47]:
Little Georgia is awesome, but, you know, God rest his soul. Right? So.
Tony Murabito [00:36:50]:
Yeah, Fat man's buggy.
Steve Swan [00:36:53]:
Fat man the bathtub.
Tony Murabito [00:36:55]:
Yes, sir.
Steve Swan [00:36:56]:
Well, good. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. You know, Steve. Sure thing. Yeah. No, and to our listeners, if you liked what you heard or saw, you know, feel free to go out and connect with us. You know, comment, rate us on.
Steve Swan [00:37:12]:
On Spotify or Apple or YouTube. All right, that'd be great than. It.