The life of a chief scientific officer
A dream job for scientists who love to work with people
During a typical work day, Brian Cathers’ mind keeps swinging back and forth between the future and the present. ‘I go from thinking two and three years into the future, to what’s going on now with our current projects, to see what the timing is to meet the goals that are two or three years into the future,’ says Cathers, who is the chief scientific officer of Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT), a US-based company that develops treatments for blood disorders such as sickle cell disease. ‘So, it’s keeping all that together, trying to merge the tactics of today with the strategy that’s driving tomorrow.’
Like Cathers, most chief scientific officers (CSO) have a complex job. While science is at the heart of what they do, doing science is just one of their many responsibilities.
Not all CSO positions are created equal – their scope varies from company to company. Similarly, chief scientific officers have strikingly varied career paths. Cathers became the chief scientific officer at GBT in February 2019, after having spent years in the pharmaceutical industry. Originally trained as a medicinal chemist, Cathers spent 15 years at the pharmaceutical company Celgene, before moving to GBT.