“I absolutely loved my time with the Stingers. We were not so successful my rookie year, but by my fourth year, I was the captain and we were ranked No. 2 in the country.”
Taking a drug molecule from discovery to pharmacy shelves is a long, complex journey.
As a lifecycle leader at the Roche biotechnology subsidiary Genentech, Stewart Campbell is tapping both his scientific and business expertise to empower a global team of about 400 people working on an early-stage molecule that may someday treat Crohn's and colitis patients.
Campbell says he learned many of his leadership skills not in the classroom, the lab or the boardroom, but on the ice playing hockey for the Concordia Stingers.
Strongest memories of Concordia
“I absolutely loved my time with the Stingers. We were not so successful my rookie year, but by my fourth year, I was the captain and we were ranked No. 2 in the country.
“I learned so much that I use today with my team at Roche: about sharing pains, sharing successes, how to deal with different cultures, how to deal with different mentalities, and how to motivate people. I intrinsically learned all those things without consciously realizing it at the time.”
On keeping his team motivated
“Drug development is extremely complex, and the timelines are extremely long, so it's those goals you score that keep you coming back and not thinking about all the chances you’ve missed. To get to those wins, we have a lot of failures so as to better understand the biology.
“What drives me and many of my colleagues in the industry is the opportunity to benefit vast numbers of people.”
Proudest career accomplishment
“Four years ago, I took over a team working with a very complicated molecule to treat a particular mutation of breast cancer.
“Just over three years later, this drug has cured somewhere in the neighbourhood of 180,000 patients, which is for me amazing, as someone who has a mother, a sister and a daughter. I’m hoping we've fundamentally changed the landscape of this particular type of breast cancer.”
Pandemic silver lining
“It has highlighted the value that the health-care industry and the pharmaceutical biotech industry provides to society as a whole.”