Responsibility growing with the questions I could help answer

Mandate

Connect process knowledge, development priorities and manufacturing investment through explicit technical choices.

Outcomes

• Established an engineering programme before committing the next process scale.
• Completed a CNY 17.6 million pilot investment within a CNY 18 million envelope, retaining three excluded projects in the portfolio account.
• Supported stopping a formulation candidate while preserving its learning and correcting the commercial scenario.

Decisions in context

I became CTO after leading the technical portfolio across the company's growing site network. My present authority is divided between process development and manufacturing technology; the 2026 figures should not be projected back to every year of this appointment. I work with quality, regulatory and clinical colleagues whose decisions remain distinct from mine. The recent programme record includes scale examination, analytical transfer, receiving-site preparation and a pilot investment chosen for a defined development portfolio. It also includes a candidate we deliberately stopped. I present the alternatives and their consequences to executive and board discussions, without claiming a director seat. The responsibility I value most is keeping technical uncertainty connected to the investment it affects. A development observation should reach the decision makers with enough context to support a responsible next step, including when the recommendation changes a schedule or disappoints an earlier expectation.

Reason for the move

Current appointment, with company-level responsibility for technical investment and development priorities.

Mandate

Coordinate the development and equipment portfolio across three sites, with technical assumptions explicit in capital proposals.

Outcomes

• Introduced project-specific equipment comparisons in technical capital reviews.
• Connected analytical capability proposals to the development questions they would support.
• Established cross-site discussion of unresolved transfer assumptions before major commitments.

Decisions in context

Technical director brought a wider set of competing needs into my remit. A site could need equipment while a development team needed analytical capacity, and the two requests could depend on different assumptions about the same future product. I worked to make those dependencies visible in the investment discussion. The company added its third site during this period and changed ownership in 2016; neither fact should be attached to the entire earlier career. ByDecember 2020 my team had 102 employees and annual authority of CNY 96 million. I asked programme owners to explain the learning and continuing obligation associated with each proposed capability. This broadened my judgement beyond whether a technically attractive asset could perform its intended task. The CTO appointment followed the need to connect these portfolio decisions more directly with company strategy, while preserving the separate responsibilities of quality and other authorised functions.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CTO to lead broader technology choices and the allocation between development and manufacturing capability.

Mandate

Prepare process understanding and receiving-site work for development programmes moving toward larger manufacturing settings.

Outcomes

• Brought receiving equipment specialists into transfer planning before final handover.
• Linked process sensitivities to the observations supporting the selected route.
• Introduced explicit unresolved-question reviews at development transitions.

Decisions in context

The process development role made scale and transfer central to my work. I had to consider what a receiving team needed to understand, as well as what the originating team had demonstrated. The final-year remit covered 56 employees through four reports, with CNY 38 million annual authority; it grew over six years rather than beginning at that level. I encouraged specialists to connect process instructions with the observations and alternatives behind them. Receiving colleagues joined planning early enough to question equipment assumptions while the programme could still respond. The result was a more explicit account of what remained to be examined at each transition. I did not regard that account as a substitute for formal quality decisions. Moving into technical directorship extended these questions across several investment proposals, where the order of capability development could matter as much as the merits of any single programme.

Reason for the move

Appointed technical director to coordinate investment and technical priorities across the expanding site network.

Mandate

Lead formulation work with a clear explanation of material choices, examination plans and the next development question.

Outcomes

• Recorded the rationale for formulation choices alongside the selected instructions.
• Coordinated analytical and process specialists around the questions each study needed to answer.
• Preserved unsuccessful approaches in development reviews to inform subsequent work.

Decisions in context

Joining Lianvero brought me into a leadership role whose scope developed substantially during the appointment. By the final year I led 21 employees through three reports and held CNY 9.4 million annual development authority. I worked with formulation, analytical and process colleagues to define what a study was intended to establish before discussing its result. The practical challenge was often translating between specialists whose use of the same word implied different decisions. A promising formulation could justify another stage without settling every question about later manufacture or use. I learned to retain the reasoning behind material choices and unsuccessful approaches, so the next team could understand more than the final sequence. The move to process development followed an increasing need to connect that knowledge with equipment, scale and the circumstances of the receiving site, rather than treating the development laboratory as the final destination of the work.

Reason for the move

Progressed into process development leadership as responsibility expanded from formulation groups to receiving manufacturing settings.

Mandate

Carry out agreed engineering studies and retain the conditions needed to interpret and compare their observations.

Outcomes

• Prepared usable records of process runs under the agreed development plans.
• Helped compare observations without detaching them from equipment and material conditions.
• Supported senior colleagues investigating differences between planned and observed behaviour.

Decisions in context

My engineering career began in July 1993, immediately after completing my chemical engineering degree. I worked within a seven-person group and did not have a personal budget or management team. The employer's 260 employees and CNY 120 million revenue refer to 2000 and provide context rather than a measure of my authority. I carried out agreed work and helped senior colleagues examine why a process observation differed from expectation. The discipline I learnt was to retain conditions alongside results: equipment, material and execution context affected what another person could reasonably conclude. Reconstructing those conditions later was both difficult and avoidable when the original account was careful. After more than seven years I wanted responsibility for shaping a development programme as well as executing parts of it. Lianvero's formulation role offered that progression and introduced the people-management and resource decisions that would accompany my later technical work.

Reason for the move

Joined Lianvero to lead formulation development and take responsibility for a broader programme of technical choices.