R&D Portfolio Stop-and-Reallocate Authority

The mandate

The portfolio executive resigned after the science committee discovered that nine programme gates had been deferred through rolling requests for more data. Modality heads are protecting teams and external collaborations, Finance is rationing cash through blunt quarterly limits, and translational scientists are spread across candidates that cannot all reach a decision point. The company needs a serving executive who can make explicit stop, hold and accelerate choices before ambiguity consumes the runway.

The appointee must start within three weeks and will hold the seat for eight months while a permanent search runs separately. The first six weeks establish comparable evidence dossiers, resource consumption and decisive next experiments for all 31 programmes; the following two gate cycles convert those dossiers into signed portfolio choices. The final period embeds a repeatable monthly forum and prepares the successor to inherit live decisions rather than another accumulated queue.

Handover is complete when every programme has a dated thesis, value-inflection point, kill criterion, remaining cash requirement and named capacity owner; at least two complete monthly gates have occurred without executive deferral; stopped work has released people and vendor commitments; and the board has approved a twelve-month translational capacity map. The permanent executive must be inducted through each contested decision and receive a documented dissent record, not only the final ranking.

The interim may freeze discretionary work pending a gate, redeploy portfolio analysts and shared translational capacity, terminate external study orders up to GBP 750,000, and decide sequencing within the board-approved risk and cash envelope. Programme termination carrying more than GBP 10 million of written-down value, material alliance consequences or workforce restructuring requires science-committee and board approval. The seat cannot change clinical endpoints, override patient-safety governance or represent preliminary findings as validated science.

Commercial licensing negotiations, fundraising leadership, laboratory-protocol redesign and permanent organisation appointments are outside this assignment. The interim will expose implications for those owners but will not become deal lead, chief scientific officer or investor-relations spokesperson. Platform strategy beyond the current modalities also remains with the board, preventing an urgent allocation mandate from becoming an open-ended corporate-strategy review.

Why this seat is open

The prior leader’s sudden exit converted an uncomfortable decision backlog into a financing risk, because the next investor diligence will test both asset choices and operating discipline. The board has authorised a temporary decision holder rather than asking scientists to referee their own resource conflicts. It intends to appoint a permanent portfolio executive only after the current evidence queue is resolved and the governance is credible.

What you will own

• Decide the evidence standard, kill criterion, decision date and accountable sponsor required for every active programme dossier.
• Convene two complete portfolio gates that record stops, holds, accelerations, dissent, dependencies and board referrals without ambiguous amber outcomes.
• Reallocate translational scientists, biometrics support, animal-study slots and external-vendor capacity toward the approved value-inflection sequence.
• Freeze work whose next experiment cannot change a decision, and terminate qualifying purchase orders within the delegated GBP 750,000 limit.
• Present high-value programme exits, alliance consequences and capacity conflicts to the science committee with alternatives and explicit downside.
• Build the successor handover containing live theses, consumed capital, remaining commitments, decision provenance, unresolved dissent and upcoming gates.
• Protect clinical-safety, regulatory and scientific-accountability boundaries while making cash and capacity scarcity visible to every programme leader.

Candidate qualifications

• Held enterprise portfolio authority in oncology, rare disease or another evidence-uncertain therapeutic pipeline spanning discovery through clinical development.
• Personally stopped sponsored programmes and converted the decision into released scientists, facilities, vendor orders and usable financial runway.
• Can compare modalities without pretending that probability, biological evidence, differentiation and development burden collapse into one numerical score.
• Has governed alliance-encumbered assets where a stop or sequence decision triggered partner, intellectual-property and accounting consequences.
• Built gate discipline that retained documented scientific dissent while preventing requests for more data from becoming indefinite postponement.
• Has handed a contested R&D portfolio to a permanent successor with traceable assumptions, decision rights and resource commitments intact.

Non-negotiables

• Available to start in Cambridge within three weeks and work onsite through both full portfolio-gate cycles.
• Brings direct therapeutic programme stop-and-reallocation evidence; portfolio reporting or venture diligence alone is insufficient.
• Accepts that patient safety, clinical endpoints, fundraising, alliances above delegation and platform strategy remain elsewhere.
• Will disclose current investor, biotech-board, clinical-vendor and transaction interests before receiving programme evidence.

1. 49 words maximum. What is the largest programme you stopped, and which people or capacity became genuinely reusable afterward?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a kill criterion you established when scientific leaders argued that one more study was essential.
3. 49 words maximum. Confirm your earliest Cambridge start date and disclose any investor, partner or biotech-board conflict.