
Why did Liz Barrett turn her back on a top job at Novartis in exchange for the helm of a biotech you never heard of?
Liz Barrett wasn’t looking for a job in biotech when she got the call from a corporate headhunter she knew well. The timing was terrible — just into a new job as head of Novartis’ global, $14 billion oncology group under a new CEO looking to push a longterm change in culture.
That’s a big deal. And she had moved over from the head role at Pfizer oncology, another Big Pharma with a major mission in oncology.
There was also one other problem: She didn’t know the company. What was UroGen Pharma about? And while she knew of executive chairman Arie Belldegrun, who led Kite to a $12 billion buyout, she had never met him before.
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