Are you a biotech consulting firm or a single operator?

Single operator. I am the senior person on every file. There is no junior bench, no leverage model, no rotating analyst. The work is direct. When I need a specialist in regulatory, tax, or IP litigation, I bring one in by name and on consent.

Do you work with early-stage biotechs or only mid-cap and up?

Both. Early-stage work tends to be partnering strategy, fundraising materials, and board readiness. Mid-cap work tends to be restructuring, transactions, and post-LOI operations. The threshold is not size; it is whether the question reaches the C-suite.

What does an engagement cost?

The diagnostic is fixed-fee, capped at two weeks. Full engagements run on monthly retainer or fixed-fee depending on scope. I quote after the first call. I do not work hourly.

Are you based in San Diego? Do you travel?

San Diego. I travel for on-site work in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, and London on a regular schedule, and elsewhere as needed.

Biotech and life sciences consulting.

I help biopharma C-suites and boards decide where to play, how to fund it, and how to execute. Boutique. Senior. Conflict-free.

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How I work

I take on a small number of biopharma engagements at a time, most with C-suites, boards, or principal investors. Engagements run from four weeks to twelve months. I am the senior person on the file. There is no junior bench. The relationship is direct.

The work I do best sits at the intersection of capital, clinical, and policy. Those are the questions a CEO cannot fully delegate to a banker, a consultant, or a head of regulatory, because the answer cuts across all three.

Six situations account for most of the inbound. Each one below is a sentence founders actually open with, and each links to a fuller description of the work.

Biotech fundraising and investor relations

You have to raise capital, and the money is harder than last time.

I serve as a fractional senior on the capital side of the business, the IR or capital-strategy lead a company needs for ninety days, six months, or through a specific moment. The bench was empty, or the seat is vacant, or the incumbent is over their depth. I sit in the chair until the question is answered.

Capital raise. Series A through C, crossover financings, PIPEs, and IPO readiness. Investor narrative, materials, data room, target list, roadshow management, and term-sheet judgment.
Investor relations. Quarterly cadence with existing investors, KOL and analyst engagement, board-ready financial communication, and crisis-grade IR around clinical readouts or regulatory events.

The round gets sized against the next value inflection rather than the burn in front of it, and the story is built to survive the diligence that follows it. I also serve as head of research and investments at BioPalace.

Business development, partnering, and out-licensing

You are talking to pharma and you have never done a licensing deal.

A first licensing deal is negotiated against people who do this every week. I sit on your side of the table for the whole arc: partnering strategy, in-licensing and out-licensing process management, target screening, valuation triangulation, term-sheet negotiation, and the post-deal handoff to operations.

The question underneath most partnering conversations is not which term to push on. It is whether the deal beats the alternative, which is usually raising. I run those two as one comparison rather than two separate conversations, because a company that partners for the wrong reason discovers it two financings later.

I do this on a retainer or fixed-fee basis. Most fractional engagements run between three and nine months. Some convert into ongoing advisory after the immediate brief closes.

Strategic transactions and biotech M&A advisory

You have a buyer or a partner at the door, or you are thinking about going public.

I have advised on more than $35 billion in biopharma transactions across buy-side, sell-side, and integration. Most engagements look like one of three things: an unsolicited inbound that needs a structured response; a board-mandated review of strategic alternatives; or a partnering deal at the company level that is too complex for the in-house BD team alone.

What I add over the bulge bracket is operator judgment. Bankers are paid to close. I am paid to tell the board whether closing is the right call, and what the company actually has to absorb on day 91.

Typical scopes: target screening and ranking; valuation triangulation across DCF, comparables, and royalty models; reverse-merger and cash-shell screening; deal-structure review; board-ready materials; CDA-to-LOI process management; and post-LOI operational planning. I do not run sell-side processes. For that I co-quarterback with a banker the board has selected.

Cross-border BD: licensing into and out of Europe and Asia-Pacific

You want to license an asset into or out of Europe or Asia-Pacific.

Roughly half of my pipeline now sits outside the United States, weighted toward Asia-Pacific. Japanese, Korean, and emerging-Chinese biotechs have the science, lack the deal grammar, and need senior US representation before they ever see a US partner. I work on out-licensing into US pharma; with US boards weighing inbound assets; and with non-US biotechs preparing to raise US capital without an office in Boston or San Francisco.

The work runs in both directions and the structure is not always a license. Regional rights, a joint venture, or a NewCo built around the asset each carry different tax and control consequences, and the non-dilutive government money available in Japan and Korea is routinely left on the table by US teams who do not know to ask.

I run Arcstone Japan from the same desk. I served as a diplomat at the World Bank, represented the United Kingdom at the UN General Assembly on pharmaceutical policy, and have been negotiating across governments for fifteen years. The European side of the practice draws on that policy and regulatory background rather than on Asian deal volume. The cross-border work is not adjacent. It is the through-line of the practice.

Operations, restructuring, and drug development prioritization

You will run out of money before the next readout.

I led a $1 billion corporate restructuring end to end: P&L realignment, workforce, operating model, and the financial communication that surrounded it. The mid-cap biopharma market in 2026 has more of this work than capacity to absorb it. Companies are not failing; they are flat-NAV-and-shrinking, and the operating model is the wrong shape for the current cost of capital.

The same decision shows up in the pipeline. I worked on a $130 million HIV vaccine development program across governments, donors, and research institutions, and the advisory I offer on development is strategic rather than operational: which Phase to fund out of pocket, which to partner, which to pause, and what the readout has to look like for the next financing to be possible. I am not your CMC consultant and I am not running your clinical operations. Most engagements run alongside a CDO or CSO who owns the science.

Engagements typically begin with a 30-day diagnostic covering what is working, what is overweight, and where the cash actually goes, then continue into 90-day implementation alongside the CFO and COO. The deliverables are operational, not slideware.

Fractional operating support for scientist-founders

You are a scientist-founder, and now you need help running the company.

A scientist-founder is hired by their own company for the science, and the rest of the job arrives with it: the operating plan behind the research plan, the first ten hires in the order that keeps the company alive, what belongs in-house against what belongs at a CRO or CDMO, and a board that needs managing between meetings rather than during them.

This is the closest thing I do to a seat rather than an engagement. In practice it looks like chief-of-staff or fractional chief strategy officer work: I run the company with the founder, take the decisions they did not train for off their desk, and leave the science to them.

Some founders want this for a quarter, through a financing or a board transition. Some keep it in place for a year. It is the one part of the practice where the right outcome is usually that the company outgrows me and hires the permanent version of the seat.

Strategy and market intelligence

Underneath most of the six sits the same question: where to put finite capital. Which indications to fund, which to partner out, which to kill; which markets to enter and in what order; how to allocate across a portfolio that is too broad for the cash runway in front of it. The output is not slideware. It is a decision the CEO can defend to the board on Monday morning.

Typical work products: capital-allocation frameworks for $1B-plus portfolios; competitive intelligence programs; scenario analyses on macro, regulatory, and competitor moves; market-sizing for new indications; and the prioritization conversation the executive team has been avoiding for two quarters.

This is the work an in-house strategy team cannot always do alone, not because the team is weak but because the CEO needs an outside read that is not auditioning for a promotion.

When a boutique is the right call

Biotech consulting firms come in three tiers. Bulge-bracket consultancies such as McKinsey, BCG, Bain and EY-Parthenon sell a model and a team. Boutique advisory like mine sells one senior operator with a personal P&L on the work. Pure functional shops sell depth in one lane.

The labels blur. Life sciences consulting, pharmaceutical consulting and biotech consulting all describe the same market, and which tier you hire from matters a good deal more than the name on the door.

The right call depends on the question. If you are running a multi-year transformation, hire the bulge. If you are running a $200-million-cap biotech, mid-restructuring, with a CFO who needs a senior thinking partner for ninety days, hire someone like me. If you need a regulatory specialist, hire a regulatory specialist.

I am happy to tell you which one you actually need. Sometimes it is not me.

How we start

20-minute call. I want to hear the question before I quote on the work. Most calls end with either a scope of work or a referral to someone better placed.
Diagnostic. Two-week paid diagnostic to validate the brief, scope the engagement, and confirm we want to work together. Capped fee. Either side can walk.
Engagement. Most run between four weeks and twelve months on retainer or fixed-fee. I take on no more than three concurrent engagements.

Questions I get asked

Are you a biotech consulting firm or a single operator?: Single operator. I am the senior person on every file. There is no junior bench, no leverage model, no rotating analyst. The work is direct. When I need a specialist in regulatory, tax, or IP litigation, I bring one in by name and on consent.
Do you work with early-stage biotechs or only mid-cap and up?: Both. Early-stage work tends to be partnering strategy, fundraising materials, and board readiness. Mid-cap work tends to be restructuring, transactions, and post-LOI operations. The threshold is not size; it is whether the question reaches the C-suite.
What does an engagement cost?: The diagnostic is fixed-fee, capped at two weeks. Full engagements run on monthly retainer or fixed-fee depending on scope. I quote after the first call. I do not work hourly.
Are you based in San Diego? Do you travel?: San Diego. I travel for on-site work in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, and London on a regular schedule, and elsewhere as needed.

Book a 20-minute intro call →