Lessons on Leadership, a Conversation with Will Lewis, Chair and CEO of Insmed

BIO: Will joined Insmed in 2012 as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the board of directors. He became chair of the board of directors in November 2018. Will is the former Co-Founder, President, and Chief Financial Officer of Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: AEGR), and previously spent more than 10 years working in investment banking in the U.S. and Europe. He also previously worked for the U.S. government. Will holds a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude from Oberlin College as well as a Master of Business Administration and a Juris Doctor with Honors from Case Western Reserve University. Will serves as the chair of the board of trustees of BioNJ, the life sciences association for New Jersey. Will is a member of the board of trustees of Case Western Reserve University as well as a member of the board of the Helix Acquisition Corp.

Asher Joy (BT): First of all, thank you for taking the time to be interviewed by Business Today. I would like to begin with the one question that will lead into many other questions. You’ve had quite the journey in becoming chair and CEO of Insmed and have had a very interesting background, coming from law school and investment banking. What exactly was this career trajectory like for you and looking back, did any part of you ever envision that you could be in the role that you're in today?

Will Lewis (WL): The short answer is no. Looking back on my career, I didn't set out to achieve a certain role or position – I really just went where my curiosity took me. In fact, when I started undergrad, I thought I was going to be a biology major, but I also took a series of history classes. For a variety of reasons, I pivoted from biology to history and began to follow that path, which also touched on areas like philosophy and economics. It was all over the place, but I loved that. I loved the ability to satisfy my curiosity for learning, which has stayed with me my whole life. A while after undergrad, I went back to school to get a JD/MBA. I thought I would become a lawyer and the business degree would complement that, but it ended up being the opposite! I went to Wall Street first and later ended up at Insmed. The journey was circuitous, but I enjoyed what I was doing every step of the way. The advice I got was to stay curious and see where that takes you. Worry less about following a prescribed path and go after your own passion.

BT: How can one follow his/her passions in a world that seems to be a stickler for traditional career paths?

WL: If you want to break the mold you have to get uncomfortable. You have to go outside the traditional or you will find yourself a participant in an existing ecosystem of business. If you want to make an impact in the world, you need to rewrite this ecosystem. You might be able to do so from within an existing institution, but if you study leaders like Jobs, Musk, or Bezos, they were so different because they rewrote the rules. Remember that Steve Jobs was a calligraphy major before he dropped out of college, and went on to rewrite five different industries. Musk rewrote the unthinkable, the automotive industry, and then did the same with the aerospace industry. These things are unimaginable to most people, but if Jobs and Musk had followed the traditional path, none of that would have happened. You have to open yourself up to the possibility of going outside the lines to have that level of impact.

BT: In terms of “breaking the mold”, would you say that you had a specific mentor or mentors along the way, who guided you along each path that you took? Or was there someone you looked up to as you were making your way through your career path?

WL: I was fortunate enough, when I was in investment banking at JP Morgan, to work on a lot of international projects that gave me exposure to fortune 500 CEOs of very complex institutions.  So I got to see established institutions and the way those leaders directed them. But most of my insights, to the extent that I have any, came from reading biographies of leaders. I would say the best training for anyone who wants to ultimately lead is to read about those who have come before you. Then, draw widely from that group, find the elements that speak to you, and latch onto those leadership qualities. One thing that the guru of all leadership, Peter Drucker, often pointed out, is that leaders are across the spectrum in terms of whether they're outgoing, charismatic, spendthrift, etc. Pick the style that you best align with; don't try to be something you're not. 

BT: Switching gears from leadership to your previous experiences, one popular career choice for recent graduates at Princeton is investment banking. How would you say that your experience in investment banking has impacted and influenced your ability now as a CEO? 

Are there any particular qualities from investment banking that you would regard as especially relevant to what you do now?

WL: By the way, when I started investment banking, I knew very little about it. I remember going through my first day at JP Morgan and I'm not sure I could have adequately described the difference between a balance sheet, cash flow statement, and an income statement. My point is that you don't need to know everything before you get there—you’ll learn on the job. With investment banking, you're surrounded by raw talent. People are very, very bright and very, very motivated. From that crucible you can learn a ton and have incredible experiences.

This process will teach you an awful lot; fundamentally, you're learning the engine of capitalism. You're learning the capital flows within the entire international economic system and that gives you a stepping-stone to understand how money gets distributed. Finance itself is the oxygen of the financial system, and if you have that comprehension you can apply it to everything from the automotive industry to the biotech industry. The reason I was recruited to start my first company was that I knew how to raise capital; I knew how to talk to investors; I knew how that process worked. The whole black box of how Wall Street operates globally is incredibly valuable to anyone in the business world and, if you do a few years in investment banking, you'll get all you need. Think of it as additional, almost collegiate or graduate level training for business.

BT: Transitioning now to your work at Insmed, can you explain exactly how Insmed is transforming patient care, especially when it comes to its emphasis on a commitment to patients facing rare diseases and their families that have to support them through this?

WL: Insmed’s mission is to transform the lives of patients facing serious and rare diseases. The diseases themselves are debilitating and in some cases deadly, and our commitment is not just to develop much-needed medicines, but also to think carefully about the patient’s entire  experience with the disease. It's a little bit more holistic than perhaps a typical drug company. Most people think of the challenges patients face from having a serious disease, but it goes broader than that; it affects the patients’ families, their physicians, and the caregivers who want to see them successfully treated. Insmed tries to touch all points of that continuum in an appropriate way.

BT: What about working at Insmed inspires you the most?

WL: The people, without question. We are fortunate to have a group of very passionate people who think a lot about how they can help the patient. If you take care of the patient successfully, the rest will follow, from the appropriate business returns to the opportunity for professional development. But it really centers around the patient, which is an important notion, because I think now, more than ever, humanity is needed in this business, and the collection of people we have at Insmed are, to a person, devoted to that mission. I find it very inspiring to be around people from all over the world who have the requisite skills and are centered on that patient. It's a pretty cool thing to be a part of.

BT: Would you say that this patient-centered focus starts even at the scientific research level, all the way up to the CEO/CFO level?

WL: I actually just came from having lunch with the entire research group in New Jersey earlier today, and I can tell you that patients are first and foremost on their minds. Their mindset is, will this medicine have a disruptive positive impact on the patient and if not, what do we need to do differently? For example, one of the medicines that we're working on had a particular formulation that we decided to change. We knew that, while the new approach would be more difficult and take longer to develop, it would be more convenient for the patient and potentially result in a better outcome for them. I think the patient-centered culture I was describing earlier brings a certain caliber of individual to the company that results in this really rich group of researchers and gives us a huge opportunity to impact patients for the better. I'm proud to say that we ranked as the number one place to work for scientists in a survey this year, ahead of some very substantial companies.

BT: Transitioning now to Insmed’s operations and commitment to its patients during the ongoing pandemic, I'm curious to know about the challenges that Insmed has faced during this pandemic and how do you foresee the new variants that are popping up continue to influence its decisions?

WL: You know, necessity is the mother of invention. And this set of challenges was quite severe and hit very close to home because we’re in the respiratory space and the pulmonologists and infectious disease specialists whom we work with were literally on the front lines of treating COVID-19 patients. What we saw was a really positive pivot to find ways to ensure that patients were being addressed for diseases other than COVID-19. For example, telemedicine, which means that we can reach anyone anywhere. It's not the same as an in-person meeting, but it's a wonderful complement and something that has evolved dramatically during COVID. You'll see this play out in terms of clinical trials where patients can now be more remote and don't necessarily need to come into a hospital or doctor's office to participate. That's a wonderful opportunity to include more and different types of patients in studies. 

So these practices like telemedicine or broader outreach to different communities are very positive things that have come from a very challenging time. We’ve also seen advances in the regulatory world, which has tried to expedite the approval of medicines to bring treatments to people in an appropriately careful but still efficient way.

BT: Clearly, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry is being transformed because of COVID, with respect to diseases that are overlooked in terms of research and via the speed at which regulatory agencies are approving vaccines. Do you think there will be a spillover effect into other research, for example, might it improve the process at which clinical trial research in general is conducted?

WL: I do think some improvements will come. I don't think the standard for what constitutes approvable medicine has changed, but I do think the efficiency with which that's been approached has changed and that can continue to be the case.  One of the interesting things in the rare disease space is that a lot of the innovation that came along was a byproduct of a legislative change, the Orphan Drug Act, from many years ago. This act provided incentives that spurred a lot of innovation for patients with rare diseases that previously had no available treatments. This tells you that in an industry as broad as medicine, something as seemingly unrelated as a legislative initiative can create a cascade of effects across an entire industry. 

I talked earlier about disruption and how you might bring about change: if you want to be a leader, you've got to be mindful of all the levers that could have an impact on transforming an industry, for the better. COVID was one of those forces, and legislation can be one as well. And I think creative undergraduates that have ideas should not be shy about bringing them forward. This is a time of change, and it's an opportunity to think outside those lines and go for it.

BT: Finally, to wrap up the interview, my final question is: if you could hop in a time machine and go back to your college-self and give yourself one piece of advice, what piece of advice would that be?

WL: Stay curious. Stay curious to follow your passion and the rest will take care of itself. It's hard to do that when you're an undergrad and you've put so much into getting yourself to a place where the opportunity is before you and now you have to start making choices. But my advice to my younger self and to anyone who bothers reading this far into the article is don't be afraid. Whatever your interest draws you to in that moment, you will find a way to bridge it to something meaningful, even though it may be later on. Many of the things you learn are universal – you don’t always have to develop your skills specifically for a particular field or area.

If you read the biographies that I described earlier, you will see the same thing over and over – follow your passion and the rest will take care of itself.

BT: Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview.