Welcome to Trailblazers! I’m Simi Shah, and in this newsletter, I dive deep into the journeys of trailblazing South Asian leaders. Listen to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or any major podcast platform and discover more exciting content on our Instagram and LinkedIn.
A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 📣 We’re coming to Boston…in a big way
On Thursday, July 27, we’re honored to be hosting a LIVE in-person podcast event in Boston with 2 esteemed global leaders: Dr. Srishti Gupta Narasimhan and Dr. Vas Narasimhan.
Dr. Vasant Narasimhan is the CEO of Novartis, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Since joining Novartis in 2005, Vas has held a range of leadership roles, including Global Head of Development for Novartis Vaccines, and Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer. Today, he helms the company of more than 105,000 associates doing business in more than 140 countries and reaching 743 million patients with its medicines in 2022. He holds a B.S. from the University of Chicago and an M.D. and MPP from Harvard University.
Dr. Srishti Gupta is a physician leader in health and education whose career spans the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Previously, Dr. Gupta spent nearly two decades at McKinsey & Co. A Senior Expert in the Global Health Practice, she worked to harness the power of public-private collaboration to tackle challenges including child mortality, vaccine access, and family planning. She has also held various roles supporting McKinsey’s talent programs including Global Director for McKinsey Alumni & Strategy, Director of Global Programs and Director of Diversity and Inclusion. She holds a B.A., M.A., MPP, and M.D. from Harvard University and an M. Phil from the University of Cambridge.
🗓️ Other Upcoming Events:
Tomorrow June 29 | Trailblazers Summer Social | NYC
We’re celebrating 6 seasons! If you want to join, reply to this email for the details✨
Sat July 8 | Masala Mixtape Concert | NYC
Sat July 22 | ABComeDy Show by ABCDGen | NYC
Tues July 25 | Kuthu Dance Workshop by Sruthi P | NYC
Our Latest Episode 🚀 Gaurav Shah, Founder and CEO of Rocket Pharma + Grammy Award Winner
The founding CEO of a breakout biotech company AND a Grammy Award winner? Gaurav Shah is no stranger to dualities — from medicine to music. In this episode, I caught up with the Co-Founder and CEO of Rocket Pharmaceuticals — a company developing first-in-class gene-modified cell therapies to treat rare diseases.
Prior to his role as founding CEO, Gaurav was a Global Program Head in the Cell & Gene Therapies Unit at Novartis, where he helped spearhead pivotal trials for patients with leukemia and lymphoma. Gaurav started his career in industry at ImClone/Eli Lilly as a Medical Director overseeing oncology trials.
Gaurav graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Behavioral Neuroscience. He received his M.D. from Columbia University, completed his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and hematology/oncology fellowship training at Memorial-Sloan Kettering.
To find balance, Gaurav also has long explored his passion for Indian classical music. In 2019, he and his wife were Grammy nominees and in 2022, they won the Grammy for Best Children’s Album, for their album entitled A Colorful World.
Read episode excerpts below 👇
Simi: You run Rocket Pharmaceuticals — a company developing gene-modified cell therapies to treat rare diseases, which as defined by the FDA, is any disease that affects less than 200,000 people in the U.S. When and why did you start to zero in on rare diseases?
Gaurav: The interesting thing about rare diseases is that each rare disease is rare, but rare disease is not rare. There are about 400 million people on the planet living with a rare disease and about 30 million in the U.S. alone. That's more common than a lot of the killers that we have, like cancer and even cardiovascular disease. The recognition of that and the impact one can have in this field for a large segment of the population is immeasurable.
I got into drug development through the door of cancer. There are many cancers that are also rare disease — not all of them, but many of them. So the regulatory pathways and considerations around how to commercialize these products is not that different between cancer and rare disease. I trained in cancer. I did my work in cancer both at ImClone and Novartis, a very well-oiled and seasoned company. And then I was called by an investment firm, here in New York City, called RTW with a chance to apply the cell and gene therapy learnings from Novartis in cancer to a host of rare diseases. So Rocket Pharma was an opportunity that presented itself, and I went with it.
But I would say that, while at Rocket for the last eight years, we've become so close to patient advocacy groups, patients, families, and we've gotten the chance to get to know a few patients. And you see the impact that gene therapy can have on certain patients — especially in pediatrics — who might not grow up to see their fifth birthdays. Gene therapy has the potential to turn them into 95-year-olds. This is not therapy; this is cure. It's the first time in the history of our species that we're not talking about medicine as a therapy, but medicine as a cure, because you're replacing faulty DNA with corrected DNA. And DNA is the essence of who we are as physical beings. So to see that impact we can have in rare disease has been so special and awe-inspiring for me and everyone at the company. I fell into this field, but I wouldn't do anything else.
Simi: How your work in music inspired your work in medicine and vice versa?
Gaurav: I grew up with Indian classical music, with Kishore Kumar and Guns & Roses in Texas. It was a weird and fun way to grow up. I was exposed to so many different cultures and intersections. The Indian classical music obsession started in middle school. And these parallel threads fed each other my entire life. In my medical school interview at Columbia, my interviewer asked me, ‘What do you think about all day?’ And I said, frankly, ‘I think about Indian musical notes.’ I never hid that from anyone. It's just been always very transparent about it. So they've been two parallel threads that have intertwined and crossed.
As stressful as medical school, residency, or Novartis, and certainly Rocket were and are, the ability to step away for an evening and perform music that my wife and I love is so special. And it’s not just performing, it’s connecting with an audience at what I think is an equally deep level as medicine, right? Medicine — especially gene therapy — is the the deepest level of physical beings we are, in the same way that music, I think, connects soul to soul.
Traverse Gaurav’s journey from the Grammy’s to gene therapy in this episode. Full episode out now on Apple, Spotify, or our website!