Meena Datta recently spoke with three Sidley alums who are now colleagues at Gilead Sciences: Hae-Won Min Liao (2001, San Francisco), Vice President, U.S. Legal Business Partner; Greg Sherman (2007, San Francisco), Senior Associate General Counsel; and Jeff Young (2010, Washington D.C.), Senior Associate General Counsel. Read here as they share how their teams collaborate and how they apply the skills they gained at Sidley in their current roles.
Meena Datta: You all moved into new roles last fall; what are you most excited about in each of your new positions?
Hae-Won Min Liao: I’m excited about the U.S. Legal Business Partner team, which brings together teams that support specific therapeutic area needs on the commercial side and the market access side. You see the whole arc of the product from a commercial perspective in the launch, as well as getting coverage and reimbursement. It’s a great team filled with enthusiastic, energetic legal professionals, and there’s a depth of intellect and capability.
It’s nice getting to work with both Greg and Jeff’s teams. As the head of the U.S. Legal Business Partner team, I feel an important responsibility to make sure the information that my team has gets to our colleagues, the affiliates, and the cross-functional colleagues within Legal. I’ve seen more of Jeff in the last month than in the entire eight years we’ve been at Gilead!
Jeff Young: I moved from a role that was subject matter-focused to a role that is focused on partnering with business units and supporting them in all of their activities across the range of legal issues that they’re dealing with. One of the things that I’ve liked most about being in-house is the ability to understand what the business needs and objectives are and help problem solve, and I’m getting even more of that in this new position.
Greg Sherman: My practice had been U.S.-focused, so moving into a global role and learning about the issues that our affiliates around the world face has provided an exciting opportunity to understand the global business in a much more granular way.
Meena: How does the company’s purpose and drive for innovation in pharma impact your team? How do you weave it into your leadership? How is it woven into the leadership that you follow?
Hae-Won: I’m proud of Gilead’s leadership and vision, specifically the well-articulated goals of not only innovating, but also enhancing patient access. That alignment at the leadership level allows us to clearly prioritize our activities. One of the most fun parts of my job is collaborating with colleagues across our myriad legal business units. The Gilead Legal team is an excellent hub of coordination. We’re not just advising the business, we’re coming up with innovative business solutions that can help patients.
Greg: Innovation at Gilead puts us in a position to be creative. Throughout my years here, there have been many instances where we have been pushed as a legal organization to think of solutions that are outside of the box, whether that’s pursuing authorized generic strategies in hepatitis C or operating under Emergency Use Authorization during the COVID epidemic. It can be stressful in the moment, but when you step back, it is fun to think about how we are at the cutting edge of science, technology, and important legal issues.
Jeff: One of the business units that my team supports is the Global and U.S. Medical Affairs organization, which comprises many former clinicians who have moved in-house. It’s gratifying to help translate their vision and innovative ideas for eradicating HIV and other epidemics, as well as providing better patient care, that they developed from their years in clinical practice, into strategies and activities that are practical, effective, and compliant for a pharma company to do.
Hae-Won: The launch of a subsidiary was a Legal department idea, involving new authorized generics, the financial systems around that, and the accompanying agreements. What Greg says is true: Gilead is the right size for that kind of creativity. We’re not so small where we’re hamstrung and can’t have breathing room to think through issues, but we’re not so big that it’s cumbersome to get things done.
Meena: Hae-Won, you mentioned that you work cross-functionally with other departments within Gilead. Where do those instances occur, and what skills do you need?
Jeff: I think cross-functional collaboration is a big part of what we’re doing every day. A skill that you can bring to the table is doing your best to understand the whole issue and the business needs as thoroughly as possible. You’re not just a gatekeeper to providing the legal advice, but a thought partner and team member coming up with ideas.
Greg: As you’re building relationships with business partners and clients, getting to that point where you’re a thought partner requires some time and effort. Have lunch with people, talk about Michigan football, talk about your families. We’ve all been working in this industry for a long time and have seen a lot of different things that are relevant to the business problems that our clients are trying to solve. Some business partners haven’t had a lot of experience working with legal, so being able to bridge that gap is an important soft skill.
Hae-Won: When I was the head of the internal coronavirus response team for Gilead, there were a lot of internal issues related to how to deal with a pandemic. I’ve learned that it’s worth taking the time to break down a legal aspect to a business problem. More likely than not, we have one tiny understanding of the “tail of the elephant,” and our colleagues have the rest of that view that they can share with us.
Meena: How have your Sidley experiences and backgrounds influenced the way you operate at Gilead?
Hae-Won: I think about my Sidley experience all the time. I had tremendous training at Sidley — how to juggle a lot of different clients, socialize ideas, and learn to be business savvy. I learned a lot about being mentored, and being a mentor, at Sidley, as well as how to champion diverse perspectives.
Greg: Sidley’s emphasis on client service has served me well. There are a variety of skills connected with the ability to go out of your way to serve the client or, in our case, our business partners. Not everyone has the ability to provide excellent service. Sidley alumni tend to do that very, very well.
Building on what Hae-Won said, people call Sidley when they don’t know the answer, so being exposed to different factual scenarios comes in handy. In private practice, you may not see the future applications of the issues you are handling in the moment, but when you look back and draw on that experience, it creates opportunity. That’s the breadth of experience that you bring to the table.
Jeff: I had mentors at Sidley who drove home the importance of understanding your clients and how their internal mechanisms work. Your role is not to just give legal advice and then throw it over the fence, because if you don’t understand what it’s like for in-house counsel to navigate their internal organizational dynamics to implement your legal advice, then that advice isn’t worth anything. The second thing is the importance of intellectual rigor. Everything we’ve talked about, in terms of being able to problem solve for the business, work with colleagues, and be both solutions-oriented and innovative, stems from being methodical, analytical, and clear in what you’re trying to accomplish and how you communicate it.
Published March 2024
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