Bruce Rychlik’s practice focuses on recruiting Chief Executive Officers as well as functional leaders for venture-backed Life Science companies including Chief Scientific, Technical, Medical, Financial and Business Officers at a national level. His practice includes therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, tools and clean technology.

Bruce has also recruited extensively in the Life Sciences industry for Corporate Boards, Academic/Research Institutions in the area of Technology Transfer, and for Global Health NGOs. In his career, he has also worked on numerous international recruiting projects throughout Asia, particularly Japan, as well as Europe.

Bruce is an Advisor to Convergence: The Life Sciences Leaders Forum, which hosts annual events in New England. He earned an M.B.A. from Boston University (1997) and a B.A. in Political Science from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (1989).

Bruce lives with his wife Kristina, daughter Anna and sons Alexander and Robert in Acton, Massachusetts. He is an avid cycler and jazz aficionado.

Chief Operating Officer; Vice President, North American Sales, Aushon BioSystems, Inc.

Senior Vice President and General Manager; Vice President, Research and Development, BioEnergy International, LLC

Chief Executive Officer, Genocea Biosciences, Inc.

Scientific Director, Osher Research Center, Harvard Medical School

Chief Technology Officer, Nano-Terra, Inc.

Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, Protein Forest, Inc.

1. What would you say was your most challenging placement and why?

Although most of my work revolves around early-stage, venture-backed life science companies, two of the projects I did for the not-for-profit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative were very challenging. In recruiting a Chief Operating Officer for the organization, we essentially had to find someone who not only had to make the “trains run on time” for the organization as a whole but also who could make easier the life of a very busy, visible (in the global health industry), and externally-facing Chief Executive Officer. It took us a while to come to terms with this duplicity but we ultimately found someone who did just this for the head of the NIAID, the head of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and the head of Cancer Treatment at the National Cancer Institute. Bill Holodnak and I also recruited a head of fundraising for the organization. Fundraising experience was not required but high-level global contacts, an ability to influence and a passion for global health were. We ended up recruiting the General Counsel from a major pharmaceutical company who at one point ran a several billion dollar device business for the company as well as philanthropy. It was through his philanthropic involvement that made him want to commit the next phase of his career to the AIDS epidemic. Let’s just say that General Counsels were not on our target list, but the philanthropy he ran was. So he was only one step away through networking.

2. What would you say is the top attribute that makes J. Robert Scott more effective than other senior level search companies?

This is the only search firm I know. It would be wrong of me to say that there are not other very effective recruiters out there serving the life sciences community. I know there are. But we have created an organizational structure which has been in place since inception that I believe make us unique. Compared to most firms, we have a comparatively large percentage of our firm who provide new and original research on every one of our assignments. Again, since most of my work revolves around early-stage, venture-backed life science companies, you have to be thorough and I would say exhaustive in terms of trying to understand all of the relevant players in the particular subsets of the market we serve. Miss a company and you may have missed the candidate who gets the role. Because we have this research-based infrastructure, we can also maintain intensity throughout the entire length of the search. I know for a fact that we turn up as many candidates, if not more, in the second-half of any given search as we do in the first half.

3. What international city do you find to be most interesting and why?

As a way to improve my German after college, I lived in Vienna, Austria for almost a year. In the end, the dialect made it a very difficult place to improve upon the language. Yet it is a remarkable city in terms of Seccessionist artists like Egon Schiele and architects like Otto Wagner, music (and not just classical) and wine, in particular the Grüner Veltliner and Gewürztraminer varietals. And as the book and the movie The Third Man have made known to many, it is a melting pot of cultures (certainly more so in the past) that was once the last frontier of western Europe. By sheer coincidence, I happen to be there in 1989 and 1990 when that all changed so I consider my self fortunate for that bit of serendipity. It is not the best city for business but it certainly is interesting.

4. What do you consider to be the hardest challenge in finding the right candidate for your clients?

Recruiting is all about creating options for our client. So the real challenge is convincing the client to think more broadly about where the candidate might come from. This is best done through presenting a broad range of candidates than through rhetoric. If your product is a cell therapy, is it absolutely essential that you find someone who has worked in the space? For some positions yes but for most positions I would argue no. What are the analogous product or technology areas (or more broadly industry sectors) where we could look that also might yield an answer? I find pushing the margins always results in the most interesting candidates in the end.

5. What’s the last book you read and did you like it?

I’ll answer the question slightly differently. As a life science recruiter, I tend to read a lot of books related to my profession. I found Her-2, The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer fascinating. That drug program faced so many internal obstacles at Genentech I find it surprising that it ever was pushed all the way through to market. But of course I am glad it did. I have become an active cyclist over the last three years so I also read a lot on that topic too. The Death of Marco Pantani by Matt Rendell is very gripping. You truly understand how hard it is to make it to the top of one's profession and how fast and easy it is, often, to fall.