Senior Vice President, Business
Development and Legal: As a for-
mer partner in two Washington DC
law firms, Mark Boulding special-
ized in life sciences and technology.
In 1999, he joined Medscape as its
general counsel during its IPO and
merger with MedicaLogic thereafter.
He began his career as an honors gradu-
ate of Yale college and earned a law
degree cum laude from the University
of Michigan. He was GC and executive
vice-president of that MedicaLogic until
late 2002, when he made the move to
PTC Therapeutics to head business devel-
opment and legal, as well as serving as
general counsel and corporate secretary.
He tells the story of how that came to be:
"I actually joined PTC after coming to a
Halloween party here. (People were in full
costume: wild dresses and mad scientists,
white coat-and-tail, and service reps in
imperial robes. So I was charmed from
the start. MedicaLogic was acquired by
GE Medical, and other bits of it were spun
out. And it was right around the time that
that was happening that I was introduced
to PTC through an investor. I wasn't sure
what I wanted to do next, and I was really
taken by the professionalism, even in
those days. To have a company that really
had started in 1998, and to be where it
was three years ago was tremendously
impressive. So many companies, especially
ones that are spun out of universities, it's
clear when you visit them that they don't
have the tools that it's going to take to
make a commercial success of the com-
pany, and the opposite was true of PTC. I
thought from the moment that I walked in
the door that this was a company that had
the air of success about it and was fairly
focused. To its credit, it was focused from
the beginning on delivering products,
which is what you need to do to be suc-
cessful over the long term, but something
that not many biotechs focused on in
the early days. Then the other thing that
attracted me and it's only been borne out
by the other additions, was who was on
the team and how they'd been selected. I
just felt a great collegial, a group of people
who take what they do very seriously,
but don't take themselves too seriously."
B
IOGRAPHY
: M
ARK
B
OULDING
Of all the PTC managers, Brazilian-born
Cláudia Hirawat may have the story with
the most human and professional inter-
est. She came to the company in 2000 as
its seventh employee, after five years as
a recruiter and management consultant
at LedbetterStevens. There, her clients
included big and little pharma companies,
large consulting firms, and biotech com-
panies including, most fatefully for her,
PTC Therapeutics. Once there, her respon-
sibilities unfolded into many areas--busi-
ness development, IT, HR, investor/public
relations, and larger spheres such as
fundraising, operations, and strategic
planning. The company credits her with
playing "a key role in building PTC." Here
she shares the highlights of her career that
led to the company's top management:
In 1995, I was a pre-med student who con-
cluded I was no longer interested in going to
medical school. Charlene Ledbetter (Principal
and founder of LedbetterStevens) offered
me a job building a business research effort
at LedbetterStevens. My job was to read
everything--all newspapers, all trade publi-
cations--and inform the team, organize sci-
ence briefings, research new emerging disci-
plines, and help our clients identify leadership
across all departments, from competitive
intelligence to bioinformatics, pricing, and
clinical development. After a year in research,
I became a consultant and worked with
both large pharma and emerging biotech.
It was indeed a dream job. Because we
focused on very senior assignments, we
had the best and brightest come to us and
explain their science and business, so we
could convey it to other brilliant people
and try to get them together. We had VCs
come to us about new companies they
were interested in, and sometimes we even
helped them draft the business plans for
new companies. We had more than a few
Nobel prize winners give us science lec-
tures. Though everyone in life sciences at a
director level and above is probably pretty
smart, getting them to work together was
a completely different story. We had to be
articulate on the latest trends in discovery,
development, commercialization, financ-
ing, partnering, and any other aspect of the
biopharmaceutical business to converse with
our clients and candidates, but we made
recommendations based on intangibles
B
IOGRAPHY
: C
LÁUDIA
H
IRAWAT
,
VICE
PRESIDENT
,
CORPORATE
DEVELOPMENT
Continued
