Carolina Alarco, Founder & Principal, Bio Strategy Advisors

Julio Martinez-Clark (00:01.883)
Welcome back to another episode of the Global Trial Accelerators Podcast. Today, I'm joined with Carolina Alarco, founder of BioStrategy Advisors and a 25-year biotech veteran who's helped companies accelerate from lab to global markets. Carolina spent 15 years at Gensheim, served as president of both Egerion and Novellion through successful exits.

and currently sits on multiple biotech boards, including Site.bio. And she's also co-founder of Latinos in Bio and a strategic advisor to e2MC Ventures, bridging biotech and space technologies. With hands-on experience launching therapies across 100-plus markets worldwide, Carolina brings the exact strategic insight our medtech and biopharma listeners need to accelerate their trials.

So let's dive in, Karolina, welcome to the show.

Carolina Alarco (01:04.13)
Thank you, Julio. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Julio Martinez-Clark (01:08.549)
Excellent Carolina, so let's get the party started here. Let's talk about your personal and professional journey, especially your personal journey. I'm very intrigued you came from Peru, right? So how is it? What's the journey behind that?

Carolina Alarco (01:21.966)
Yes, correct. So, yeah, so I was born and raised in Peru and I decided to study a graduate degree in Boston. So I came here in the 90s, basically when I was in my 20s and I got a master's degree in international business. And then I observed around me that

the up and coming industry with biotechnology. In the 90s, very few people were involved in biotechnology. So it really caught my attention because I've always been into innovation and what's the future, right? So in Peru, I had been working for almost five years at Abbott Laboratories. So I had some big pharma experience. And during my

Julio Martinez-Clark (02:13.39)
Okay, that's good.

Carolina Alarco (02:18.762)
actually my graduate degree, I met a scientist that was studying a business degree to go from the lab to the business. And he told me that he was working at Genzyme, which was a small little biotech startup company at that point. I think it was only a hundred employees or so in the nineties. And lo and behold, I gave him my resume and

Julio Martinez-Clark (02:35.8)
Mmm, yeah.

Carolina Alarco (02:46.636)
They hired me and they gave me an H1B1 visa to stay in Boston. that's, you know, long story short, that's how I started in biotech.

Julio Martinez-Clark (02:48.421)
Excellent! Wow!

Julio Martinez-Clark (02:56.431)
Yeah, I also got a H1B visa. That's how I got in telecom and networking through Lucent and Nortel networks. All right, so let's talk about Latinos in Valle. I think it's a common interest that we have as Latinos. I was born and raised in Colombia, as you know. So what's behind Latinos in Valle?

Carolina Alarco (03:12.419)
Mm-hmm.

Carolina Alarco (03:21.454)
So Latinos in BIO started with a group of 15 people that had not met each other despite being in the industry for many, many years. And we were all Latinos in different biotechs. And we just got together after work and planned to have a larger group of Latinos in biotech. But then the group started growing. So we said, why don't we do a more formal group?

And we launched it at the end of 2019. I remember in EMD, Serrano here in Burlington, Massachusetts. And we had like 50 attendees at that event. So we said, well, maybe we are onto something, right? And during the pandemic, we switched obviously all of our events to virtual events. So we grew until we were about 400 Latinos in bio. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (04:03.321)
Hmm.

Ha ha!

Julio Martinez-Clark (04:16.608)
Wow, really.

Carolina Alarco (04:20.022)
All the people from outside of Massachusetts joined us too. So we were a nationwide organization at that point. We decided to incorporate it as a 501c3 nonprofit and get some sponsorships to continue operating, right? But even until now, we are more than 1500 members and we are still an organization of volunteers. there's no full-time employees or anything, but we have close to 30.

Julio Martinez-Clark (04:39.491)
Hmm.

Carolina Alarco (04:48.566)
sponsors, so all of the biopharmers that you can think of are sponsoring us and supporting what we do. And we have programs for early stage career Latinos, middle stage career Latinos, and then we also have a C-suite and board ready program that is first in kind to prepare Latinos to not only, you know, enter the workforce in biotech, but really make progress in their career until they reach the C-suite and the board.

to have leadership positions and I think we are very happy with the outcome. So it's a wonderful group and it continues to operate. I'm a co-chair right now.

Julio Martinez-Clark (05:30.688)
Excellent. I applaud that initiative, Carolina. And I participated as a mentor in one of the rounds a couple of years ago. And I was fortunate enough to, to, to see my main T grow in the Latino. She was a Colombian girl living in Boston. So anyway, let's talk about trends. Carolina, as you know, these podcasts,

Carolina Alarco (05:46.828)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (06:01.092)
is about accelerating global clinical trials and what trends do you see in the industry, meaning any political trends that you wanna discuss or economic or funding trends, that's a hot topic today in biotech startups or medtech startups. So what do you see happening that is relevant to the discussion today?

Carolina Alarco (06:25.87)
So in biotech, the trend that I see and that actually I think is going to be the future of therapeutics is nucleic acid-based therapies, So RNA and DNA, RNA and DNA-based therapies. Right now, there are some challenges. Most of these gene therapies basically or cell therapies are viral-based, so they're using AAVE as a delivery vehicle.

Julio Martinez-Clark (06:36.388)
Okay. What's that? Yeah. Okay.

Carolina Alarco (06:54.378)
I think that the future is going to be non-viral delivery because those are the challenges that we're facing right now in the early days of DNA and RNA therapeutics. But we are moving towards a non-viral delivery and I think that's going to be much safer for patients and much more efficacious probably. So I know that politically I heard this week actually that the government has defunded

Julio Martinez-Clark (06:58.017)
Hmm.

Carolina Alarco (07:23.406)
mRNA projects. I think that's a mistake. I think that we had made a good start with the mRNA vaccines that were accelerated because of COVID, right? But I think the future of vaccines is there, is going that way instead of inactivated viruses, which is something we've used for, I don't know, 100 years. So.

Julio Martinez-Clark (07:37.537)
Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (07:48.963)
Hmm.

Carolina Alarco (07:50.647)
So I think that it's, you know, I think we as a community and as an industry need to continue to support DNA and RNA based therapeutics. There are a lot of microRNA reprogramming technologies that are going to be the key to longevity in my view. And that's basically in the biotech space, right? In the med tech space,

I see a lot of sensor technology, like advanced sensor technologies, mostly not, I mean, minimally invasive sensors to track different metrics in the body. think that's going to be really track biomarkers, track, you know, blood pressure, for example, and things like that. And I also see a lot of great promise on wearables.

Julio Martinez-Clark (08:19.351)
Mmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (08:31.638)
Biomarkers.

Carolina Alarco (08:46.58)
especially wearables that are for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and controlling or harmonizing the gamma oscillations in the brain. I think that's going to be really promising for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, et cetera.

Julio Martinez-Clark (09:09.569)
Hmm, interesting. And I have to ask about AI. It's the keyword now, it's the marketing keyword now. And I think there is no discussion, personal, professional discussion where AI is not being talked about. What do you have to say about AI in your field?

Carolina Alarco (09:15.544)
Mm-hmm.

Carolina Alarco (09:29.496)
So interestingly enough, I believe that in biotech, we have been using AI for quite a while. We used to call it bioinformatics, but yeah, yeah, but we used it in drug discovery, like high throughput screening of different molecules to decide which one is going to be best, et cetera. But of course, we did not have the AI with a compute power that the new AI technologies have.

Julio Martinez-Clark (09:39.765)
What? Really?

Carolina Alarco (09:59.503)
So I think that's gonna be game changing, basically. The more our scientists get used to implementing AI, the more our discovery is gonna accelerate and the better and more accurate decisions are gonna be made around different drug candidates, right? Even before drug candidates, molecules alone. So I think that in biotech is gonna be life changing.

still not clear how it will be implemented in med tech like for medical devices, but I understand a lot of med tech companies are looking into incorporating AI into the data analytics and collection that they are. So now these medical devices are smart, so they are collecting data, right, constantly. And I think AI can be really useful at analyzing that data and coming up with certain

Julio Martinez-Clark (10:47.133)
Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (10:56.64)
outcomes that will be useful for the industry.

Julio Martinez-Clark (10:59.809)
Anything to say about clinical research and the intersection of clinical research, AI, or any trends that you see happening in that industry or in that space?

Carolina Alarco (11:10.85)
Yeah, I think that one of the trends that I'm seeing is the emerging mini organs, Like organoids, and I know you might not like this a lot, but I think that the FDA had made a good decision a few years ago, a couple years ago, to change the need and the requirement to do animal testing and started accepting more

Julio Martinez-Clark (11:18.368)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (11:34.623)
Yes.

Carolina Alarco (11:38.223)
data coming out of mini organs or humanoid organoids, if you will. And that's another big trend that I see in preclinical research, right? Where companies are going to be able to maybe skip the clinical trials in mice and in non-human primates and other animals and go from organoids to first in human. That's going to be a really great accelerator. The other trend that I'm seeing is that companies are looking to do clinical trials

outside of the United States because the cost and the paperwork in the US hospitals, and I'm saying this even being a trustee at Mass General Hospital. But yeah, I think it just takes way too long, right? And companies are looking into Australia because the Australian government actually provides wonderful incentives for companies to do research in Australia.

Julio Martinez-Clark (12:09.056)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (12:21.136)
okay.

Carolina Alarco (12:34.87)
I think Latin America is coming up with some great new deregulation that is actually incentivizing companies to look at Latin America as a potential place for their inhuman trials.

Julio Martinez-Clark (12:40.587)
Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (12:49.729)
Interesting, the timing of this conversation is right because the news all over Colombia this morning was that the Colombian Congress, well, two congressmen in Colombia just submitted a new bill for a new clinical research legislation in Colombia. It hasn't been updated in over 30 years. Can you believe that? Since 1993. So it was about time.

for Columbia to step up and have a more updated and more modernized way of evaluating and approving clinical research. So now that we're talking about that, any comments about Peru? I don't hear much about Peru in the clinical research arena. I know they're a player, but do you see any initiatives or anything on Peru to modernize the law?

Carolina Alarco (13:30.648)
Absolutely.

Carolina Alarco (13:34.67)
You

Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (13:46.047)
I have not Julio, but I assume that the legislatures are looking into what Columbia is doing. I did hear about Brazil and a new legislation around clinical research in Brazil, which is actually fantastic because Brazil used to mandate that any companies doing research in Brazilian patients, subjects in Brazil had to commit to provide therapy.

Julio Martinez-Clark (13:56.357)
yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (14:01.748)
Mm-hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (14:13.471)
Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (14:15.662)
to those participants for life. And that really disincentivized companies to do research in Brazil because knowing that they have, know, when a clinical trial stops, especially in rare diseases, then they need to continue to provide therapy for life. When it's a chronic disease, that's really, you know, a major commitment for a company. So the cost of the clinical trial is not just the period of testing, but it's all of the...

Julio Martinez-Clark (14:32.009)
Mm-hmm.

Carolina Alarco (14:44.386)
basically the period after that, and Brazil just got rid of that. I think they've actually mandated that the company shall just provide free therapy to the participants until the Brazilian universal coverage system covers for the drug, which is about three to five years maybe after approval by Mvisa. So I think that's going to be a major, major incentive for companies to look at Brazil for conducting clinical trials.

Besides the fact that Latin America really is a very diverse population, racially, genetically, so you have a wonderful diverse pool of potential participants in your clinical trial that will provide this diversity that is required now by FDA and other regulators. as you know, in Latin America, you can find people of all kinds of descents. I'm from

Dutch descent, that's why I'm blonde. Yeah, my grandfather on my mother's side was Dutch. And like that, right, there are a lot of people from European descent, a lot of people that are African, Latin American, a lot of people that are indigenous. So the diversity of the genetic pool in Latin America makes it a really interesting place to conduct clinical trials.

Julio Martinez-Clark (15:44.593)
Are you really? Wow!

Julio Martinez-Clark (16:10.879)
That's true, yeah. All right, Carolina, let's move on to another segment. Let's talk about what you are doing with your consultancy firm. What's the value proposition that you bring to the table? How is it that you startups succeed? How is it that you help them raise funds, expand to international markets? I wanna hear the story behind your company.

Carolina Alarco (16:37.454)
Yeah, perfect. So after my last exit, Julio, in 2019, at the end of 2019, I decided to start my own consultancy, take a break from being an operating executive at two or three startups. And it was really a demanding role, right? And when you're in a startup that is going public, that needs to launch products, et cetera, it's tremendous. It's 24-7.

Julio Martinez-Clark (16:56.83)
Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (17:06.798)
Um, and a lot of travel. So, you know, in 2019, I decided to start by a strategy advisors. I had already been in conversations with a couple of clients that I knew were going to give me a head start on my consultancy. And, um, and then the pandemic hit and I had a lot of clients that were doing COVID related technologies, whether they were vaccines, diagnostics, all that provided a little boost to my consultancy.

Julio Martinez-Clark (17:20.072)
Mm-hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (17:30.194)
Okay.

Carolina Alarco (17:36.847)
And now we are 12 advisors in different aspects, 12, yeah, in different aspects of strategy. We basically focus on startups and early stage, middle stage companies. We don't work with large pharma or even large biotech anymore. You know, we like helping startups and helping founders. They're normally

Julio Martinez-Clark (17:40.669)
12, wow, hmm, amazing.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:01.723)
Yeah, it's beautiful.

Carolina Alarco (18:04.396)
scientific founders, right, that are not necessarily business savvy. we provide the business vision, the corporate strategy, the pipeline prioritization. We analyze the market, the business opportunity. We run their revenue models. We do all of that strategic work upfront. We also, the pitch deck exactly, as a result of that,

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:06.043)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:10.895)
Exactly.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:24.078)
Mmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:27.985)
The pitch deck.

Carolina Alarco (18:33.152)
it comes a pitch deck with a sound corporate strategy that investors and strategics can understand and can see, you know, the companies focus on this, they're heading towards this. Even though it's early stage, I think that getting these companies investor ready or strategic partner ready is very important. It's very important.

Julio Martinez-Clark (18:51.173)
yes, totally. Yeah. You're looking for an exit, right? So you accelerate your path to exit.

Carolina Alarco (18:57.474)
Yeah. Exactly. But to me, an IPO is also an exit. So when you're working with a biotech and medtech, and that's what I like to transmit to the scientific founders, you need to think that you're going to be going it alone for a long time and not necessarily have an exit early, right? Companies like large pharma companies are not looking at assets until maybe phase two.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:04.177)
Yes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:19.697)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:25.426)
Hmm.

Carolina Alarco (19:26.71)
And even if so, I think a company needs to operate as if they were going IPO and going it alone until bringing the therapy or the device to commercialization. Because that really is what builds value, right? The more you progress and more you advance, let's say you can have strategic partners, right? You can work with larger biotechs or pharma in co-development deals and things like that.

Julio Martinez-Clark (19:32.657)
Yeah, yeah, good point.

Carolina Alarco (19:55.651)
But I really like to focus on making progress without a partner first. So securing some non-delutive capital first and then friends and family, and then moving into maybe early stage VC. with that in mind, hoping for an IPO as an exit, or if along the way comes another large company that is a great fit for your technology, then of course you need to be open to strategic deals, of course, an &A, licensing.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:01.948)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (20:25.934)
things like that. But I find it that when founders are too focused on an exit, they forget to make progress early on. So, you know, really what you need to focus on in this industry is how does your technology, your product, your device will make an impact in patients. And the more you focus on that, the better your product is and the better your exit is going to be that comes.

Julio Martinez-Clark (20:35.718)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (20:54.614)
You know, but honestly, I, my founders are not focused necessarily just on exits are focused on bringing great value to patients in the United States and around the world.

Julio Martinez-Clark (21:02.684)
Sure, yeah.

Fascinating. So I'm curious, what's the model, the business model? mean, you, you professional fees, I mean, is a fee for service, or you take a small fee, and then you get a percentage of the exit. How does it work in the model of charging for your services?

Carolina Alarco (21:18.35)
Mm-hmm.

Carolina Alarco (21:31.183)
So we work on a per hour fee basis, basically, because per hour. It doesn't matter who in my team is involved, because almost all my advisors are very experienced folks from excellent, wonderful companies. But we have a per hour. because I work with startups, we basically set up a minimum amount of hours per week and a maximum cap, because obviously there is

Julio Martinez-Clark (21:34.555)
per hour, okay?

Julio Martinez-Clark (21:44.463)
Yes, I'm sure.

Julio Martinez-Clark (21:57.211)
Okay.

Carolina Alarco (22:00.823)
You know, they are on budget and they can't afford. Exactly. Exactly. But if it comes down to comparing it versus hiring full-time employees in their own companies, it's a much better deal. Like the hours that we put are super high quality hours with very experienced people that you couldn't even think about hiring in your little startup. you know, having like a regulatory expert that has

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:02.593)
Yeah, and they have to predict their cash flow and all that.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:16.436)
yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:24.986)
Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (22:30.358)
you know, registered many drugs around the world and has filed many INDs, having a pharmacology IND expert, or in the case of med tech, preclinical clinical expert in medical devices or engineering expert, that costs money. And these startups cannot afford a full-time employee to do that. So we are like the external team. We are like the outsource external team for the company.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:37.274)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (22:56.635)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah. I once hired a $2,000 per hour attorney in California. And when I saw the work that they deliver, I'm like, wow. Now I see the difference between a $200 an hour attorney and a $2,000 an hour attorney. I mean, every second that they talk to you is like wisdom. It's just spit out wisdom.

Carolina Alarco (23:09.614)
Mm-hmm.

Carolina Alarco (23:29.004)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:30.234)
and productivity and effectiveness. That's really what you're looking for. Somebody who can deliver and make you move forward quicker.

Carolina Alarco (23:41.987)
Yeah, we are not that expensive. know, because I've been in the other side, I've been on the startup side and I know every penny hurts, you know, so we really are affordable and we provide as much value as we can, not only strategic, but we actually do execute a lot of the tactical work.

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:44.41)
I know, I know. I'm just giving you an extreme example of...

Julio Martinez-Clark (23:56.313)
Yes.

Carolina Alarco (24:08.962)
like a time-sum-sum analysis, a revenue model, and of course, not the most experienced advisors are involved in that tactical work, but I also have more junior analysts that are helping with that. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (24:19.194)
Sure.

Julio Martinez-Clark (24:24.923)
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Well, we're close to the end of the show. Carolina, we usually try to keep it to 25, 30 minutes conversations. Any final words of wisdom you want to give to a new founder that is looking to grow their company?

Carolina Alarco (24:46.094)
Yes, absolutely. So founders need again to focus on bringing value to society. So when you are a scientist or an engineer or a biomedical engineer working on a new therapeutic or a new device, you really need to think about how does this device change the, you know, changes the standard of care in whatever disease you are focusing on.

So that's one thing, you need to focus on the value that you are bringing. Again, not focused so much on the money that you're gonna get upon exit, because then you don't have your heart in the right place. So you need to have your heart in the right place and be passionate about what you do, not be passionate about millions of dollars after you exit, right? So that's number one. And we find a lot of young people that are focusing on the wrong things right now. you know, number one is to make...

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:19.64)
Mm-hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:38.424)
into sin.

Carolina Alarco (25:40.697)
to bring value and the valuation of your company actually is tied to the value that you bring to patients and physicians for that matter. So, and then, you know, be resilient. It is a really tough environment to raise funding right now. So be creative. Some companies are doing crowdfunding. Some companies are still pursuing non-deluded funding or looking to work with accelerators, incubators.

Julio Martinez-Clark (25:56.076)
Mmm-hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:02.809)
Hmm.

Carolina Alarco (26:09.754)
you know friends and family, but you know, normally Latinos Latino founders don't have a lot of rich friends and families. So I always say, you know Need to find alternatives Need to find alternatives and you know, obviously the incubators and accelerators help a lot and in early stage vcs are gonna focus on those scientists and biomedical engineers that bring the most value so before to

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:16.787)
Hahaha!

Yeah. Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (26:38.818)
talking to a VC, don't go out and make a bad impression. Make sure that you have your business side also taken care of, your financials, your entity incorporated if you want in a Delaware C Corp or something like that. Do not go out and talk to investors prematurely because then you're just gonna kill your reputation. So yeah, exactly.

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:45.496)
You

Julio Martinez-Clark (26:56.908)
Mm-hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (27:02.018)
Yeah.

You're gonna burn your bridges, yeah. So Carolina, do you see more Latino founders nowadays? Yeah, what's your take on

Carolina Alarco (27:18.752)
I do. Well, Latinos in the United States are really killing it. They are really coming up with wonderful, innovative technologies. You know, when you study in the United States, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities, right? But schools in Latin America are becoming really good, especially in the sciences. Argentina, Chile, they have some amazing scientists, even Colombia. And I can see that people

Julio Martinez-Clark (27:23.746)
Nice.

Julio Martinez-Clark (27:43.064)
Hmm.

Carolina Alarco (27:47.251)
are getting more entrepreneurial and thinking of their technology in a way to build a company rather than just, you know, to be an academic. That sometimes our countries don't provide that entrepreneurial environment and the incentives and the venture capital that you need to build a company. But it's becoming more more common. like the founders of SiteBio are in Argentina and the lab is in Argentina right now. And they're doing wonderful because they have some

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:14.442)
Mmm.

Carolina Alarco (28:15.992)
great co-development deals. Venture capital is not there yet in the region, so I'm hoping that that will improve over time. But in terms of co-development deals and working with other companies there, things are looking good.

Julio Martinez-Clark (28:31.618)
So a Latino, excellent, good to hear. So a Latino founder in Chile, Argentina needs to come to the US somehow. Like Maria Aturtuaga from Colombia, she needed to be here to make her company successful because in Colombia there's really no chance, there's really no ecosystem to bring these technologies forward, right?

Carolina Alarco (28:45.997)
Mm-hmm.

Carolina Alarco (28:56.258)
That is true. And that is one of the things that BioStrategy started doing is helping companies that are outside of the US to do a soft landing, to do a soft landing here in the US, whether it's Massachusetts or a different state. But yes, although there are opportunities in Latin America and there is great science, there is no capital to scale up at the level that you need to really build a meaningful company. a lot of companies will...

Julio Martinez-Clark (29:03.723)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (29:18.912)
Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (29:23.968)
look into doing a soft landing here in the US.

Julio Martinez-Clark (29:27.276)
Yes, there's no risk capital, I will clarify, because that's really what we're looking for. Investors who are willing to take risks as we have in the US. I think, and Jeff Bezos I think said it in an interview the other day, the difference between the US and the rest of the countries around the world, especially Europe, because innovation in Europe is not a thing. It's not as much as it is in the US. It's because, in his words, it's because of risk capital.

Carolina Alarco (29:39.063)
Exactly.

Julio Martinez-Clark (29:57.587)
The amount of risk capital that we have in this country is just astronomical. And that's really what fuels all these innovative startups.

Carolina Alarco (30:06.826)
Exactly, venture capital is capital de riego in Latin America. Maybe they should change the name, change the name because that scares investors. Venture capital sounds better.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:11.158)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:15.479)
Good point, yeah. Sounds better, yes. So before we end, Carolina, I have to ask you about Latinos in Bio again, because I'm really curious about the future of Latinos in Bio. I think it's a phenomenal initiative. And again, I applaud what you are doing. Who else is involved in the leadership team, by the way?

Carolina Alarco (30:24.832)
Exactly.

Carolina Alarco (30:43.31)
So my co-founder is Jose Estabil. He's Jose Estabil from Cyperome that is a genomics company. And he is very involved, of course, still. The chair is Giselle Perez, who is at Biogen. And we have lot of, we have 17 board members right now. So we are basically driving the organization. Then we have,

Julio Martinez-Clark (30:47.285)
the to build.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:06.325)
Okay, wow.

Carolina Alarco (31:12.108)
Marketing and Communication Senior Specialist, Fernanda Gamero, and she really drives the programs and the events. We have a lot of networking events. So if people go to latinosimbayo.org and become a member, it's free. It's free. We don't charge for membership. You can just join the distribution list and you're going to see all the events and programs, educational programs that we have for our members and all of them.

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:15.767)
Mmm.

Carolina Alarco (31:40.219)
all of our sponsors and the things that we do in the website. And if you become a Latino environment member, then we have a lot to offer to you in terms of networking opportunities, in terms of educational opportunities, mentorship opportunities. And the more we help each other as Latinos in the United States, the better we're going to

Julio Martinez-Clark (31:57.121)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:02.001)
Great, yes. And what's your future? What's your outlook for Latinos in value in the next three, five years? Where do you want to see the organization?

Carolina Alarco (32:12.972)
Right now we are very centralized in Massachusetts because that's where we started. we're about, yeah, were about 40 % of our members are in Massachusetts. But now we are growing a big contingent, more than 20 % from California. We wanted to expand to other states, including Florida, Julio, where you are. And we are growing in other states, so we really wanna become a...

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:18.216)
Hmm, that's what I feel.

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:29.748)
Hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:35.092)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Carolina Alarco (32:40.862)
a nationwide organization and do events not only in Massachusetts, we have done a couple in California, but we want to expand that. And we also want members from Latin America to step up and start doing activities for Latinos in bio. We don't have chapters and the board has made a decision not to have. Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (32:55.606)
Sure.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:03.304)
I was gonna ask you that. Really? Okay, why is that?

Carolina Alarco (33:07.758)
Because we want to have, because we are an organization of volunteers, we don't want to have a lot of overhead, you know, and then when you, when you establish chapters and you, you know, you need a chapter lead and a chapter head and a vice chair and you know, et cetera, et cetera. And exactly. That creates a lot of overhead and we really want to spend all the sponsorship money from our biopharma sponsors in programs and you know, networking events and opportunities for.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:21.142)
a chapter website and all that.

Carolina Alarco (33:36.622)
for people to find new jobs and opportunity for advancement, opportunity for doing business with each other and things like that. don't want to create, we don't want a paid chair and co-chair and all of that. We don't pay the overhead people. So we are a different nonprofit in that sense.

Julio Martinez-Clark (33:58.901)
Oh, makes sense, makes sense. However, I would say that it'd be fantastic to or to incentivize local networking groups of some sort. Doesn't have to be called a chapter, but I love to connect with people in Miami, but we need somebody from above that pushes that effort, right? Even if we just meet at a restaurant every month.

Carolina Alarco (34:17.507)
Yeah.

Julio Martinez-Clark (34:28.725)
So.

Carolina Alarco (34:30.082)
Yeah, absolutely. There is a group in Miami that we are supporting. It's called the Biotech Leaders Collaborative. I will connect you with them. you know, Latinos in Bio, we are open to really having any folks, any groups in other states that will initiate events and things like that. The board members are all over the United States, so we can even travel there.

Julio Martinez-Clark (34:38.728)
Yes, please!

Carolina Alarco (34:57.686)
we can support it, we can support their events financially if that's needed and things like that. So we are very open to having groups start activities in other states.

Julio Martinez-Clark (35:03.871)
Excellent.

Julio Martinez-Clark (35:09.791)
Yeah, excellent. Yeah, I'm very happy every time I see a Latino founder. I've been in this industry, in the med tech, clinical research industry to be more specific, for about 15 years. And very rarely I see a Latino founder and every time I see one, of course it's like, we feel like brothers because we're part of a small, very, very tiny community.

Carolina Alarco (35:22.328)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Julio Martinez-Clark (35:36.553)
that doesn't get to shine in these industries. Usually white male Anglo-Saxons. At least in medtech. I don't know much about biotech, it's not my forte. But yeah, I have one friend, Gerardo Noriega, out of San Francisco. I don't know if you've heard about him. He's a celebrity in the San Francisco area in the Latino community, or at least in the Latino life science community because he was able to.

to have several exits, he's very successful and he's now the president of of the leading mettech company out of a famous Fogarty Institute.

Carolina Alarco (36:17.438)
Wonderful. I'd love to meet him. No, I haven't met Is he my god moreover I Will I will definitely I will connect with him in LinkedIn

Julio Martinez-Clark (36:19.634)
He's actually from Peru. Yes, Gerardo Noriega, look him up. Gerardo Noriega from Peru. the company, yes, yes, the company is called Perk Assist, Perk Assist. Yeah. All right, Carolina, I think the listeners were able to capture a lot of your wisdom and knowledge and experience. Hopefully this is a platform for.

Carolina Alarco (36:33.462)
fantastic.

Julio Martinez-Clark (36:48.333)
everybody to learn about your work in your consultancy firm and thank you so much for being here.

Carolina Alarco (36:57.026)
My pleasure, my pleasure Julio. And thank you for having me and to your listeners, I hope you had a good time. Thanks.

Julio Martinez-Clark (37:05.492)
Sure.