Many have come to private realizations amid the pandemic—some staggering and profoundly recalibrating, some embarrassingly quotidian.
For healthcare finance professionals like Kelly MacDonald, the chief financial officer (CFO) at Dynavax Technologies, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing vaccines for infectious diseases, the last few years, while challenging, have led to realizations that only clarified her purpose.
While many people learned firsthand the astounding power of vaccines during the pandemic, Dynavax already knew what it had on its hands: The Northern California-based company’s scientific developments had been incorporated into five Covid-19 vaccines used around the world, with millions of doses administered. And the biotech company already had an impressive track record: In 2017, the FDA granted approval for its hepatitis B vaccine.
MacDonald, who joined as CFO in 2021, was impressed with the company’s credentials, but she was just as inspired by smaller-scale positives the company had enacted during the pandemic.
“The way that Dynavax treated its employees in such a time of disruption and crisis […] was really, really exceptional,” MacDonald told Healthcare Brew. And that’s ultimately why she wanted to work there. “One of the things I was looking for, and was really inspired by, was the company’s people-first mentality. That’s something I can’t turn off.”
Lessons from everywhere
MacDonald’s first foray into accounting occurred “well before [she] knew it was a career path,” she said. A family friend was the bookkeeper at a local auto body and landscaping company, and she let MacDonald, who was 13 years old at the time, “play around with the general ledger and problem-solve with debits and credits,” as she remembers it.
But once MacDonald realized that her love for numbers and problem-solving was a viable career path, she was almost derailed by circumstance: Her formal finance career, which kicked off at professional services and accounting firm PwC, happened to coincide with the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Though the era was challenging—amid layoffs, she helped colleagues carry their belongings out of the office—the tumult of that time gave her a more concrete mission, she explained.
“I could see some of the negative impacts of not having proper financial management and governance,” MacDonald said. “So, I was really motivated from an early stage in my career to really focus on: ‘What can I do to make a difference?’ Not only in finance and accounting, but also for whatever organization I work in, and for whatever team I’m a part of.”
It’s something coworkers have picked up on as well.
“Under Kelly's insightful leadership, our team has not only grown in size, but also in strength,” Justin Burgess, controller and chief accounting officer at Dynavax told Healthcare Brew. “Her strategic guidance has instilled in us a deeper appreciation for efficient processes and a collaborative approach. We’ve learned that success is not only about numbers but also about the people and systems working together to achieve our mission.”
Chance encounters
A fair amount of serendipity pushed MacDonald on her current path as a biotech-focused financial professional.
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As a public accountant, MacDonald had a wide variety of clients and wasn’t totally sure which industry she’d land in. That changed after she found herself on-site with a biotech client when they received FDA approval for a commercial product they’d been developing.
“I had just been working four 80-hour weeks in a row,” MacDonald said.
So, when the news came through, “it was just remarkable,” she explained.
“All of the scientists and all of the employees were just so proud of the decades of work that it took—and all of the failures along the way—to finally have this success,” MacDonald said.
Asking the right questions
With that new career insight, she transitioned to a role at Boston-based Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, where she eventually internalized a lesson that all finance and healthcare professionals would be wise to carry with them: invest in your people.
MacDonald’s senior finance leader at Ironwood was someone she “looked up to as a mentor, and somebody who trusted that I could take on some new and different challenges,” she explained.
“She saw that in me, and our whole team, in ways that we definitely couldn’t have seen without her giving us that platform—that launching pad, if you will—to take on new positions, new risks,” MacDonald said.
Now, she works to adopt the same spirit of generosity in her first CFO post.
A personal mantra: “Lead with inclusivity, [and] focus on employee development and career growth,” she said. “One of the unique things about being in a small biotech [company] is that you get a ton of opportunity. There’s no shortage of fun stuff to learn.”
And that’s the other key lesson she’s picked up as a finance pro working in the medical field—although she understands spreadsheets, she’s not always as seasoned when it comes to test tubes and petri dishes.
“In many areas, I’m definitely not the expert in the room,” she said. That makes one of her most pressing tasks simply “asking the right questions […] and looking for where I can provide direction and guidance.”
MacDonald learned some of her most useful question-asking skills by watching how other senior leaders gathered information.
“You have to find your own voice, and pay really close attention to how certain people who you really respect and want to emulate ask questions,” she explained. “Over time, you see a bunch of different styles, and you can kind of be like, ‘Oh, that really feels right for me. Let me practice that a bit.’”
Even outside of biotech and healthcare, this skill is something other finance professionals should consider, MacDonald added, particularly as the CFO role becomes increasingly strategic and narrative.
“You end up being such an important storyteller for investors and analysts, and for all of our stakeholders,” she explained. “Being able to see that bigger picture, and ask a lot of questions so that you understand that bigger picture, is something that I’ve taken really seriously.”