I am a Consultant who used to do statistical data analysis for pharmaceutical companies. I guess that I have been “out of the loop” for a while, since I just learned that, last April, John Curd died of natural causes at age 65.
Several years ago, I did some consulting work under John at Novacea, where he was President and CMO. During his tenure at Genentech as CMO, I had also done a couple of contracts but, at that time, I only knew him from letterhead. Back in those days and afterwards, I knew that John had presided over the development and bringing to market, of three of Genentech’s biggest blockbuster drugs.
John moved on to help found a few other startups, including Novacea.
Later, at Novacea, John made a special effort to get to know each and every person at the company. He was polite, friendly and talkative. He wanted to know what you did for the company and what he could do to help make your work more productive. He seemed genuinely interested in what you had done in your life and career. You would never have known, from talking to him, what a stellar career that he had had.
As I was told by the manager that brought me in (and later by John) that a major part of the mission of Novacea was not just to bring their first drug to market, but to streamline the entire clinical trial/submission process, i.e, faster, cheaper, better.
At that time, most of the work was being farmed out to CROs and they were just starting to bring all of that in house. Novacea had already recruited a serious amount of talent for their small staff. John had taken a personal interest in the recruiting process at Novacea and, I must say, their permanent staff was the best of the best. I was one of two consultants that were brought in to help set up the core of their statistical programming environment (a few month contract).
Then there was a serious crisis that was very time critical and it fell to me to find a solution. I was temporarily taken off my original contractual project to work on this. That was when I started to have direct business dealings with John.
How an executive deals with a crisis tells a lot about the person. Many executives just throw a problem down and demand that someone solve it… Not John. He asked focused questions and drilled down until he understood all of the issues and learned what resources that I would need to solve the problem, right down to giving me his home number that I could call any time of the day or night. He expressed the seriousness of finding a solution but, without seeming panicked. As far as the deadline was concerned, the best that I could offer was that, it would not be cheap or easy. It would be close, but that I could probably make it. He accepted that. Throughout the process, he never put undue pressure on me. He only wanted to do what it took to solve the problem.
With the help of several of Novacea’s staff, I was able to make the deadline, just under the wire. Only later did John want to know what could be done to prevent a situation like this from occurring in the future and what could his staff have done better to make my task go smoother (nothing I told him, they gave me better support that I could have imagined). The one question that he never asked me was, who was responsible for the problem in first place. He was totally solution driven.
Over the following years, we were in occasional contact. I always enjoyed talking with him and valued his advice, most of all. John was a giant in the industry. He will be missed.
John Curd, MD (July 1945 – April 2011)
