As a CFO for Sway Ventures and Nex3 (2013–17), Verogen (2017–19), and most recently, Certis Oncology Solutions (since early 2020), Scott Arnold has completed a full career cycle. He began his career in internal audit and cost accounting with General Dynamics, led operations and business units in the middle of his career with Gateway, Intuit, and Life Technologies (now ThermoFisher), and has now returned to his finance and accounting roots.
Below are highlights of the interview:
Describe your background and what did you do before joining Certis Oncology Solutions?
I’m kind of a misplaced competitive athlete. Over the span of a 40-year career, I’ve had the opportunity to lead transformational teams in multiple functional areas supporting aerospace, consumer technology, software, life sciences, and financial services businesses both large and small, with a more recent concentration in life sciences and venture capital/private equity backed businesses. In the seven years prior to Certis, I helped create four new businesses in San Diego, all of which are prospering today.
Tell us more about Certis Oncology Solutions.
Certis Oncology Solutions Inc (Certis) was formed in response to the premature death of our Chairman’s son, in 2016, with the hope that the Orthotopic Patient Derived Xenograft (O-PDX) was a technology that could save or considerably extend the lives of cancer patients. Certis spent 3 years developing a scalable approach for O-PDX, and began commercialization of Patient Services in late 2019, and added a complimentary business providing pre-clinical drug development services to pharma in 2021. Strategically, we aspire to leverage the clinical efficacy of our O-PDX tumor models to derive AI-based predictive biomarker panels that can serve a greater % of patients suffering from cancer, and which can supplement a treatment system that isn’t designed in their favor.
Who is your target audience? How do you create services that align with what they’re looking for?
Ultimately, our target customer is the patient: we serve the patient both directly, and indirectly.
Our Patient Services model engages directly with an individual patient and his/her oncologist to identify therapeutic options/solutions where the standard of care has failed the patient.
Our Pharma Services model engages with pharmaceutical companies developing new oncology drugs intended for patients and provides better (and more confirmatory) pre-clinical oncology intelligence than the preceding methods that have been in use.
What are the major changes happening in client behavior and market operation since the pandemic?
Hospitals and healthcare facilities were shuttered in the early days of the pandemic to concentrate on COVID. “Discretionary” activities, which in many cases included cancer care, were substantially curbed. As we return to “normal” from the pandemic, the healthcare system is “different”, and we are working hard to understand how those changes affect our engagement principles with both the clinic and with Pharma.
We also believe that a greater % of patients are losing confidence with the health care system, and this is buoyed by federal initiatives targeting value-based care. These are tailwinds in our favor.
What gets you up in the morning? What are your responsibilities as the CFO of the company?
I get up with the sun and yet I haven’t had a cup of coffee in my life. I thrive on the opportunity to compete every day for a little win to make a little difference for someone (an employee, a client, a business partner) every single day. That’s my “engine”.
As EVP and CFO, I cover the blind (and/or less attractive) spots for our CEO: accounting, planning, banking, risk, HR, IT, facilities, contracts, and operations. I work with the leadership team to develop concrete goals and objectives, a meaningful culture for our Certisians, and strong third-party relationships with banks, investors, service providers, and customers.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
Short-term success is defined by role modeling leadership behaviors for our Certisians and a successful Series C raise of $25-35M. Continuing to deliver value for our Series C investors, and our Certisian family.
What advice would you give to the next generation of leaders?
That’s an interesting question, because I grew up with a generation of leaders that had a certain set of values and experiences that our younger generations may not fully understand. The pace of my life was much different, and I didn’t grow up with the impact that social media has today. The “acceleration of life” has been very impactful on the gifted (in a positive way) but also on the less-resilient (in a not-so positive way). I believe that leadership will need to consider a more bi-polar (exceptionally high and exceptionally low achievers) workforce than may have ever existed. I also believe, and we are already seeing this, that the demand/supply relationship between employees and employers is being (appropriately) rebalanced, but I’m concerned about the pendulum being swung too far.
What are your future plans to sustain your and the company’s success?
On the clinical side, we need to secure reimbursement for our patient services and continue forward momentum with our AI-driven predictive biomarker panel development, to optimize therapeutic care for cancer patients at the point of detection.
On the pharma services side, we are investing heavily in the development of additional tumor models and concentrating heavily in ImmunoOncology to be more broadly supportive of both current therapeutic discovery as well as serve what appears to be a giant wave of new cell therapy and gene therapy drug development coming from Pharma.
Internally, we need to continue to evolve our knowledge and practices from “tribal” to “institutional”, and to continue to cultivate a culture that feels ownership and pride in being a Certisian, and would readily recognize Certis as a Great Place to Work.
Website: www.certisoncology.com
