How Radical Candor, Mindfulness, Compassion, and Authenticity Help Drive Verge’s Scientific Innovation.
By Victor Hanson-Smith, PhD, Distinguished Computational Scientist, Head of Computational Biology
November 13, 2023
I was honored to represent Verge as the California Life Sciences Institute hosted its Pantheon awards ceremony. For 20 years, Pantheon has celebrated the transformative work of individuals and organizations propelling solutions that lead to longer, healthier lives.
Verge was recognized with the Emerging Innovation award, given to California-based innovators “making strides towards transforming the life sciences landscape.”
I’m privileged to work with a team that’s developed a truly innovative technology platform, CONVERGE®. It combines industry-leading human tissue datasets with computational analytics, including machine learning, to find new targets. It’s what enabled us to advance a drug development program for a target for ALS, a disease with incredibly high unmet need, from discovery to clinical candidate in less than 5 years. This is a fraction of normal industry standards.
I’m tremendously proud of how these technical innovations have driven our success, but I’m even prouder of the role that cultural innovation played.
Let me explain.
We’re a company based on the values of courageous ambition, treating every situation as an opportunity to improve ourselves with mindfulness, radical candor, and authenticity. At Verge Genomics, diversity, feminism, and queerness have a dominant role in our leadership team. And those principles, we believe, have been essential for our success to get to this point today.
As someone who identifies as gay and is proudly part of the LGBTQ+ community, this type of company culture isn’t the norm. It takes intention and fearlessness. In an industry that often prizes cultures that emphasize cognitive intelligence, Verge has long recognized that we must consciously create a company culture where emotional intelligence is equally important and tremendously valued.
The result is a workplace where:
We can see our emotions as holding rich data and clues about our perception of risk, our desire for change, and what’s worthy of pursuing.
We can be authentic, open, and welcoming to everyone, especially those who historically felt excluded given their gender identity and sexual orientation.
Trust and open, honest communication lets diversity thrive.
I’m eager to keep embracing these behaviors and actions in pursuit of making a big difference for people living with devastating illnesses.