Episode 4: A Conversation with 2026 Distinguished Alum Stacey Adam

Counter

I think what you want to do is whenever possible, use the model that best answers the question you’re trying to address. And sometimes it’s not something that’s established.

Adam

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that’s absolutely right.

Counter

I guess what would be really interesting is once you put your gown on and your cap and you got your degree, what did you do next? And how did that lead you to sitting here in this podcast?

Adam

Sounds good. Yeah. So obviously I finished up my Ph.D. in ’07. Initially, I took a track that I think a lot of people take. I enjoyed grad school. I think I attribute that largely to being in your lab. I know not everybody always has the most wonderful of experiences. But I really liked that, and I thought it was great.

And so I applied for postdocs, went on quite a few different places, but ultimately ended up at Stanford in Doctor Dean Telstra’s lab, once again working on animal models. This time, back to the more rodent‑based things of what folks were doing, but also doing some translation between industry and the clinic. And so that was really nice.

Whether it was just a matter of stubbornness or you see yourself on the track and you sort of set yourself down the academic track and you think that’s where you should be.

My own stubbornness of, you know, I don’t like to give up on things that, you know, five and a half years in my postdoc and I got some great papers, did a lot of great collaboration. In fact, I was where I was first introduced to kind of a broader version of team science, where not just even collaboration across biology labs, but into computation.

And that sort of got to work with some of the seminals of the field, you know, a tool, blue collar, like great folks within the computational biology world that was really getting up and running. And now I’m dating myself. You know, that was the first thing when I went to bed, stuck. And I really actually, that’s what I started to enjoy more.

I really liked the collaborations that I had with our computational folks. I liked the collaborations that we had with our industry folks.

I did again, as most people did, I applied for my 99, zero zero—you know, the transitional award that you think is going to take you to faculty. And I guess that was kind of the first note of a little bit of harsh reality. It was that transition in ’07‑’08, kind of our last downturn of the cyclical nature of scientific funding.

But what really hit me in all of that was when I got the reviews back. And again, they weren’t necessarily stellar reviews, but it was the sort of debriefing with both my main mentor and my auxiliary mentor—because you have to have two on the grant—that really sort of started to push me in another direction.

They sort of brought around the reality that what I had proposed was a lot of team science in the grant, and that team science was no way to get tenure. And part of the reason that I probably wasn’t necessarily succeeding is that I wasn’t distinguishing what was going to be mine and what was going to be my lab.

And it sort of clicked something in my head that I’m like, if we can’t all do this as a group and we all have to own something rather than owning something communally, I don’t know that this is where I want to be.

Because again, everything that I enjoyed about what I was doing was what they were telling me wasn’t necessarily going to be rewarded.

Now, I will say, I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think we’ve advanced far more down the team science route. Keep in mind, I’m old and this was over two decades ago. But it got me thinking what my next step would be.

Obviously, out at Stanford, lots of good things going on. Most of the folks who transition out of postdoc or med school stay in the Bay Area. They go directly into industry. They do the lateral transition to the bench.

I realized that if I was going to leave, that’s not what I wanted to leave for. I didn’t want to leave to just go do the same job in industry. And so I kind of looked at everything.

I did some student consulting at Stanford just to get some experience. Did interviews with a lot of the big consulting firms, applied for the Oak Ridge fellowship at FDA. So I just kind of took a really broad perspective that if I was going to move away from the bench, let’s make this a jump.

And I was lucky enough that I had some former colleagues who had gotten into the consulting game and got me an interview at Deloitte in their federal healthcare practice.

It just seemed to be a good fit of all the things that I interviewed for. I made that jump. It was definitely a learning experience. Science doesn’t teach you all those soft skills, being at the bench. It can be kind of a one‑man game.

Consulting is not like that. Consulting is definitely a team sport. Always. You work across a lot of different teams. You have a lot of clients. It really taught me the need to very effectively communicate and the ability to manage folks.

I probably was about three and a half years in at Deloitte, and a colleague of mine sent me a LinkedIn posting and said, this is really interesting. This is sort of like your past life and your current life all matched into a single job.

Looked at it and he was absolutely right. That’s exactly what it sounded like. So I applied to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to be their director for their cancer portfolio.

At the time, I interviewed with about half the staff because the organization was only about 30 people. They really put you through a thorough interview process. I even interviewed with some of their board.

Once all was said and done and I took the job, I’ve been here ten years.

My colleagues at Deloitte caught up with me a couple of years after I started, and they were like, so when are you coming back? And I’m like, oh, you know, maybe a year or so. A decade later, I’m still here, because honestly, I’ve never found any other place that lets you work at the nexus between all the different stakeholder groups in the ecosystem for science.

And it’s just a place where you can make a lot more impact. I’m not saying you can’t make an impact in other places, but it’s just a very fascinating place to be.

Counter

And so staying in your current career, if you could pick three things that you are most proud of—achievements—what would those be?

Adam

Oh, that’s actually a really tough question. Again, the most obvious one that comes to mind is, you know, as the director for the cancer portfolio here, that was a little bit my trajectory up until 2020. We all had a bit of a harsh pivot in 2020.

I ended up getting pulled into some infectious disease work around COVID. Little did we know the trajectory that was going to take. remember us talking about this project. My supervisor at the time...as well as, a couple of my other colleagues, Doctor Mike Santos and Doctor Karen [...]. We all kind of got pulled out of our normal jobs, and they're like, we need you to go run this program NIH is going to put together. We're going to address kind of some of the problems around the fact that there are so many trials starting up, and nobody's getting a full trial of Covid patients. And we really want to kind of harmonize everything that's going on. And the call, you know, came across from Francis Collins, who was then head of the NIH to our overarching boss at the time, Doctor Maria Frayer.

And so that partnership one just amazing in the speed that it got stood up and that we basically pulled together, over 20 companies, four separate nonprofits in about, five or six government agencies into one thing in less than a month's time.

So pulled that partnership together. We worked, to help harmonize the protocols for the vaccine trials. We did a lot of assessment of the resources for pre-clinical testing and prioritization of kind of what order things needed to go into. And then also did like an assessment of the entire clinical trial network capabilities within the US.

And then finally, you know, the place that I got to oversee was we actually, for all intents and purposes, became the tested, the therapeutic testing arm for Operation Warp Speed because I got to oversee the clinical testing of therapeutics. And so we stood up 11 master protocols, in about a year's time. And over the three years that the pandemic ran, we tested 37 agents to kind of definitive, you know, and of whatever that was, we only had six successes.

So that's a that's a that's a more of a story as far as clinical testing. You don't always get a win. But we made a lot of meaningful contribution and changed a lot of clinical practice over the time that we did that. And so, I mean, that was just amazing, both for the sheer proof that team science across an ecosystem can be done.

It can be done at scale. It can be done at pace.

And, just, you know, getting to kind of see in real time the impact that you're having because we were actually getting to kind of see clinical practice change based on some of the information that was coming out of what we were doing. So that's probably number one. Again–

Chris

Before you go to that, let me let me just personally thank you.

I got a Covid shot.

You know, from somebody speaking is just a regular citizen. Covid was extremely scary.

You know, our grandparents were passing away at record numbers. My mom got a Covid shot. She's in her 80s. And so, you know, I know it's I know lots of people are involved, but, you know, you your work saved people, Stacey. And that. And that's that's pretty amazing. So I'm just thanking you for me. So I'm here on this podcast talking to you because I, you know, I got I got a Covid shot. And so thank you. Thank you. You and your colleagues.

Stacey

I was going to say, I appreciate the kind words. I will say this was massively a team effort. By the time we tallied up, everybody that touched that partnership, we were well in the thousands. And again, the frontline workers, definitely the caught the brunt of all of it.

Chris

Sure, I agree. I appreciate that. And I do agree that you were not single handedly responsible for the COVID vaccine development and testing, but I want to thank you for what you did do.

Stacey

Thank you.

Chris

Okay. Number two. Sorry I interrupted you. That's gonna be a. Tough one to beat, by the way.

Stacey

Well, that's why it's number one, right? Like you, you're kind of. You did. You did ask for the top. And so {Chris: I did.} You know, I think it's interesting because I'm sort of hedging my bet here a little bit, but I think number two is actually something that I'm going to be working on right now.

And it's because once again, I think we are going to proof positive that team science can be done at scale and at pace. So our current NCI director, Doctor Tony Le Tai, just recently got installed at the end of last year. For those who don't know.

The NCI director is a presidential appointment just like the NIH director is. And so.

Again tends to switch over a lot more than the other institute like it's. At NIH.

We met him on December 19th, through an event that we were having, and his honor.

Obviously made some sort of impression because he called my CEO and I the next day and he's like, I know what I want my first partnership with you all to be. It's going to be in cancer vaccines. Now remember, this is December 20th. And he he followed up that next statement with, can you assemble me an advisory committee before Christmas?

Chris

He knew the right person to come to.

Stacey

So nothing like moving at pace. And just to say, like how exceptionally motivated people in the cancer vaccines field are.

I sent out 30 invitations the night of the 20th. With some help from my co-chairs and 29 people showed up to a meeting on the 23rd of December. So again, I think, as with the pandemic there, the pandemic had incentive that we were all needed to be in the same boat. We all needed to be moving in the same direction. Both, you know, for societal reasons and economic reasons, because, you know.

Businesses were losing money like different things were getting, deferred. I think on cancer vaccines, we're going to be able to capitalize on a lot of things that are coming together. At this point in time, we have some really interesting early results. In the field, both of personalized vaccines, as well as some of the more off the shelf. Once again, just a very passionate field that has kind of been grinding away at this for like, you know, 20 years and now kind of getting to see some light. And then just really, I think an understanding from the community, of the potential of what these will have. And so.

We put together the advisory committee, we wrote a roadmap for a best in class research network in the US in two months time. Presented that to Doctor Letai, from the group. And then he and one of our co-chairs presented that to the National Cancer Advisory Board on March 17th and so resoundingly received from the National Cancer Advisory Board there. And for those who aren't, familiar with that, it's not just scientists. It's scientists, physicians, patients, even business folks that sat on the committee. And so just across the board, everybody was very, supportive of that.

And so, we have set yet again an aggressive target to kind of move on from that. Doctor Letai has thrown the gantlet to, set the price tag at this for about $200 million, which will be single handedly the largest partnership we will have launched other than active as a single partnership.

And so between government funds, which we'll probably need about $100 million in private sector funds, about $100 million, we're going to try and bring that together. And, he hopes that we can launch something mid-summer. I might have a slightly more tempered expectation than that, just because I know how long it takes to get people to consensus.

But, you know, we are going to try to strive for a very aggressive timeline on that. And so I think this will be revolutionary for patients who don't have any other options right now, especially in very aggressive cancers. So things like pancreatic cancer, others of that class.

I think we're going to be able to do quite well, and I think we're going to be able to democratize the use of cancer vaccines, because right now it's kind of a bit of a concierge medicine thing. But if you have enough money, you can afford one. But right now we cannot. And so that doctor, his vision is that by the time it all said and done, if we do our job right, anybody geographically or socioeconomically in the US that would qualify for a cancer vaccine could get one.

So. You get to hear this kind of in transition. You know, this is how it goes. We're set really big goals. And then we have to kind of pursue them. And, you know, maybe we can do a follow up podcast three years from now. And I can tell you how it went. I physically did because none of us knew going into the COVID pandemic, we literally thought that active was going to last six months.

That's what we targeted. Little did we know, three years later, it was all still going to be gone and going. So that's number two. And I think just number three, we've got a handful. I don't know that I can take another project, but we've got a handful of things going on in pediatric and rare diseases, which are really underserved areas, but just super excited to be able to bring people.

Together there, because honestly, there's no other way that those type of projects to get done. There's no economic incentive for companies to pursue them. So, groups like ours get to pick those up. And so.

Obviously just great when you can kind of help further the lifespan of a child. So I think that's really good. 

You get to hear this kind of in transition. You know, this is how it goes. We're set really big goals. And then we have to kind of pursue them. And, you know, maybe we can do a follow up podcast three years from now. And I can tell you how it went. I physically did because none of us knew going into the Covid pandemic, we literally thought that active was going to last six months.

That's what we targeted. Little did we know, three years later, it was all still going to be gone and going. So that's number two. And I think just number three, we've got a handful. I don't know that I can take another project, but we've got a handful of things going on in pediatric and rare diseases, which are really underserved areas, but just super excited to be able to bring people.

Together there, because honestly, there's no other way that those type of projects to get done. There's no economic incentive for companies to pursue them. So, groups like ours get to pick those up. And so.

Obviously just great when you can kind of help further the lifespan of a child. So I think that's really good.