“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart
Time to go.
We’ve all hit that point where we’re faced with the thought of whether to stay or leave a job.
Like that smart ad by job posting site Indeed called “The Box” (“He knew this day would come.”) – my turn weighing pros and cons came last summer.
I’d been privileged and honored to work since 2013 with folks at Atara Biotherapeutics such as founder and CEO Isaac Ciechanover and the early pioneering team of Esther Welkowsky, Gadi Soffer, Chris Haqq, Mitch Clark, Valerie Gilliam, Josh Higa, Mike Klein, Tina Gullotta, Jeff Masten, Diana Lowell, John McGrath and Amanda Lucas. Together we’d built a patients-first, roll-up your sleeves, team-centric organization.
Isaac recruited me to join the organization and the team grew from 3 to 300+ Atarians under my watch and into the world’s leading allogenic t-cell immunotherapy company. As the Head of Talent & Culture, I was (and am) so proud of our team and the work done to advance the transformation of medicine to save patient lives.
But the things that excite you building a company are not always the same things that happen once a company is established. You realize that there are other callings for your time, your attention, and your interest. When that happens you hopefully find a way to do what you love and not what’s in a now-narrower corporate role.
As my former colleague Heather Turner said last year when I talked about options of moving on, “You’re lucky you have them.”
So when I ran the calculation I knew it was time to go.
There are more things I wanted to do, and most were outside of the construct of being an employee at Atara. So I had few regrets last summer when the news was shared with our leadership team that I’d be transitioning 6 months down the way.
After my last work day at Atara Bio in April I’ll be returning to my San Francisco-based consulting practice, where I’ve been lucky for over 20 years to have an enviable success rate working with early stage companies like Atara Bio and have been blessed working with execs, like Isaac, who have gone on to do great things.
I am welcoming clients on a full-time basis beginning in May.
And while there are places I’ve worked, left, and not missed, Atara won’t be one of them. The team is filled with people – many who I helped bring on board – who are terrific, good, hard working people doing great things to help patients’ lives.
I will miss them tremendously.
I’ll be around though.
I’m simply going back to the core of what I do best; coaching individuals, working with early stage startups, and working with exec leadership teams.
My next adventures await; I must be going.