As a kid, she raised money to cure cystic fibrosis. Now she’s the CEO of a $2.6 billion genetic testing company
When Catherine Stoyland was 11 years old, she went to her mother’s branch of the family tree and learned that my cousins were multiple with a sacal fibrosis.
Stuland did not know the meaning of this for her direct family. So the books were struck.
“There was one written by sports writer Frank Deford” –Alex: The child’s life– “On his daughter who has Case’s fibrosis,” she saysluck. “I devoured this and decided that I would change the world. I ended up collecting $ 1500 for the Cirback Foundation.”
This moment did not put Stuland on a road to become a doctor or a laboratory mouse. She continued to obtain a university degree in, yes, science, but also English literature, and building her career in the field of communications for health companies.
But her career bow was slowly isolated towards childhood revelation. Today, Stuland is the CEO of GenedX, a genetic test company circulating publicly with $ 302 million in 2024 revenues and a $ 2.6 billion market cover, based in Stamford, Kun.
“Today I spend most of my time working with the preachers of the patients who are rare for the disease,” she says. “It is a kind of full circle in a sense. I didn’t intend to be this way at all.”
From Pharma to biotechnology
Stuland spent the first part of her career working on pharmaceutical concerns. It worked on the first brutase of HIV/AIDS and the first immunotherapy for cancer approved by the Federal Drug Administration. I worked on Lexabro and effort to prepare depression and anxiety. I worked in Naminda, used to treat severe dementia that comes with Alzheimer’s disease.
However, it took a divorce for 2013 to disrupt its style, get it out of the drug world in the Middle West, and pushed it into a scene in the field of biotechnology in the western coast that avoided offices, stressed the difference, and encouraged great risks.
“The corporate environment gave me stability to survive,” she says. “As I am in my confidence, talking to these companies and seeing how she was, which I felt greatly like the home for me. Immigration was related to the risk of myself and the feeling of comfort in risking other people as well.”
It was also a prominent year for genetics. In 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruledMolecular pathology connection Fifth. Genetic science is countlessIsolated human genes cannot be patent.
Stuland started working on Invitae, now owned by Labcorp, who had partially emerged from genetic health in the hope that the courts would rule as it did.
“Another moment is at risk,” she says. “The company put a great bet on it.”
The effect of access
The emerging genetic tests are started as a missile. More than different types of people were conducted. The costs decreased – it was once 3500 dollars for the one -gene sequence, it became less than that to do the raidum, which contains 20,000 gene.
With the broader test, more patterns were observed about genetic situations. For breast cancer, for example, the same share of patients was found inside and outside the recommended examination instructions at risk, which expands the necessary opening.
“We diagnose more women with breast cancer, because we are examining more, but the rate of the sickness decreases because we find them early and are able to intervene,” she says.
Stoyland’s profession was undoubtedly rising with a genetic test mutation. But it was not until 2021 that enjoyed the idea of taking over the higher company job.
“I was completely surprised.”
“In the middle of the epidemic, I received an invitation about my interest in assuming the job of the CEO,” she recalls. “I felt I felt a lot of clarity before that moment when I had no interest. I was a really good person. But” yes “got out of my mouth. I was completely surprised.”
This invitation came from a competitive genetic test company: Genedx. She was aware of the organization and its technology because it competed for it for years. But Stuland was an unconventional candidate – an old warrior in the category, yes, but one without a master’s or MD or doctoral master’s degree.
“I wanted to create a culture that people can bear their dangers on themselves and create amazing professional trips – where people can risk from which they could not in other companies,” she says. “This team ruins people who have many different backgrounds with a common purpose.”
She also wanted to offer a “smart, brain, detailed, academic” company that burns tens of millions of dollars in the quarter of the commercial muscles that it needs to work in public markets.
“It was a big shift, and I have reduced it,” she says. “It took an enormous amount of partnership throughout the company. I knew that culture would be a large part of what it made or broken, undoubtedly.”
The achievement that means this means adopting the dynamic of the approach of entrepreneurship-excellent, decisive, and most directed towards growth-which first attracted Stoyland from more traditional environments that she occupied earlier in her career.
“You know the song you need to play, what musicians you need to bring, and what notes you need to play [for a given audience]”She says.
After years of re -calibration – a solid slide of the peak of the 2021 Frothy 2021 – Genedx again in ascending. The company’s shares sell 10x what it was a year ago. It is on the right path to profitability this year. It will benefit from the recent FDA guidelines about the use of artificial intelligence in medical devices. It cuts a rare economic burden for the disease estimated by the CEO of a trillion dollars.
This is all good news for the CEO of GenedX. But on a personal level, Stuland is grateful because her career has returned to the family for the past years.
“There was this wonderful fixed thread to work with people who wanted to improve people’s lives, like this,” she says. “Many people come to this industry from the personal experience or the experience of a member of his family.”
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
2025-03-31 14:00:00
