Dr. Parag Mahanti is a life science professional with experience in life sciences strategy consulting, biotech valuations, and pharmaceutical access/commercialization strategy. Parag received his Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology in 2013 from Cornell University where his research was focused on nuclear hormone receptors, steroid signaling, and metabolomics. He then transitioned to a career in management consulting at the IMS Health Consulting Group (now IQVIA) focusing on biotech/pharma strategy projects. Subsequently, Parag was part of an II ranked biotech equity research team at Barclays, where he focused on rare diseases (especially neuromuscular and ophthalmological diseases), gene therapy/editing/cell therapy platforms, and immunology/immuno-oncology companies. Since late 2018, Parag has been at Novartis, focused on strategic planning and operations around pricing and access, and is currently a Director of US Market Access Business Planning. Since 2013, Parag has also been a volunteer for the USA-India Chamber of Commerce in organizing the Annual BioPharma & Healthcare Summit at Cambridge, MA. Parag continues to be passionate about early stage startups within the healthcare industry and serves as a mentor for the Entrepreneurship Lab (ELABNYC) launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation to provide mentorship to biotech/health-tech start-ups. Outside of life sciences and biopharma strategy, Parag’s passions include music, both playing and listening, and understanding the evolution of scientific reasoning and leadership skills. Parag takes an active interest in career progression of PhD students to explore and pursue non-academic careers and has participated in multiple career panels at Cornell, Gordon Conferences, Cold Spring Harbor Labs, and NYC-INET. Parag has also created PhD Career Networking Group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8476427), a fast growing LinkedIn Group to foster career development of PhDs and graduate students which currently has 4,000+ members. In this webinar, Parag told us his story and explained how he made his career decisions so far. He also told us about the origins of the PhD Career Networking Group on LinkedIn and the philosophy behind the group. How to network on LinkedIn? How to look for mentors? How to stay forever young? We touched all these subjects, and many more!
