Day One

• How can a biotech preserve the culture that built its success while scaling rapidly during its most demanding period of growth to date?
• Learn how Parabilis, celebrating its 10-year anniversary, closed the biggest biotech IPO in history, an oversubscribed round, on the strength of its Helicon technology, which is designed to reach undruggable targets that make up an estimated 80% of cancers
• Discover how Parabilis’s five person HR team is scaling deliberately through this growth, while identifying which parts of its culture must be protected to sustain the momentum

This interactive Q&A explores how to preserve culture and protect talent pipelines through both rapid growth and unexpected setbacks.

• Scaling a people function deliberately during a period of rapid headcount growth
• Maintaining candidate engagement and pipeline integrity through an unexpected hiring delay
• Using authentic, personalized communication to protect long-term talent commitment

This roundtable applies these lessons to your own context, whether scaling up or navigating a setback.

• What parts of our culture are non-negotiable through change?
• How do we keep talent engaged when plans shift?
• What does deliberate, not reactive, scaling look like for us?

Leave with practical ideas for protecting culture and talent through change.

• Utilizing a values refresh to preserve and modernize culture in action – taking values and moving it from beyond cultural branding to embed the values framework in business practices to support enterprise decisions and impact
• Discover how Wave Life Sciences rewrote its values language and used it as a launching point and framework for both updated People & Culture practices (including performance, leadership development, recognition, and promotion nominations) while also reinforcing the application of the values in business decisions and shaping the organizational “how"
• Wave has already seen evidence of values permeability in recent engagement Pulse survey data, more cohesive and impactful recognition and development programs, and enterprise-wide discussions on how to shape AI integration in alignment with their values

• How do you formalize the culture that got you here, capturing years of unwritten values built through rapid, founder-led growth, without losing what made the company special in the first place?
• Learn how Bicara Therapeutics took a bottoms-up approach to defining its values, involving every employee in the process, then brought the resulting values (Powered by People for Patients, Adaptive Momentum, and Candour that Elevates) to life through a personality assessment that gave each person a persona, and a values-themed bingo game designed to help colleagues with different personas connect
• Discover how this approach helped sustain zero employee turnover and industry-leading engagement scores through a period of intense growth, while supporting a time-to-hire under 40 days (against an industry average of around 90) and recognition as a top workplace

This interactive Q&A asks what makes a values framework change day-to-day behavior rather than sit on a wall.

• Embedding values into business practices, not just branding
• Taking a bottoms-up approach to defining culture
• Reinforcing values through performance and recognition processes

This roundtable explores how to make values genuinely operational in your own organization.

• Are our values shaping behavior, or just sitting in a deck?
• What would a bottoms-up approach look like for us?
• How do we measure whether our values framework works?

Leave with a clearer plan for embedding values into daily decisions.

• As funding pressures, shifting priorities, and limited promotion opportunities continue to shape emerging biopharma, how can HR leaders keep employees engaged, motivated, and committed? Join this interactive peer discussion to share strategies, tackle common challenges, and uncover practical approaches for retaining talent and maintaining momentum when the future is difficult to predict.
• How It Will Work: After a brief introduction from Kerry Robert, attendees will break into facilitated table discussions to explore a series of thought-provoking questions around engagement, retention, career growth, and communication during uncertain times. Groups will then reconvene to share key takeaways, compare approaches, and identify practical strategies that can be taken back to their organizations.

Fractional and interim HR leadership is on the rise in emerging biopharma, whether you’re a company weighing it as an alternative to a full-time hire, or an HR leader considering building a career this way yourself. Hear from leaders who’ve been on both sides, on when it makes sense, how to structure it to actually work, and what it takes to land clients, manage multiple companies, and make a lasting impact part-time.

• How can an organization navigate a reduction in force with enough care that former employees choose to come back?
• Discover how Spero Therapeutics handled its RIF with transparency and fairness, kept relationships alive by re-engaging former employees as consultants, and avoided a “two pool” commercial versus R&D culture split that nearly took hold during a failed commercialization push
• Learn how this culture first approach means at least 75% of Spero’s next phase of growth is expected to come from returning employees, proof that how you treat people on the way out shapes whether they come back

• How can emerging biopharma organizations maintain candidate engagement and protect critical talent pipelines when unexpected business setbacks delay hiring plans?
• Discover how Savara reimagined candidate engagement through authentic communication, personalised outreach, relationship-building, and transparent leadership during a 10-month hiring delay
• Learn how this people-first approach retained 11 of 12 targeted hires (over 90%), reducing the need to rebuild a specialized talent pipeline while strengthening long-term employee commitment and employer brand

This interactive Q&A looks at how to navigate a reduction in force with enough care that trust, and sometimes employees, come back.

• Handling a reduction in force with transparency and fairness
• Re-engaging former employees as consultants or returning hires
• Using high-touch management to protect retention

This roundtable explores practical, high-touch approaches to protect trust when headcount decisions are unavoidable.

• What would make former employees want to return?
• How do we avoid a cultural split during restructuring?
• How do we protect our employer brand when people leave?

Leave with people-first approaches for your next workforce decision.

The panel discussion focused on strategies for HR professionals to mitigate the increasing cost of healthcare, particularly for small biotechs. It explores various funding strategies like captive funding and ICHRA, and different plan designs to keep employee premiums stable or decrease them.