Futureproofing Leadership at BioCryst: A Comprehensive Investment in Talent Growth & Change Resilience

Client Profile & Challenge

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals is a publicly traded biotech company advancing breakthrough therapies for hereditary angioedema and other rare diseases. Their team is driven by shared ownership to deliver the right treatments to patients who need them most.

Leadership development is part of this commitment. By focusing on how to lead together, BioCryst teammates are turning their company’s values into actions — helping them achieve important goals while truly caring for patients and each other.

“From the top down, the tone is clear that people come first,” says Leah Finnegan, Executive Director in US Marketing, who participated in one of our custom solutions for BioCryst leaders. “I’m treated as an owner, and that inspires me to deliver more for our patients, our company — everyone. Truly honoring that ownership means stepping up as a leader.”

The leadership development programs at BioCryst help bridge the gap between value-based intentions and impact. These initiatives give leaders the language, frameworks, and practical tools necessary to ensure their actions consistently reflect the organization’s values.

BioCryst launched a formal leadership development strategy in 2021 to support its first commercial drug launch and growing operations. In a fast-moving industry, biotech companies must constantly adapt to scientific advances, new technology, and patient needs. As BioCryst expanded, employees faced new challenges and ways of working together.

Recognizing the importance of leadership development, BioCryst partnered with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)^® to identify the key competencies BioCryst’s leaders needed at the time and in the next 3–5 years.

Through careful discovery — including needs and gap analysis via interviews, focus groups, and competency prioritization activities — CCL identified 6 primary and 6 secondary leadership competencies. Primary competencies included trust, team leadership, engagement, decision-making, communication, and credibility and integrity. BioCryst aligned its development programs directly with these leadership capabilities, which reflect its core values.

Solution

Research is an essential foundation at BioCryst. For leadership development, this meant choosing a partner whose solutions are built and continuously improved based on research.

“It was crucial to partner with a research-based organization that brings deep experience and gravitas — so everyone within BioCryst could confidently engage in the program and know it will benefit them,” says Jenn Caldwell, Vice President of Global People Empowerment.

Together, CCL and BioCryst developed a leadership development strategy that included 2 key initiatives as part of a larger ecosystem of solutions:

1. Tailoring development by leader level. BioCryst wanted programs that addressed specific challenges at different leader levels. We developed 3 custom leadership programs that grow with leader responsibility and impact. Each program emphasized hands-on learning following the 70-20-10 framework, which shows that 70% of leadership development comes from challenging experiences, 20% from relationships, and 10% from coursework and training. These cross-functional, in-person programs include follow-up refreshers and virtual masterclasses to reinforce and expand growth.
2. Scaling development via virtual sessions. CCL Passport™ is an all-in-one subscription for L&D teams, with access to a plethora of leadership development resources, including research-based digital workshops and training programs. BioCryst used it to create a tailored leadership bootcamp for its people managers and integrated Passport into ongoing training to reinforce skills and leadership language for participants in formal leader-level programs.

BioCryst’s programs are unified by a shared leadership language. This common language is vital for helping leaders communicate clearly, collaborate better, and align and focus on shared goals. Using the same language helps BioCryst break down silos, strengthen culture, and move forward with change and innovation as one team.

“We are a small biotech company, but we have the same diversity of functions, from R&D through commercial, that a larger company in our space has,” says Charlie Gayer, President and CEO. “Building and encouraging a shared leadership language creates the opportunity for team leaders to learn from each other and support their teams in similar ways, even if their functional responsibilities are very different. We believe that kind of alignment makes us nimbler, which allows us to compete effectively against much larger companies.”

Featured Solutions

All-in-One Leadership Development Subscription: CCL Passport™

Access tailorable training and tools with an all-in-one leadership development subscription to help you support and scale your in-house corporate leadership training initiatives.

Customized Leadership Development

Drive business outcomes by partnering with us to create a customized leadership development program tailored to your organization's context and culture.

One common framework highlights that direction, alignment, and commitment are outcomes of good leadership — created through a shared social process.

All work, at some level, is relationship-driven. Having clear frameworks gives everyone at BioCryst a shared way to communicate effectively. They turn what can become a personal conversation into a collaborative dialogue focused on direction, alignment, and commitment.

“A leader can now say, ‘We’ve all agreed on how to work together, so if there’s a lack of alignment, we see it as a shared opportunity to solve — not a personal issue,’” Caldwell says. “This common language unites us around how we lead.”

BioCryst measures its return on investment with a thorough evaluation plan, including pre-program Benchmarks® 360 assessments, end-of-program feedback, debrief sessions, and follow-up custom impact surveys.

Results

Qualitative and quantitative measurement of the programs’ impact reveals high overall satisfaction and applicability to roles. Caldwell has observed important outcomes, including significantly stronger collaboration across teams, deeper understanding and relationships between departments, and a notable increase in psychological safety.

The programs evolve as Biocryst evolves. By continually updating the curriculum to reflect organizational shifts, the development remains relevant to the leaders’ real-world needs.

Beyond gaining practical skills, Finnegan used the custom senior leader program to build a network across the organization. By engaging with leaders from different departments during the program, she gained a more systemic view of the business, fostering a level of trust and cross-functional collaboration that has outlasted the program itself. Today, she and these peers continue to support one another — not just as colleagues, but as co-architects of a stronger company culture.

“Driving change is a collective responsibility, and my growth as a leader is never truly finished,” Finnegan says. “Continuous development ensures my leadership toolkit evolves alongside the challenges we face. I’m always asking: ‘How can I respond more effectively? How can I better support my peers and my team?’ These leadership programs help with all these things and ultimately sharpen our focus on what matters most: our mission to deliver life-changing medicine to patients.”

Program Impact

Jason Amar, Senior Vice President of Managed Markets and Patient Support, found immediate value in the polarities discussion while attending the senior leader program. It gave him a practical way to diagnose why people cling to one perspective over another. By shifting the conversation from either / or to a both / and approach, he has helped his team capture the strengths of both sides, providing a critical boost to his change initiatives.

“It was very applicable to the changes we are trying to implement — stimulating a lot of productive dialogue in a structured way around both options that we’re facing,” Amar says. “Acting on it quickly and seeing tangible results that are significantly better than what I was seeing before fueled my desire to use it even more.”

Amar also found significant value in the post-program leadership coaching, which helped him refine his approach to workload management. By addressing the personal pressure to take on extra tasks, he has learned to balance his sense of responsibility with the trust required to develop others.

Together, BioCryst’s focus on leadership development is helping leaders build self-awareness, grow closer to the company, and expand their networks. Through in-person and virtual programs and by integrating CCL Passport, they’re improving how they talk about leadership and culture.

“We’re seeing teams work better together and leaders feel more confident,” Caldwell says. “Psychological safety and trust are growing. Leaders are using the tools to create safer spaces where teams collaborate, share ideas, give feedback, admit mistakes, and adjust quickly. When leaders embrace this approach, their teams feel comfortable speaking up, disagreeing, and innovating — which leads to better results.”

Participants Say