As a kid, she raised money to cure cystic fibrosis. Now she’s the CEO of a $2.6 billion genetic testing company

When Katherine Stualand was 11 years old, she went to a meeting for the branch of her mother’s family tree and learned that several cousins ​​had cystic fibrosis.

Staalland did not know what it meant for her or her immediate family. So she hit the books.

“There was a writing by Sportswriter Frank Deford” –Alex: The life of a child– “About her daughter with cystic fibrosis,” she saidFortune. “I devoured it and I decided that I was going to change the world. I ended up collecting $ 1,500 for the foundation of cystic fibrosis.”

This moment did not exactly put Stualland on a path to become a doctor or laboratory rat. She then obtained a university degree in, yes, science, but also English literature, and built her professional career working in communications for companies adjacent to health.

But his career arc slowly looked towards this childhood revelation. Today, Stueland is the CEO of Genedx, a genetic test company listed on the stock market with $ 302 million in 2024, a market capitalization of 2.6 billion dollars, whose headquarters are in Stamford, Conn.

“Today, I spend most of my time working with defenders of rare diseases,” she says. “It is a kind of complete loop in one direction. I did not intend to this way.”

From pharmacy to biotechnology

Stualland spent the first part of his career working on pharmaceutical concerns. She worked on the first protease inhibitor for HIV / AIDS and the first immunotherapy against cancer approved by the Federal Drug Administration. She worked on Lexapro and the effort to deactivate depression and anxiety. She worked on Namenda, used to treat severe dementia provided with Alzheimer’s disease.

But it took a divorce from 2013 to disturb its model, to withdraw it from the pharmaceutical world from the companies of the Midwest and plunged it into a biotechnological scene of the west coast which avoided the offices, underlined the teams and encouraged to take great risks.

“The corporate environment gave me the stability to survive,” she says. “While I trusted and I was talking about these companies and I saw how disjointed they were, it looked very much like the house.

It was also a historic year for genetics affairs. In 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruledAssociation for molecular pathology v. Genetic myriadThese isolated human genes could not be patented.

Staalland started working for Invitae, now owned by Labcorp, who had withdrawn the genomic health in part with the hope that the courts would govern as they did.

“Another moment of risk-taking,” she said. “The company has placed a big bet on this subject.”

The impact of accessibility

The emerging genetic test industry has taken off like a rocket. Plus types of people have made tests. The costs fell – which was once $ 3,500 to sequence a single gene has become lower than it to make a genome which contains 20,000 genes.

And with wider tests, more models on genetic conditions have been observed. For breast cancer, for example, the same share of patients inside and outside the recommended screening guidelines has proven to be at risk, expanding the necessary opening.

“We diagnose more women with breast cancer, earlier, because we screen more,” she said, “but the morbidity rate drops because we find them earlier and capable of intervening.”

Stualand’s career undoubtedly increased with the genetic test boom. But it was not until 2021 that it entered the idea of ​​taking the best job of a business.

‘I was totally surprised’

“In the middle of the pandemic, I received a call on my interest in taking a CEO job,” she recalls. “I felt like I had a lot of clarity before this moment that I had no interest. I was a very good person on the right. But” yes “came out of my mouth. I was totally surprised.”

This call came from a rival genetic test company: Genedx. She knew the organization and its technology because she was in competition against her for years. But Staalland was an unorthodox candidate – a veteran in the category, yes, but without MBA, MD or PHD.

“I wanted to create a culture where people could take risks and create incredible career trips – where people could take risks that they could not in other companies,” she said. “This team is disjointed with people from different backgrounds who meet with a common goal.”

She also wanted to give a “intelligent, cerebral, tailor -made and academic” company burning tens of millions of dollars per quarter of the trade muscle he needed to operate on public procurement.

“It was a huge transformation, and I underestimated that,” she said. “It took a huge amount of partnership throughout the business. I knew that culture was going to be a large part of what did us or broke us, without any doubt.”

To accomplish this meant to adopt the dynamism of an entrepreneurial approach – faster, decisive, more focused on growth – which first attracted Stuleland of the conventional environments that she occupied earlier in her career.

“You know which song you should play, what musicians you need to bring, what notes you have to play [for a given audience]”She said.” I consider the meetings I do not speak as much as they are the best meetings in which I am. “”

After years of recalibration – and a slide lasts from its peak in the sparkling market 2021 – Engenedx is again up. The actions of the company are sold at 10 times what they were a year ago. He is on the right track of profitability this year. He should benefit from Guidance of the FDA on the use of AI in medical devices. And he is crushing an economic burden of rare diseases that his CEO estimates that he is 1 billion of dollars.

This is good news for the best executive in Genedx. But on a personal level, Staalland is grateful that his career returned to this family meeting all these years ago.

“There was this wonderful coherent thread to work with people who want to improve people’s lives, as joint as it may seem,” she said. “Many people come in this industry from personal experience or the experience of a loved one.”

This story was initially presented on Fortune.com