In this episode of Elevate: Women Leading the Way in Pharma Outsourcing, host Marianne Gissane speaks with Susan D'Costa, Chief Technical and Commercial Officer at Genezen, about building a career through serendipity, learning to be comfortable with failure, and why representation matters at every level of seniority.

Susan traces her path from a self-described "medical school reject" studying microbiology in Mumbai, through a PhD in virology at Texas Tech and fourteen years in Rich Condit's lab at the University of Florida, to a chance conversation that led her into gene therapy manufacturing at Florida Biologix. From there she moved through Brammer Bio and Thermo Fisher Scientific into technical sales, then to Alcyone Therapeutics, before joining Genezen as Chief Technical and Commercial Officer. She talks openly about the mentors who shaped her, the leap into quality control she nearly turned down, and the husband who kept asking her one question: what's the worst that could happen?

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why treating a career as "serendipitous" doesn't rule out being deliberate about which risks are worth taking
How summarising a conversation back to the room helps you, and everyone else too nervous to ask, actually keep up
Why having more than one woman in a leadership meeting changes what gets said and what gets heard
What her husband's constant question, "what's the worst that can happen", taught her about learning to fail
Why she treats mentoring students and postdocs on LinkedIn as a genuine pay it forward rather than a favour

"You gotta say, 'shut up, Bruno,' and move forward a little bit stronger."
Susan D'Costa

Susan D'Costa is Chief Technical and Commercial Officer at Genezen, a gene and cell therapy CDMO, where she leads AAV process development and manufacturing. She holds a PhD in virology from Texas Tech University and spent over a decade in academic research at the University of Florida before moving into CDMO leadership roles at Florida Biologix, Brammer Bio, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Alcyone Therapeutics.

She's known for bringing technical rigour and a strong sense of mentorship to every role she's held, treating support for other women and immigrants in the industry as central to how she leads rather than a side project.