With experience ranging from all sides of the industry – evaluating Horizon 2020 SME applications, leading a life science company and working at an investment fund – Okee brings unique know-how to the MSC team. His constant drive to be part of something good, and to do good, has followed and inspired him through a longstanding and diverse career – a career that we asked him to elaborate on in this team profile.
My name is Okee Williams and since late December, I am a Senior Management Consultant at MSC. Educationally, I have experience from both business and science, where my educational journey started with a Master of Science in Nutrition and Biochemistry at Stockholm’s University. This provided me with a sound platform to stand on as I continued on into the fascinating world of the life science industry. Since a young age, my greatest driving force has been to be part of something good and to do good. Therefore, the life science industry and the fascinating transformation that it offers, where science is translated into innovations that help patients, has always felt like the right place for me.
Although science is the core of the industry, it was the business side that excited me the most. After a few years of gathering experience as an analyst, management consultant and portfolio manager at Boston Consulting Group among others, I returned to university to pursue an MBA at Stockholm School of Economics in 2009. This was an extremely intense but developing time of my life as I only two years before had co-founded the life science company Allenex, which just had started to accelerate. Combining an MBA with working at a start-up was tough, but the founding and development of Allenex is also one of my proudest professional achievements. That, and the founding of my own bike company, Okee Bikes, which has been one of the most exciting things this far.
The life science industry has been my focus throughout my entire career. Since it is an industry in constant development, analyzing its ecosystem never gets old and neither does assisting individual companies looking to improve the world. I am, therefore, looking forward to continuing on this track at MSC where I will be assisting clients with strategic and other challenges, as well as help them raise capital for their journey of building their companies and create breakthrough medical innovations. Into this position I bring profound experience, creativity, and a visionary mindset. Additionally, I have personal experience from sitting on the opposite side of the table from the small and medium-sized enterprises seeking investments as I have evaluated companies, as well as their business ideas, both as Venture Manager at an investment fund as an Independent Expert Evaluator in the Horizon 2020 SME program. Therethrough, I have the advantage of knowing exactly what it is that these parties are looking for.
In 2019, I am looking forward to continuing to develop together with MSC and all the fantastic life science companies out there that are on to something big. I would say that MSC is quite unique in the Nordic region, which is also what lead me here. We are a relatively young group but still has a lot of experience and a deep understanding of the scientific, clinical, and business challenges that comes with running a smaller life science company.
Okee
