Willing to Win

Biotech Leaders Against All OddsBiotech leaders, founders and executives are warriors chasing cures against impossible odds. Their journeys are not only about science, but about belief, resilience, and leadership. Willing to Win is the podcast where these stories are told - the late nights, the rejections, the doubts, and the unshakable conviction that keeps them going.Each episode gives listeners an intimate look into the emotional “why” behind biotech leaders, offering inspiration, connection, and lessons in leadership and perseverance that apply far beyond biotech.

Willing to Win is a business podcast hosted by Christian Rados, with 22 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Christian Rados hosts Willing to Win, a business show with 22 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #21

  Episode 21 | I Shouldn't Be Here: Moderna's First CSO on Making Life Count (Antonin de Fougerolles)

  Sep 10, 202654 minS1

  Tony de Fougerolles was born in Montreal three months premature, weighing about a pound and a half. He was the youngest child in Canada to survive at that age and weight. Twenty years of operations followed: doctors two or three times a week, surgery every summer, every Christmas. Ask him what he would change, and he says: nothing. "I shouldn't be here. This is all extra, let's make the most of it." He picked science because it was his worst subject. He joined Alnylam when it was six people in one room, and in 2011 became the founding Chief Scientific Officer of Moderna, ten people working on a molecule the field considered too unstable to ever be a drug. Vaccines were not the plan. Tony spent two, three months convincing chairman Noubar Afeyan and CEO Stéphane Bancel to even test them. By his count, the technology his team invented sits behind vaccines that saved sixteen to eighteen million lives. We talk about the tenfold rule (biology without a 10x effect is not worth looking at), why a good experiment gives you a yes or no answer instead of a success, why he left Moderna after two years and what stock options had to do with it, why he interviewed every single hire as CEO of Evox, who actually guards a company's culture, and why the team beats the science. Every time. ABOUT THE GUEST Antonin "Tony" de Fougerolles, board chair and investor across AI, cell therapy, mRNA and radioligand medicine. Founding Chief Scientific Officer of Moderna, seven years at Alnylam leading the RNA delivery work that produced lipid nanoparticles, later CSO of Ablynx and CEO of Evox Therapeutics. PhD in immunology from Harvard, postdoc at the University of Cambridge. He plays tennis, basketball and football, which is exactly what the doctors said he never would. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/antonin-de-fougerolles-a41a819 ABOUT THE HOST Christian Rados is a Munich-based executive headhunter for venture-backed biotech in Europe and founder of Rados Recruiting. Since 2011 he has placed permanent and interim leaders in biotech, pharma, and MedTech, over 1,000 placements from Director to C-level and board. Every search starts with a stage-first leadership analysis: stage first, then the seat, then the human. Willing to Win is his podcast with biotech leaders who built companies against the odds. Website: rados-recruiting.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams ABOUT THE SHOW Willing to Win - Biotech Leaders Against All Odds. Conversations with the people building this industry, hosted by Christian Rados. Music: "Impact Andante" and "Deliberate Thought" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); "Amberlight", "Simplicity" and "With These Hands" by Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au). All CC BY 4.0

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  Episode #20

  Episode 20 | I Can't Not Be Fascinated (Wolfgang Hofmann)

  Sep 3, 202640 minS1

  As a child, Wolfgang Hofmann was more often sick in bed than in school, his asthma so severe that a doctor told his parents he would probably not survive. Ask him about it today, and he gives you one sentence on resilience. Then he talks about curiosity. That is the pattern of this whole conversation. The engine of his career is not the illness. It is fascination, and the people who passed it on: a Harvard professor who ran a thousand mutations when everyone said it would never work. A thesis advisor in the lab at three in the morning. A stranger who gave a young student one hour, and wanted nothing back. Today Wolfgang is CEO of leon-nanodrugs in Munich, building next-generation manufacturing technology for lipid nanoparticles, after six years at Novartis and nineteen at Fresenius. This July, against the doubts of his own supervisory board, his team launched the entire product suite in Boston, on the date they had promised. "I just wake up fascinated every day. How can you not be fascinated?" We talk about where fascination comes from, hiring for energy, why the CEO is always the chief sales officer and why Germany must dare to be part of the future. ABOUT THE GUEST Wolfgang Hofmann, CEO of leon-nanodrugs (Munich). Physician by training, gene-therapy research at Harvard Medical School with Joseph Sodroski, six years at Novartis, nineteen at Fresenius. President of a Frankfurt tennis and hockey club he helped bring back from the brink. ABOUT THE HOST Christian Rados is a Munich-based executive headhunter for venture-backed biotech in Europe and founder of Rados Recruiting. Since 2011 he has placed permanent and interim leaders in biotech, pharma, and MedTech, over 1,000 placements from Director to C-level and board. Every search starts with a stage-first leadership analysis: stage first, then the seat, then the human. Willing to Win is his podcast with biotech leaders who built companies against the odds. Website: rados-recruiting.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams ABOUT THE SHOW Willing to Win - Biotech Leaders Against All Odds. Conversations with the people building this industry, hosted by Christian Rados. Music: Reawakening, Open Those Bright Eyes, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); In This Moment, A Kind of Hope — Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au). All CC BY 4.0

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  Episode #19

  Episode 19 | We understand only 8 % of Biology (Karol Jarzabek)

  Aug 28, 20261h 1mS1

  Eight percent of drugs make it to approval. Karol Jarzabek thinks that is roughly how much we understand about biology as a civilization, and he thinks the real number is lower.He also thinks he knows why. The best minds in the field spend three quarters of their time at a bench, and most of that work is work they have already done once.This is a conversation about what a person does with a number like that.Karol grew up as an immigrant kid who never followed the rules. He was told for years that he had too much energy, that he was trying too hard. He never turned it down, and the people who dismissed him first are the ones he still speaks to decades later. He has taken roles he was not qualified for, again and again, on nothing more than the conviction that he would figure it out and the willingness to ask questions that sound stupid.At Azurity he doubled a production line by removing automation, and a company that was about to lease a second building did not have to. He then took a portfolio nobody wanted to buy, lost a third of it in his first quarter, and turned it into one of the strongest parts of the business. Private equity hired him off the back of it. Everybody told him it was the dream job.He left it. He is now COO of iOrganBio, using robots and AI to hand biologists their time back, with a stated goal of moving that eight percent to twenty. He does the maths out loud in this episode, and the number is worth hearing.When Christian suggests that a predictable biology would mean fewer biotech companies, Karol argues the exact opposite, and the reason he gives is the best thing in the conversation.He has one measure for his life. He decided as a kid that he wanted to write the best story he could, and that he would have to write it with his own experiences. This is what that looks like in practice.CHAPTERS 00:00 A strict mother and a kid who would not follow rules 04:18 The chair he pulled up next to the teacher's desk 05:59 Out of your depth, and the conviction that you will figure it out 07:43 Azurity: doubling throughput by removing automation 12:12 Nobody catches a falling knife 18:12 330 days in hotels, and what it cost 23:10 Private equity, and having influence without authority 25:08 Being the one nobody wants to see walk in 28:32 "This guy has too much energy" 32:48 Why scientific founders should say yes to the money 38:38 The real problem in biotech is that we know almost nothing 40:38 A misallocation of human capital 43:17 What happens when eight percent becomes twenty 46:36 Why predictability would create more biotechs, not fewer 48:54 Leaving the dream job 54:00 Writing the best story you can 56:25 What he is determined to avoidABOUT THE GUESTKarol Jarzabek is Chief Operating Officer of iOrganBio, a Chapel Hill company that came out of stealth in October 2025 with $2M and the CellForge platform, founded in 2024 by Daniel Delubac, Shuibing Chen and Xiling Shen. He was previously at QHP Capital and at Azurity Pharmaceuticals, and started his career in oil and gas and aerospace.LinkedIn: / karol-jarzabek-928455a iOrganBio: https://iorgan.bio/ Subscribe for new episodes with the people building this industry.ABOUT THE HOST Christian Rados is a Munich-based executive headhunter for venture-backed biotech in Europe and founder of Rados Recruiting. Since 2011 he has placed permanent and interim leaders in biotech, pharma, and MedTech, over 1,000 placements from Director to C-level and board. Every search starts with a stage-first leadership analysis: stage first, then the seat, then the human. Willing to Win is his podcast with biotech leaders who built companies against the odds.Website: rados-recruiting.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams

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  Episode #18

  Episode 18 | Turning down the obvious path (Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy)

  Aug 13, 202621 minS1

  Halfway through her career, Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy did the thing nobody advises. She left a global role in Boston and moved to Latin America for a job that was smaller on paper. Her own words for the move: "I call this going from the Pentagon to the trenches." In this episode, Christian Rados sits down with Charo for a conversation about the decisions that do not show up well on a CV. About arriving in Buenos Aires with an affiliate to build, a home still to find, and a pregnancy nobody had planned around. About Boston calling her back, more than once, and the photo of her children she held up every time. She is clear that the no was never the hard part. Making peace with it afterwards was. It is also a conversation about what innovation actually requires on the ground. Global patient brochures telling families to eat filet mignon. A local nutritionist hired to rewrite them into something affordable. Why diagnosis, not therapy, is the real bottleneck in rare disease. And a definition of winning that has room for dinner at home. About the guest Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy grew up in Uruguay and trained as a geneticist before a scholarship took her to the US, where she switched to an MBA in Boston. She held global and regional roles at Biogen, Vertex and Genzyme, co-led the integration after Sanofi acquired Genzyme, and built a biotech affiliate in Buenos Aires from scratch. Today she runs RC STEM Consulting, advising companies on go-to-market and international expansion, and coaching people through the career decisions she has already had to make herself. In this episode Reversing the standard career path, from global to regional What gets lost when you only ever see the strategy Building an affiliate while pregnant, in temporary housing Why the global playbook fails on the ground The diagnosis gap in rare disease Turning down the move back to Boston What she tells people weighing the same decision What success looks like now Connect Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy: linkedin.com/in/rosariocharocestaumurphy Christian Rados / WILLING TO WIN: linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams Full Episode also on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts

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  Episode #17

  Episode 17 | The fight for thousands is not over (Dr. Dominik Witzigmann)

  Jul 30, 202652 minS1

  Three years ago, Dr. Dominik Witzigmann wrote on LinkedIn: "Last month, we lost the battle against lymphoblastic leukemia. But the fight for thousands of others is not over." He was writing about his daughter, Lotta, who passed away at close to four years old, just eight weeks after her first symptoms. In this episode of WILLING TO WIN, Christian Rados sits down with Dominik for one of the most personal conversations the show has hosted, about the diagnosis and the loss, about grieving as a couple and a family, and about how he turns that grief into what he calls his massive transformative purpose: building medicines that could one day give another family the outcome his own did not get. Lotta still helps him, in his words, in the uncertain moments. It is also a conversation about leadership. "Family first, above everything." Why he gives blood and registered as a stem cell donor, and brings his whole team with him. Why you should give help rather than just offer it. How losing a child reshaped the way he handles stress, builds teams, and hires for personality. And where lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology is heading next, from cancer vaccines to in vivo CAR-T. Dr. Dominik Witzigmann is Co-Founder and President of NanoVation Therapeutics and CEO of the European entity. A pharmacist by training with a PhD from Basel, he joined Pieter Cullis' lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2018 and co-founded NanoVation in 2020 to solve the delivery problem at the heart of genetic medicines. If this conversation moves you, consider registering as a stem cell donor and giving blood. As Dominik says, registration is easy, but be ready for the call. Connect:Dr. Dominik Witzigmann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominikwitzigmann/NanoVation Therapeutics: https://nanovationtx.com/Christian Rados / WILLING TO WIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams/ If this conversation moved you, consider registering as a stem cell donor and giving blood. As Dominik says, registration is easy, but be ready for the call.

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