Intermission: Sue Lancaster --Entrepreneur and Business Developer :)

After graduating from the University of South Dakota, Sue Lancaster jumped into the local biotech community to help bring a variety of products to market, which has included technologies from two faculty at South Dakota State University. Learn more about her career journey and other fun details on this intermission!      

Transcript

Aaron Harmon: 0:00

Welcome to Inside Out quality intermissions, where we give you a closer look at the people who make this podcast possible and short features of local professionals in the biotech industry. Welcome to Inside Out quality intermissions. Here today with us is Sue Lancaster. She is the VP of Corporate Development and strategy for South Dakota innovation partners. And I've been able to talk her into being on this show. Thanks for having me. My podcast debut. Nice, cool. It is a very fun process. I'm excited. So tell us what you do for a career.

Sue Lancaster: 0:34

So simply put, I commercialized research to a scale that solves global challenges. more complex than that. I identify probably more so as an entrepreneur. But I work at South Dakota innovation partners, which is an early stage investment capital group that is also a startup management company. My entire career has been built around two portfolio companies where I spend all my time and have spent all my time med gene Labs, which is the state's first USDA licensed vaccine facility and a leader in the new field of prescription vaccines, and Prairie AquaTech, which is a precision fermentation company using a proprietary process to make high quality plant based ingredients.

Aaron Harmon: 1:17

And do you remember on episode one of season one for this podcast, we had Prairie AquaTech on the show?

Sue Lancaster: 1:25

That's right, Stephanie. Good.

Aaron Harmon: 1:28

It was a lot of fun.

Sue Lancaster: 1:29

She's great.

Aaron Harmon: 1:29

Definitely. I still remember that. Where did you go to college?

Sue Lancaster: 1:33

I went to the University of South Dakota, both for my undergraduate and my graduate degree, biomedical engineering.

Aaron Harmon: 1:39

Very nice. How did you end up where you are now, like after graduate school,

Sue Lancaster: 1:43

that's a little bit of a long story. But I went to a local biotech conference when I was finishing my graduate degree. And there was a presentation by a managing director Mark Lukey, of South Dakota innovation partners about research commercialization. And we got connected because he has a finance and investment banking background. And he needed someone that had a technical background to start evaluating these ideas coming out of universities. And so he gave me a phone call. And I decided, sure, I'd intern while I finished my master's thesis. And once I finished that I was offered a position and I thought, you know, maybe I'll go to Boston Scientific, or Medtronic, do something out of larger medical device company. But my dad said, these opportunities don't come around all the time. So I decided to take a risk. So a little bit of risk and a little bit of serendipity.

Aaron Harmon: 2:40

It's very exciting to see both pre Aqua tech and merging both of the faculty from the from South Coast University that are involved with their were in the program back when I was in graduate school at SDSU. And so it's been so fun watching them go from these university faculty to people developing businesses that are employers in South Dakota and really get their products out there.

Sue Lancaster: 3:01

Now appreciate that. It's it's been quite a journey, and it is really cool to see things come to life.

Aaron Harmon: 3:06

If you could be any animal, what would it be? Oh,

Sue Lancaster: 3:10

my daughter would want me to say a jaguar. So I'll say a jaguar.

Aaron Harmon: 3:14

Do you use emojis in email?

Sue Lancaster: 3:16

No. I'll put in text. I rarely use an emoji. Yes, I

Aaron Harmon: 3:21

think evokes an emoji.

Sue Lancaster: 3:23

I typically not. It's just one of those things I do not do. So this

Aaron Harmon: 3:27

has to be like, like a career development thing? I guess. So. Like, at least a little smiley face now and then I'll work

Sue Lancaster: 3:35

on it. I'll take that as an action item.

Aaron Harmon: 3:39

Do you name your cars? Yeah, I believe you share the name of your car with us.

Sue Lancaster: 3:47

It's kind of a family. Or deal. My daughter is named my car, the silver puppy and our other color red hot.

Aaron Harmon: 3:58

I like it. Car naming is fun. It is for sure. What have been one of your career highlights up to now.

Sue Lancaster: 4:05

I would say my career highlight would be it's really cool to take something that was an idea on a piece of paper. And say that you have this mission of commercializing something that is going to impact on a global scale and to look back over 10 years and think that's pretty cool. We've been able to do that. I mean part on that's, that's the highlight of my career.

Aaron Harmon: 4:27

That was really neat to see. There's something special about seeing product out in the world that you helped create.

Sue Lancaster: 4:32

Absolutely, and all the details it takes to just to get that there you know, as simple as a product may be or as more complex as it might be. It's just to get it into somebody's hands and have an impact. It's pretty cool.

Aaron Harmon: 4:43

If you could choose a superpower, what would you pick? Mind reader how would you define quality?

Sue Lancaster: 4:53

Quality is meeting my expectations and exceeding my customers expectations.

Aaron Harmon: 4:59

Do you think like The mind reading thing was like be problematic, like a mall, like you're walking around, you just see all this stuff.

Sue Lancaster: 5:05

It'd be a lot of noise. I mean, there'd have to be a filter. Totally.

Aaron Harmon: 5:08

Okay. We're coming up to the holidays. Is there a favorite holiday that you have? I love Thanksgiving. You have any traditions around Thanksgiving,

Sue Lancaster: 5:16

we go out to a family farm. And it's just a lot of food and a lot of enjoying the outdoors going for family, walk, hike, etc. That that definitely be my favorite and I love fall.

Aaron Harmon: 5:29

I I like fall to write definitely one of my favorites. What do you want listeners to know about the South Dakota biotech community?

Sue Lancaster: 5:37

I think it's important for listeners to know that the community in biotech is growing. And it also wants you whether you're a student or a business or someone in biotech, they want you to be successful. And there's a lot of growing businesses to create opportunities for the next generation. But there's also a lot of programs to help people that maybe aren't as in tune with what's going on in biotech to educate themselves and also be part of that community.

Aaron Harmon: 6:03

So if I understand where things are correctly, yeah, very Aqua tech is selling products globally. Yes. You started your education in South Dakota, an opportunity right now in your career, and in that process, been able to help take products made in our state and distributed globally? Yes, 100%. That's a really neat thing to see over a very short career. I thought it's not like you're 60 years old or anything? Not

Sue Lancaster: 6:28

yet. Not yet. Anyway, I hope you keep doing more of it. Well,

Aaron Harmon: 6:32

thank you for being on the podcast.

Sue Lancaster: 6:34

Thanks for having me.

Aaron Harmon: 6:35

And stay tuned for the next episode of Inside Out quality. We hope you enjoyed this episode. This is brought to you thanks to South Dakota biotech Association. If you have a story you'd like us to explore and share, let us know by visiting www. SD bio.org. Also, if you live in the Sioux Falls area, check out quit a local Quality Assurance Professionals Network. You can find out more about COBIT by clicking on the link on our website too. Thanks for listening