Sarah Browning | The Business Case for Kindness: Why Happier Teams Are 20% More Productive | Pharma Prescribed

Sarah Browning is a "Kindness Cheerleader" with a 25-year career in internal communications and engagement. In 2021, after an afternoon of reflection on a bench by the River Thames, she founded the Time for Kindness wellbeing programme — built on a simple idea: there is far more kindness in the world than the headlines admit, and noticing it changes how people feel, and therefore how they perform.

This episode is where that idea meets the evidence. Adam puts the data audience's challenge to Sarah directly — show me the numbers — and she answers: a University of Warwick study linking a culture of kindness to employees who were around 20% more productive; a Harvard finding that leaders who intentionally model kindness find their difficult conversations easier, because they've already built the trust those conversations stand on. Her through-line: kindness isn't weak and it isn't fluffy. It's an intentional, measurable business skill.

From there the conversation gets practical. How to spot kindness in an ordinary working day. Why busyness is the enemy of noticing. The "hero stories" she collects and shares. Kindness ambassadors, team practices, and reframing the tough conversation as an act of respect rather than its opposite. And how all of this held up — or mattered more — through COVID.

Honest, warm and rigorous in equal measure. A conversation that takes a soft-sounding word and makes a hard-edged case for it.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

🔗 RELATED EPISODE Sarah's evidence-led case for kindness pairs directly with Graham Allcott (Think Productive) on KIND, psychological safety and the quiet power of kindness at work: ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/1i1_TIZRBmI 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/04glB17p7bBWVmLjlwIO7z 🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/graham-allcott-on-kind-psychological-safety-the-quiet/id1829715970?i=1000778402287

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Sarah Browning 1:00 The Kindness Cheerleader mission 3:00 Kindness conference energy 4:00 Why kindness is powerful 6:00 The River Thames eureka moment 10:00 Defining kindness at work 14:00 The evidence: productivity and performance 17:00 Building kind cultures 20:00 Changing big organisations 23:00 A hero story in action 24:00 Team kindness practices 27:00 Reframing tough conversations 28:00 Kindness through COVID 31:00 Spotting kindness daily 35:00 Slow down, notice more 43:00 Kindness is contagious 46:00 Quickfire and wrap up

👤 ABOUT SARAH BROWNING Founder of the Time for Kindness wellbeing programme and a self-styled Kindness Cheerleader. Strategic communications consultant with 25 years in internal communications and engagement, and Internal Comms Manager for Staff Wellbeing at a Russell Group university. Speaker, storyteller and advocate for staff wellbeing as a core business measure. 💼 Search "Sarah Browning" on LinkedIn 🌐 https://www.timeforkindness.co.uk

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#SarahBrowning #TimeForKindness #KindnessAtWork #WorkplaceWellbeing #Leadership #PharmaPrescribed #PsychologicalSafety #EmployeeEngagement #OrganisationalCulture #KindnessMatters #StaffWellbeing

Pavel Trofimov spent roughly 15 years in international B2B sales across complex technical markets before moving into clinical research — where he noticed something the industry treats as normal. Founders, scientists and operational leaders were doing the delivery and the business development themselves. In most other regulated industries, that commercial work sits with a dedicated team.

That gap became Lab-2-Business (L2B). Pavel's mission, in his own words: to help excellent scientific and technological companies be as deliberate about winning business as they are about delivering it.

In this episode he unpacks the imbalance at the heart of clinical research — delivery machines built to be precise and never make mistakes, with almost no one positioned to make the value clear and turn it into revenue. He's sharp on why founder-led growth hits a ceiling, why he refuses "twin mandates" (so he never becomes the networking "head that changes its body" at every conference), and why he rejects the word "fractional" altogether — he embeds as an extended team member, aligned on scope and outcomes, in it for the long run.

The conversation's most provocative turn is on AI-native startups. Pavel argues they face a harder sell than anyone: they're not selling a product into the clinical trial ecosystem, they're selling behaviour change — convincing people to change how they work, measure and invoice. His prediction: once the early adopters move and the regulatory rules settle, the companies that move fastest could own the clinical trial market, and parts of the old industry may simply collapse.

Adam and Pavel also trade notes on a live concern: AI "personas" now cold-approaching people on LinkedIn, and why validating that you're talking to a real human matters more than ever.

A commercial lens on an industry that rarely applies one to itself.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com

Youtube: https://youtu.be/Fb4HYN0J6Zk Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Pavel and Lab-2-Business 2:00 Spotting the commercial gap 4:00 The limits of founder-led growth 14:00 Embedded, not fractional 18:00 The pivot into life sciences 26:00 AI-native tools and selling behaviour change 35:00 Quickfire and golden rule

👤 ABOUT PAVEL TROFIMOV Founder of Lab-2-Business (L2B). Commercial specialist with ~15 years in international B2B sales across complex technical products and services, now focused on clinical research and life sciences. Works as an embedded commercial team member helping founder-led scientific and technology companies build deliberate, systematic business development — with particular interest in AI-native companies stripping manual work and friction out of clinical trials. 💼 Search "Pavel Trofimov" on LinkedIn

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#PavelTrofimov #Lab2Business #ClinicalResearch #BusinessDevelopment #CommercialStrategy #PharmaPrescribed #AIinPharma #ClinicalTrials #FounderLedGrowth #B2BSales #LifeSciences

Henrik Nakskov | An AI Can't Ask Questions of the Future - Data Trust in Clinical Research | Pharma Prescribed

Henrik Nakskov is a Danish life sciences specialist with more than 20 years in clinical drug development — a medical chemist by training who became one of the field's more original thinkers on data integrity. He spent a decade at Novo Nordisk in haematology and coagulation, held senior roles at NNIT, and led biometrics at Symphogen. That experience now runs through three companies: Sims Consult (his life sciences consultancy), Novyra Life Sciences (where he's CEO and Clinical Information Management Lead), and Safe Implant Technology (where he leads the science).

Henrik cares more about where data comes from than almost anyone. In this episode he explains how he borrowed from Second World War supply-chain theory and Toyota's just-in-time management to rebuild the way trial data is collected and cleaned — taking last-patient-out to database release from a normal 8–12 weeks down to one week, and in some studies to two days. He tells the story of trauma trials collecting 1,102 data points in three hours under conditions of war and car accidents, and of mapping the full chain of a stroke patient's care — onset, admission, CT scan, treatment — so precisely the FDA used it to teach what data intelligence actually means.

Then the conversation turns to AI, where Henrik is refreshingly precise. He runs Grok and ChatGPT against each other to hunt for the "black holes," builds explicit frameworks and guardrails so the models can't wander, and makes a sharp philosophical point: an AI can only work from references it has already learned — it cannot ask a genuinely new question of the future, so the more you use it, the more surveillance your safety monitoring needs to compensate for the unknowns you've introduced.

Coaching over policing, trust over box-ticking, and a continuous-monitoring vision for where quality is heading. A masterclass for anyone who works with clinical data.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/40WRQLAD3Ed6ibFV9Fm7wZ?si=QRbYluxTT-2E6O3jeGRWiA Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-ai-cant-ask-questions-of-the-future-data/id1829715970?i=1000792188722 Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com

Youtube: https://youtu.be/9ZbJ9PXOJBM Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Henrik Nakskov 6:00 Faster trials, better quality 12:00 From Novo to consulting 16:00 Building Sims Consult 25:00 Culture and change management 34:00 Trust, standards and due diligence 39:00 Coaching, not policing 41:00 AI in clinical quality 42:00 Frameworks and guardrails 49:00 Why old-school approaches fail 51:00 The black-box risk problem 57:00 A continuous-monitoring vision 1:00 Quickfire and golden rule

👤 ABOUT HENRIK NAKSKOV Medical chemist and clinical data specialist with 20+ years in drug development. Former Project Data Manager at Novo Nordisk (haematology and coagulation), senior roles at NNIT, and biometrics lead at Symphogen. Founder of Sims Consult; CEO and Clinical Information Management Lead at Novyra Life Sciences; CEO and science lead at Safe Implant Technology. Specialist in data integrity, clinical informatics, quality management systems and the governed use of AI in regulated research. Occasional contributor to regulatory guidance. 💼 Search "Henrik Nakskov" on LinkedIn

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#HenrikNakskov #DataIntegrity #ClinicalDataManagement #ClinicalTrials #AIinPharma #Biometrics #PharmaPrescribed #ClinicalInformatics #DataIntelligence #QMS #DrugDevelopment

Dr Sonit Handa | From Physician in India to Building a $1M-a-Day Children's Cancer Tissue Bank | Pharma Prescribed

Dr Sonit Handa is the founder and CEO of Biovance Consulting, where he helps biopharma leaders navigate global launches, operating-model transformations and post-merger integrations. He trained as a physician in India, then moved to the United States — drawn to the intersection of medicine, science, technology and business.

His path started with a swerve. Watching everyone around him in medical school run the same race toward the same specialties, Sonit went looking for the thing beyond traditional medicine. He found it in the late-90s wave of medical transcription being outsourced to India — his first glimpse of technology transforming healthcare — and followed it into biomedical and tissue engineering in the US.

That led to St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis: a non-profit where no family pays for treatment, funded entirely by donation to the tune of roughly a million dollars a day. Sonit was hired to build the operations of its tissue bank — 25 years of samples stored without a proper database — so researchers could actually find and request what they needed and turn it into discoveries for children with cancer. He's candid about how he got there: cold emails through the night, visa deadlines, and one CSO in the city he was already living in who wrote back.

From there the conversation opens out into the ideas that run through his work: why culture is an emotion you feel, not a line in a job description; why EQ will matter as much as IQ for the next generation; why change management is the one discipline AI makes non-negotiable; and the ethics of drug pricing seen from both sides of the world.

Warm, wide-ranging and genuinely reflective — a reminder that, looking back, the dots connect.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

🔗 RELATED EPISODE Sonit and Adam return again and again to kindness and cultural fit — the same ground Graham Allcott (Think Productive) covers on KIND, psychological safety and the quiet power of kindness at work: ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/1i1_TIZRBmI 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/04glB17p7bBWVmLjlwIO7z 🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/graham-allcott-on-kind-psychological-safety-the-quiet/id1829715970?i=1000778402287

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Dr Sonit Handa 1:00 Mission and approach 2:00 From India to the US 3:00 A tech spark in medicine 5:00 The St Jude tissue bank 8:00 Immigration and kindness 11:00 Choosing the MBA path 14:00 Building Biovance Consulting 16:00 Support and advice for students 22:00 AI, EQ and attention 28:00 A consultant's problem-solving 31:00 The change management playbook 41:00 Ethics and access 46:00 Quickfire and close

👤 ABOUT DR SONIT HANDA Founder and CEO of Biovance Consulting. Physician trained in India, with graduate study in biomedical and cell/tissue engineering in the US. More than two decades in life-science leadership across clinical development, regulatory affairs, market access, commercial operations and transformation. Advisor to biopharma leaders on aligning strategy with execution — global launches, operating-model change and post-merger integration. Mentor to students entering the field. 💼 Search "Sonit Handa" on LinkedIn 🌐 https://www.biovanceconsulting.com

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#SonitHanda #BiovanceConsulting #StJude #ChangeManagement #LifeSciences #PharmaPrescribed #PharmaConsulting #EQatWork #AIandWork #MarketAccess #PostMergerIntegration

Clive Bonny on Atrial Fibrillation, Blood Thinners & the "Sudden Death Syndrome" Nobody Checks For | Pharma Prescribed

⚠️ This episode discusses suicide and bereavement. If you're affected, please reach out to a professional or a crisis line — in the UK, Samaritans are available free on 116 123, day or night.

Clive Bonny is a management consultant and business advisor of 36 years, specialising in responsible business standards, intellectual property protection and ethical, outcome-driven leadership. He's also a health advocate who lives with atrial fibrillation and is a prostate cancer survivor — and in this episode, business and biology meet.

Clive and host Adam Walker discover how much they share: both live with AF, both lost a sibling to suicide, both were endurance athletes. That common ground makes for an unusually open conversation about what AF actually feels like, how it's diagnosed — often by accident — and why Clive calls it "sudden death syndrome": nearly a million people in the UK have it, and many don't know until it's too late. His practical message is simple: check your pulse, and if it's consistently low, ask for a test.

Clive shares his own dramatic diagnosis — a resting pulse of 30 discovered on an operating table, two weeks in intensive care, heparin, cardioversion, a pacemaker and an ablation — the same ablation procedure Adam was himself about to undergo. Both discuss life on long-term anticoagulation (DOACs) and the different level of cardiac care that followed.

The conversation ranges wider too: Clive's career innovating for Bayer and Hoechst, taking inventions through IP protection and clinical trials, robotic prostate surgery, and building social value through local volunteering.

Honest, warm and genuinely useful — two patients comparing notes in public so others don't get caught out.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Content warning 0:35 Intro 1:00 Meet Clive Bonny 1:30 Mission and values 3:00 Early influences 7:00 The open-minded connector 11:00 A career in pharma innovation 14:00 How the microcurrent device works 17:00 Living with atrial fibrillation 24:00 Adam's AF experience 26:00 Clive's prostate cancer story 32:00 Da Vinci robotic surgery 34:00 ESG and social value 37:00 Local volunteering wins 44:00 Life outside work 45:00 Golden rule 47:00 Closing and contact

👤 ABOUT CLIVE BONNY Management consultant and business advisor since 1990, specialising in responsible business standards, intellectual property protection, dispute resolution and cost-efficient operational strategy. Former innovation lead for Bayer and Hoechst. Board-level governance advisor and mediator. Health advocate living with atrial fibrillation and a prostate cancer survivor. 💼 Search "Clive Bonny" on LinkedIn

https://consult-smp.com

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ Youtube https://youtu.be/6ssayU4ouNc 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics/ 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

ℹ️ Nothing in this episode is medical advice. Views on treatments and devices are personal experience only — always consult a qualified clinician about your own care.

#CliveBonny #AtrialFibrillation #AFib #DOAC #Anticoagulants #ProstateCancer #PharmaPrescribed #PatientVoice #HeartHealth #MedicalDevices #ResponsibleBusiness

Ashish Rishi on The Patients Clinical Trials Leave Out — and the Evidence That Counts Them In | Pharma Prescribed

Ashish Rishi is Founder and CEO of Unwritten Health, the Manchester-based patient experience data platform working to make life science's evidence reflect the people it's meant to serve.

His mission is unsentimental — and it starts with his father. At 17, Ash watched his dad spend three years fighting for a GP referral for worsening back and bone pain. The eventual diagnosis was terminal prostate cancer, delivered to an 18-year-old and his mother — for whom English is a fourth language — in a two-minute conversation and a flyer, with no family network to turn to. His father lived six more years and passed away three months before Ash's graduation.

That experience became a company. In this episode Ash explains "inclusion debt" — his term for how bias compounds at every stage of drug development: unmet need defined without the real patient voice, multi-billion-pound programmes built on focus groups of eight to ten patient experts, recruitment budgets thrown at social ads that reach the already-reachable, and value dossiers that carry only the majority narrative. By market access, it's too late to fix.

The Patients Clinical Trials Leave Out — and the Evidence That Counts Them In

His answer is Equity Engine: a 6,000-strong UK participant panel profiled across the social determinants of health, built through gurdwaras, mosques, temples, churches and community groups, generating longitudinal lived-experience data at a scale focus groups never could — and turning it into submission-ready evidence.

Honest about being a "failed scientist," about burnout and anger, and about the trust he has to earn in every room. A powerful conversation about fixing inequity as an evidence and design problem, not just a moral one.

🎧 LISTEN TO THE AUDIO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Ks5oLfSDf0u9F1I8GUjti Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/adam-walkers-pharma-prescribed-podcast/id1829715970 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1a43eb87-b83e-441d-9a87-321263e3f821/adam-walker%E2%80%99s-pharma-prescribed-podcast Podbean: https://pharmaprescribed.podbean.com

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast Full transcript and episode notes: https://pharmaprescribed.com/episodes

⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:35 Meet Ashish Rishi 1:00 A father's diagnosis 3:00 From neuroscience to comms 4:00 The clinical trial wake-up call 7:00 The Demand Diversity movement 9:00 Building Equity Engine 12:00 Inclusion debt explained 15:00 UK data fragmentation 17:00 Barriers and misinformation 19:00 AI-powered patient insights 26:00 Neurodivergent-friendly trials 28:00 Quickfire round 30:00 Golden rule and wrap up

👤 ABOUT ASHISH RISHI Founder and CEO of Unwritten Health and creator of the Equity Engine platform. Neuroscience MSc and former health communications specialist. Sits on the scientific advisory board of IHI READ-Y (an EU Innovative Health Initiative / Horizon Europe programme advancing inclusive clinical research) and the equity committee of the US Prader-Willi Syndrome Association. Advocate for re-engineering health inequity as an evidence and design problem. 💼 Search "Ashish Rishi" on LinkedIn 🌐 https://www.unwrittenhealth.com

🎙️ ABOUT PHARMA PRESCRIBED Pharma Prescribed is the podcast where leaders, innovators and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites, no spin. Just raw insight, one prescription at a time. Hosted by biometrics consultant Adam Walker. 🌐 https://pharmaprescribed.com ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@pharmaprescribedpodcast 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwalkerbiometrics 🏢 https://uk.linkedin.com/company/pharma-prescribed-podcast

#AshishRishi #UnwrittenHealth #InclusionDebt #HealthEquity #ClinicalTrials #ClinicalTrialDiversity #PharmaPrescribed #PatientExperience #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #RWE #HealthInequality