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Ep. 99: Serial Entrepreneur Candice Hughes Uses Science to Help People Have Better Lives

“You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be present. How you are is good enough.”

In this episode of the Women Killing It! podcast, host Sally Hubbard introduces us to Candice Hughes, the CEO and founder of Hughes BioPharma Advisors and an award-winning serial entrepreneur. Candice has a PhD in Anatomy and Neurobiology, and went back to get her MBA after hearing from venture capitalists that she didn’t have enough business experience — despite having already led several successful ventures.

Her company, founded in 2005, focuses on boutique consulting specifically for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Candice, who has worked with a third of the top 25 global pharma and leading biotech firms, helps clients in areas like getting new products approved, understanding the market, innovation, regulation, and expansion into new markets.

“One thing that I realized that you need is grit and persistence. So you really need to keep going through and around every obstacle that comes to your way and you have to realize that you’re going to get knocked down no matter how great and fabulous you are. Sometimes you’re going to fail and you need to pick yourself back up and keep going. And you might not realize how critical that is to your survival.”

In this episode, Candice talks about her extensive experience in the pharma and biotech industries (including creating a global app to help kids with ADD and leading a division from $0 in revenue to $4M in revenue in just 3 years), while still working a full-time job and having a young child at home.

Candice’s deep first love is getting more innovative technology to patients so they can live better lives. She shares why she loved studying neuroscience, her focus on using science to help people, and her experience being a woman in a male-dominated world.

“I started to realize that no matter how amazing you are as an individual, you really need that community and support around you because as one person working alone it’s difficult to make headway and it’s difficult to make impact in scale. But if you build a community of people who are cheering you on or are passionate about the same things you’re passionate about, then that’s when you’re reaching the scale that you can have a real impact and a visible impact.”

Candice also chats with Sally about how she deals with fear and risk in entrepreneurship, her advice for women who want to be entrepreneurs, the importance of building community around you, and her advice for companies who want to support women.

This episode will inspire you to create the company you’ve been dreaming of, ask for help, and be a strong woman role model in your field.