How to Lead With Mission When the Pressure Is On — with Julie Blasingim

Best, Not Biggest: Julie Blasingim on Leading With Mission Under Pressure

In this post: Univo IRB CEO Julie Blasingim built a private equity backed company around one question: does this make research better for patients? She explains how she hired for belief, defined success as being the best rather than the biggest, and used that mission to say no.

When Julie Blasingim got the call to lead a new institutional review board, her first reaction was skepticism. "Why do we need another IRB?" she asked herself. There were plenty of options already.

The more she studied the field, the clearer the gap became. Human research protection, she concluded, was missing something central: the patient and their voice, and whether the system was helping people take part in trials or pushing them away. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do it very differently," she said on Activating Greatness, the leadership podcast from Velocity Advisory Group.

That conviction became Univo IRB, where Blasingim is CEO. It also became a filter that, under the pressure of private equity backing and rapid growth, she uses to decide what the company will and will not do.

From the Bottom Up

Blasingim started in the industry at 18 or 19, doing regulatory work at a phase one clinic. She calls her path something like Cinderella's. She began by taking in submissions and preparing them for the board, became an expert in FDA regulations for human research protections, and went on to serve as a chair and vice chair of IRB boards. In all, she has spent about 22 years in the field, 17 of them at central IRBs.

Then she left one of the largest IRBs to become head of training and compliance for a large site network. There, she helped a doctor with no research experience become an investigator and watched clinical research reach a community for the first time. "Sometimes it takes leaving great places to see what additional greatness you have in you," she said.

People First, Then Strategy

Building Univo, Blasingim started with people. She handpicked colleagues she had worked with over her career, often people who had been overlooked because they lacked a certain title or, as she put it, "all the gray hair." She wanted people who were passionate, believed in the mission, and could flex through hard days. She was frank with them about what those days would look like.

Strategy came second. "This was not a Me Too situation," she said. The goal was for the industry to look back in five or 10 years and say Univo changed how it thinks about protecting participants. When the team was five people, she set an unusual target. "I'm not focused on how big we get. That's not a metric that I'm interested in," she said. "What I'm interested in is how are we known for being the best and what does the best look like."

The team defined best as earning trust, hiring people who love their work, and using technology to remove administrative work so experts can spend time with investigators, coordinators, and patients. Revenue and EBITDA, she said, "will come naturally if you're the best at what you do." Her reason is simple. Univo does not make widgets. On the other side of every informed consent form, she said, is "somebody who's trying to make a decision if this is a good option for them to be in a clinical trial."

A Brand Built Around One Patient

Blasingim believes leaders should know exactly where their company's name and brand came from. Univo's logo interlocks a U, an N, and an I, which can read as "you and I" or as unifying the sponsors, research organizations, and hospitals the company works with. The VO stands for the voice of the patient.

The letter I is a golden yellow, and it represents the individual patient. She tells her team to see themselves in it, as a patient, caregiver, or family member. Slide decks always show patients in yellow, employees wear it at events, and the company built a full-size photo booth at a trade show so visitors could stand inside the logo.

Hire for Belief, Screen for Difficulty

Blasingim still sits in on interviews to share why Univo matters. "I want them to be interviewing us as much as we are interviewing them," she said. She does not want anyone treating the role as just a job. The average Univo employee, she said, has 20 years of clinical trial experience.

She is equally clear about who will not fit. "You can be the absolute best at what you do, so you're the best salesperson or the best operator, but if you're difficult to work with, then Univo is not the place for you," she said. Jason Casarella explored a similar standard for life sciences teams in coaching versus micromanaging.

"I'm not focused on how big we get. That's not a metric that I'm interested in."

Julie Blasingim, CEO, Univo IRB

The Question That Says No

Private equity backing lets Univo grow at greater scale, and Blasingim welcomes it. But she said she would never sacrifice anything that put the company, patients, or clients at risk, and that sometimes means saying no to investors. Her deep knowledge of the regulations makes many shiny objects easy to reject.

For everything else, one question decides. "I view everything through the lens of does this make research better for patients," she said. "Just because everybody else is doing it doesn't mean that it's something that I need to do." Jeanne Hecht, a CEO Blasingim called a leader she looks up to, has made the case for culture as a strategic value driver.

Blasingim knew she was a leader when colleagues started asking, "What would Julie do?" The CEO role came later. "It's not that I wasn't ready for the role," she said, "but I would say the industry and the company wasn't ready for me."

Rapid-Fire Leadership Lessons

• Daily habit: Quiet time every morning to clear her head and decide what success looks like that day.
• Most underrated skill: Humility and selflessness. "It's not about me, it's about my team," she said.
• Stop doing: Sending emails. "There's no passion. There's no tone. It's one directional."
• Best advice: The most successful leaders have a hobby, because "your happiness should matter just as much as the happiness that you're trying to cultivate with your team."

The Takeaway: Make Room for What Brings You Joy

Blasingim's best advice is also her strongest defense against pressure. She finds joy with horses and in helping rescue animals, and ideas for Univo often arrive during a ride. A leader who spends every hour in front of monitors and email, she said, leaves the brain no room to be creative.

Her closing request was characteristically specific. If you see her at a conference and either of you is wearing yellow, tell her you know what the yellow stands for. A mission that clear does more than guide strategy. It gives everyone, inside and outside the company, a reason to care about the person on the other side of the work.

Listen to the Full Episode

Hear Julie Blasingim's full conversation with host Alec McChesney on Activating Greatness. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow Julie on LinkedIn.