Climbing the Ladder of Executive Leadership: Insights from Andrea S. James, Chief Financial Officer of Oncocyte 

Thanks for the question. I certainly never aspired to be a CFO and in fact if you asked me five years ago if I wanted to be a CFO, I would have said no thank you!

I have had a bit of a portfolio career, where I studied computer science and minored in physics at university, but then went on to become a financial journalist, and then after the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, migrated to Wall Street simply because I needed a better way to pay the bills.

While working as a stock analyst, I observed that CFOs have one of the hardest jobs in any company. Managing multiple stakeholders — and doing it well — within the constraints of the fundamental economic principle of scarcity, requires real skill.

Another position I came to really respect was that of the shareholder. Managing assets for a living is a serious and important endeavor.

After several years at my Wall Street firm, I realized it was time to move on. I’d set a personal goal of adding to our family with more children and a professional goal of growing in a new direction. I loved both people and spreadsheets, I joked, so where does that leave me?

I ended up assisting Tesla with its investor relations and found that I really loved it. I liked marrying business strategy and understanding the P&L with investor communication, and also maintaining relationships with Tesla’s shareholders, whom I had already known as my former clients.

After Tesla, I went to work at Axon as vice president of investor relations, reporting to the CFO. My aspiration at first was simply to do the best job I could at helping Axon repair its Wall Street reputation and raise capital. We made major changes to our shareholder communication simultaneously with making changes to how we ran the business — starting to focus more on margins and profitability. Providing input to the financial strategy was tremendously rewarding, and I liked being able to help guide the company in a way that I knew would resonate with shareholders. Over time, new finance opportunities emerged and my role expanded. As a capable leader, I was trusted with increasing amounts of financial responsibility.

I had a productive six years at Axon. I wore multiple hats and saw and learned a lot. I grew as an executive and came to understand that I had talent for leading people to do their best work, as well as building processes and teams.

The great thing about spending multiple years in one company is that I got to see how decisions played out over the longer term – which is something that people who only do two-to-three-year stints do not experience. It’s one thing to come into a company and propose an idea or policy or strategy and then leave. It’s another to lead through phases of growth and see how decisions made several years back play out over time.

By the time I left Axon, I knew that I was not only ready to be a CFO, but that I wanted to do it and would enjoy leading in that sphere.

I built my career on the concept of disruptive technology, and I believe that what Oncocyte is offering is truly disruptive in its target category.

The marketplace gap is simply offering a molecular diagnostic kitted test for biomarkers where kitted tests are not currently available.

Ok, so that was a mouthful. Let me unpack that, with the caveat that I am a finance and technology person, not a healthcare industry person.

The two concepts to grasp are that of a) advanced molecular diagnostics and b) kitted testing.

In today’s landscape, simple diagnostic blood tests are done in a distributed way, meaning that there’s lots of capability to run a blood test and get a quick result at local labs. Anyone who has participated in the modern healthcare system is familiar with routine blood tests.

But many advanced diagnostics – which rely on advancements in molecular science – are confined to centralized service labs, requiring samples to be sent off-site for analysis.

All the innovation we’ve seen in molecular diagnostic technology is a net good – but it is often trapped within a central service lab model that is not fully serving the market.

Our mission is to democratize access to molecular diagnostic testing, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes. We are doing this by developing and distributing kitted tests that can be performed locally at hospitals and labs, empowering facilities to conduct complex molecular diagnostics in-house.

This simple switch addresses a significant unmet need. We believe that the market wants options that are more accessible, cost-effective, and scalable. Our thesis is that this democratization can help improve patient outcomes, particularly in areas like organ transplantation where early detection of complications is critical.

Additionally, by providing hospitals with the tools to conduct these tests on-site, Oncocyte will help them to bill for revenue that would otherwise go to external third-party labs. This shift can help improve the financial viability of healthcare institutions.

Kitted tests are also more exportable! One of our first laboratory customers is in Southeast Asia, and they are thrilled about being able to run their own future tests in house rather than shipping blood samples to the United States.

We think that the kitted test model should facilitate broader adoption across global markets, enabling healthcare providers to access advanced diagnostic technology without having to build expensive centralized labs.

So, that’s the goal. And I’d be remiss if I did not conclude with this important regulatory point: Our kitted tests do need regulatory clearance to be used in clinical decision making. While we are pursuing future regulatory clearance, we have started to commercialize “research use only” kits, which helps drive research and innovation in our category and enables labs to become familiar with our company and our products. This is our land and expand strategic approach.

It is still early days, and we like our trajectory. We recently published an updated investor presentation at investors.oncocyte.com. It lays out the strategy and explains our strategic markets of transplant and oncology.

There are so many! A public company CFO position requires baseline finance subject matter expertise in financial modeling, capital markets, quarterly reporting, and regulatory compliance.

It also requires an ability to anticipate how strategic decisions will translate to current and future quarterly financial statements.

I’m always thinking in terms of the business we want to build, and why, and how we are going to get there. I am constantly evaluating where to invest to help the company thrive.

But being a CFO goes way beyond baseline skills. The world doesn’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet. We may have to understand the complexity, but our job is to help make things simple for everyone else; to help make decisions with clarity.

Executives also need to demonstrate people skills such as leadership, strength, transparency, an ability to build trust and foster consensus, and help team members to do their best work.

Another important skill needed to lead a growth company is that of building teams. Building teams is incredibly challenging and also rewarding. If I could give advice to anyone – including other executives – it would be to know thyself. Being familiar with your own strengths and weaknesses can help you to be a better leader, and to know when to augment your skillset and hire people who complement what you bring to the table.

None of us has it all – and it’s important to be secure in oneself and self-aware. The worst leaders are insecure deep down. Their self-blindness risks destroying value. The best leaders know their own strengths and weaknesses, and don’t take themselves too seriously.

One of the most fun things about building teams is combining a diversity of skill sets where everyone is playing to their strengths. Best-in-class teams have high trust and once they get into a groove, they can move quickly.

Everyone who is great at something is also, probably in some area, bad at something else. That’s OK! That’s human nature. Know that whatever you’re bad at, there’s probably someone out there who is great at it. Find that person, hire them and tell them why you need them. That’s how you build a stellar team.

To everything, there is a season. At this point, I’ve had an infant or toddler in my home for over a decade. Consequently, my life’s joys are small moments, like eating breakfast together, planting kisses on kiddo foreheads, or catching the sunset twinkling through the evergreens in Seattle.

Because I travel so much for work, flying on an airplane for vacation doesn’t appeal to me during this life season. You’re more likely to find me cuddling my toddler for a Sunday afternoon nap than shredding the epic gnar in the Swiss Alps.

Day to day, my morning runs are sacrosanct! Most weekdays, I put on my sneakers and jog about 3.5 miles. Sometimes, I take work calls while huffing and puffing.

I decided over a decade ago that daily exercise was just as mandatory as any other obligation. I am grateful to my younger self for holding the line on physical fitness, because my 40s self is better for it.

My morning outdoor run – in every type of weather – makes life more enjoyable. I am happier and more energetic all day long.

I also read a lot. I’m usually reading one book or two at any given time. I read when the kids are asleep or on weekends when they are watching cartoons. Two of my kids are now old enough to read by my side, and we cuddle up under blankets and read together. I love this stage!

I also like to read the newspaper over coffee on weekends. When we do leave the house for reasons other than work, we ski and mountain bike. Since I was 13 years old, I dreamed of building a “ski family,” and this past season, all three of my kids got up on skis at a local mountain. This made me unspeakably happy and thankful for life’s gifts.

Quick shoutout to my snowboarding, mountain biking husband, who makes mountain sports happen, because loading up the car with skis or bikes is no joke. Actually, he helps make almost everything in our lives possible. We’re a great team.