Selecting a CRO

A signed CRO contract is not an operating model. 

In 25+ years across CRO leadership and helping sponsor operations, I kept seeing the same pattern:  brilliant science, a committed team, a carefully chosen CRO…and momentum quietly leaking away because no one had built the operating system around the partnership.

It's never a lack of effort or intelligence.  Emerging sponsors are running lean, moving fast, and answering to a board that wants first patient in yesterday.  Structure feels like a luxury.  So the relationship starts without clear decision rights, without agreed measures of performance, without a path for raising problems early, and by the time something surfaces, it's a timeline problem instead of a conversation.

I believe a CRO can be a genuine extension of your team, but it cannot be a substitute for sponsor accountability.  Your program, your decisions, your data, your risk.  Operational excellence is not bureaucracy; it's what lets great science reach patients without preventable execution failures.

I work with emerging biotech and biopharma sponsors — usually when a team is ready to select a CRO.  Three ways I plug in:

📍CRO selection — turning development strategy into real evaluation criteria, a disciplined RFP, and a defensible decision.

📍Governance and oversight retainer — the metrics, escalation path, meeting rhythm, and risk visibility that keep a partnership honest in both directions.

📍End-to-end support — building the clinical operations foundation from development planning through start-up and delivery excellence.

My job is not to sit between a biotech and its CRO.  It's to help the sponsor lead the relationship with enough clarity and confidence that both organizations do their very best work and have a strong, sustainable partnership that can move forward through the .

If you're building your first — or next — clinical program and want a sponsor-side partner in the room, I would love to talk with you about my CRO selection and governance approach.

The operating system around a partnership rarely builds itself. Sponsor-side CRO selection and management is where ABRA spends most of its time.