Kelly Macdonald

Senior Vice President, Principal Accounting Officer & Chief Financial Officer, DYNAVAX TECHNOLOGIES CORP

The Journey Of A Biotech CFO With Kelly MacDonald, CFO Dynavax Technologies

🎥 Feb 21, 2024 📺 Secrets of Rockstar CFOs ⏱ 0m 👁 64 views

A massive part of CFO success is being in a company whose values and mission you deeply resonate with. That is the case with ...

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About Kelly Macdonald

Kelly Macdonald, Senior Vice President, Principal Accounting Officer, and Chief Financial Officer at Dynavax Technologies, discussed her role and the company’s evolution in a September 2024 podcast. Macdonald said she has been working to position the finance organization as a “strategic asset” to the company, aligning capital allocation with Dynavax’s strategic initiatives and long-term growth. She noted that she joined Dynavax in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, describing the decision to work for a vaccine company and relocate from Boston to the Bay Area as a chance to align with a mission she believed in. Macdonald stated that she inherited a “very streamlined and even skeletal” team after a restructuring and acknowledged that the team was initially uncertain about a new leader from outside the region. Macdonald also shared perspectives on the evolving role of CFOs, describing them as expected to be strategic thinkers and subject matter experts across corporate finance and operations. She emphasized the importance of work-life balance, stating that 80-hour work weeks are not sustainable throughout a career and that being intentional about priorities is key. Macdonald added that she practices mentoring both formally and informally, and she described the Dynavax team as one that empowers each other and solves problems beyond finance.

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Transcript (1 segments)

Kelly Macdonald0:00

I was very fortunate to inherit an extremely strong team at Dynavax. I was reflecting on our earlier eras in the prior question of where the company comes from. When I joined the company, they had just completed a large restructuring, and the team was working off of what I would consider a very streamlined and even skeletal type organizational structure. The company had been through a lot of change and was a very dynamic time. With that background in mind, I think the team was probably a little uncertain about what to make of a new CFO, a new leader, somebody from Boston. Not only am I a transplant with kind of a funny accent sometimes, I think you're always uncertain when you get a new leader exactly what they're going to try to solve for in the next 90 days, year, two years, or what their vision is.