Nearshoring for Life Sciences: Talent, Compliance & Growth with Kristin Brown | Nearshore Cafe

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**Brian:** Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Samson, your host and a veteran in the Nearshore space. Very excited about today’s episode. If you’re working in the Life Sciences space, you’re already nearshoring, or you’re considering nearshoring, we’ve got a special treat for you. Our guest, Kristi Brown, is an expert at both of those, based out of San Diego. Kristi is very well connected with the life sciences world, and she’s done nearshoring for quite some time too. Before we jump into it, I want to thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies. Plug.tech. Plug is a great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies. All right, let’s get into it. Kristi, welcome to the show.

**Kristi:** Thank you for having me.

**Brian:** Kristi, you’ve lived in San Diego for some time, so what does it mean to live in that part of the country and your exposure to Latin culture?

**Kristi:** Yeah, I mean, we moved out here in 2014. My husband is a Marine, and so we got moved out here because he was stationed down at Miramar. So, we moved from Colorado, and obviously, San Diego is not a terrible place to live. Weather’s good, and I really like it. It’s nice, in our field of work doing nearshoring, that we’re 30 minutes down the road from Tijuana as well. So, that is really nice for a lot of the San Diego-based companies that I work with.

**Brian:** Yeah, how prevalent is Spanish in San Diego? And, you know, help us maybe understand the relationship between Tijuana, San Diego, and this broader…?

**Kristi:** Well, I mean, I think it’s what, 137,000 people cross the border between San Diego and Tijuana every day. So, I mean, it’s very… the cultural affinity, cultural affinity, is very much aligned. There’s a lot of Spanish speakers, and versus working for outsourcing in some place like India or a different place, the cultural affinity is very, very much aligned. And there’s a lot of people in Tijuana that are very… their English is very good, and a lot of speakers in San Diego, well. So, yeah.

**Brian:** That’s great. That’s great. Just a detour here: are you a fan of Mexican food? And, you know, do you have any particular favorites?

**Kristi:** My mom’s side of the family is all Mexican Latina. My grandmother’s last name was Montoya, so I grew up on Mexican food. Yeah, love it. They’ve got some good food down here as well, as well as in Tijuana. Go down the border in 30 minutes and get some great food.

**Brian:** Yeah, there’s nothing like fish tacos from San Diego.

**Kristi:** Yeah, exactly.

**Brian:** So, also being in San Diego, for those who haven’t been, could you just give a kind of a macro idea of how big the life science, medical device, Pharma…? Just give a broad understanding for those that haven’t, you know, driven on 5 and all the other freeways. How big is it? UC San Diego? All that stuff.

**Kristi:** Yeah, yeah, I mean, they’ve got a very large hub of life science companies here in San Diego. Obviously, Illumina is one of the biggest employers out here, and some really great companies that are doing awesome things to eradicate cancer and deal with diabetes and help with a lot of the aspects of that. So, it’s a large hub.

**Brian:** Yeah, when I think of, you know, the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s software, tech, AI. But when you get down, you know, Orange County, it’s a lot of medical devices, and then as you go further south, a lot of these Life Sciences companies. Can you give us a… there’s hundreds, maybe thousands of companies just dedicated to the space, right?

**Kristi:** Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I’ve had the privilege of working with some of those companies that are doing things like I said. You know, one of the companies that I worked with just last year, their mission is literally to eradicate cancer. I mean, they have things that are detecting it at stage one instead of stage four, so that we can treat it earlier. So, it’s really, it’s really cool the types of stuff that people are working on down here. It’s life-changing.

**Brian:** Yeah, it’s very mission-driven, right? Yeah, it’s not just about, you know, the next app to get food; it’s life-saving stuff.

**Kristi:** Exactly. And that’s my background. I come from a background in pharmaceutical. I worked for Eli Lilly for a decade, and so I’m really passionate about that. I know with our company, we place a lot of different positions. I mean, some of them are VA positions, some of them are virtual medical assistants, some of them are life science companies. I mean, marketing, operations, finance, you name it, we can do it. But my passion really lies in that field of life science, so I do a lot with those types of companies.

**Brian:** For those that haven’t worked in that particular space before, maybe we’ll start with Pharma, for example. My background, I’ve worked a lot in the venture-funded software, tech world. So this is kind of a foreign world for me, you know: Pharma, life science, and so forth. Maybe just take Pharma for example. How are these companies organized? You know, you’ve got scientists, you’ve got regulatory people, operations, IT. Can you tell us more about that?

**Kristi:** Yeah, I mean, you hit it on the nail there. That’s kind of how things… we have pipelines, and it takes a long time, years, to get a product to market and billions of dollars. And so, they’re working on a lot of that type of stuff. And especially with the pandemic, I think they’re trying to tighten up that timeline to get things going faster. We saw that with COVID, but of course, you have to make sure that the medications that we’re giving have trials and periods of time where we make sure that they’re safe for patients. But yeah, I worked sales; I was a senior sales rep for them for a decade, and I tend to take a different approach than most sales people. I’m not your typical salesperson. I would go into some of my doctor’s offices and tell them, “You probably shouldn’t use my product,” and they look at me like I had four heads, like, “Why are you telling me not to prescribe your product? That’s not how you get paid!” And I’m like, “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s the right product for that patient, and here’s why.” And so, you gained a lot of credibility by just making sure that you stay focused on the fact that there’s a patient at the end of the line of that stuff. That’s important. You know, that’s a real person that you’re affecting.

**Brian:** Sticking with Pharma for a second, before we get into the other related fields, with the organization of these companies, I’m thinking, for example, the scientists. They’re generally onsite in the lab; you’ve got clean rooms, beakers, and all this stuff. How about the rest of the organization? Are those roles that you see… are they roles that have to be there? Are they roles that you think could be more remote?

**Kristi:** No, I mean, you’re right. There are a lot of scientists and stuff that are working on those organizations, people with boots on the ground that are doing the pipetting and the testing of these products. But I mean, if you think about it, I mean, even, I worked with a company that was a clothing company, and they needed engineers. So, of course, they need these people to help them scale and bring product to market faster, and to have the ability to tap into Nearshore software developers, engineers working in the background on, maybe, version two of something, or things of that sort. It’s really helpful because it allows them to scale, and those products that are coming to market faster, like we just talked about, are really important products that are affecting real patients that need them. So, yeah, we dealt with a lot of software developers and engineers for sure.

**Brian:** What are things that maybe a pharmaceutical company might be worried about if it was the first time and they were going to offshore or nearshore, not having their developers right in the office? Maybe help us understand the regulatory landscape and stuff.

**Kristi:** Yeah, I think that in all honesty, I’ve done more work with life science and medical supply companies than Pharma companies. But the things that they think about are: they need to be able to make sure that their personal protected information is secure. There are secure VPNs, there’s HIPAA compliance. And we do that all with Plug, where we’re able to… we understand that, we speak that language, we understand the importance of it, and also understand that it’s important to be in compliance with local employment laws and things of that sort as well. So, that’s very, very important for the medical industry to make sure that those things are really tight and secure.

**Brian:** So, there’s confidentiality, there’s invention IP protection, things like that. I’d imagine these are big items for these types of companies. And I’ve found that the companies that I work with, they really need to know that we understand that this isn’t just throwing around roles. And sometimes people think, “Okay, well, if I send a role over to Mexico, how are you going to keep that all tight?” And we take that really seriously.

**Brian:** So, speaking of Mexico, because of the… there’s such a big concentration, like we talked about, in San Diego, is there maybe a counterpart location in Mexico? Whether it’s Guadalajara or Mexico City, is there a concentration of life science workers there?

**Kristi:** Yeah, I mean, there are quite a few that are in Tijuana, but there’s also Guadalajara, Monterrey, and throughout Latin America. I mean, sometimes when you’re looking for a Ruby on Rails engineer, you’ve got to hit Brazil. And, you know, it’s interesting, the segments of engineers that are kind of highly populated in certain areas. So, that’s what’s been good. And the people that I work with at Plug have lived in those places or do live in those places, like Nicaragua, or places like that, where it’s Argentina. They walk the streets, they talk the talk, and they know what they’re talking about, which I think gives people a little bit of…

**Brian:** So, Kristi, we talked about a lot of the regulatory concerns and so forth, and things that companies need to be considering. What’s an advantage for these companies then to nearshore? Why would a life sciences company decide to nearshore part of their staff?

**Kristi:** Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I think that it makes my job in particular a lot easier that I work in… my territory is here in the California region. Because, I mean, the time zone alignment is a huge thing. A lot of the people that I talk to are taking calls at, you know, 8:00, 9 o’clock at night, so they’re in the exact same time zone with Mexico. Again, 30 minutes down the road, you’ve got the cultural affinity that makes a big difference. I’ve worked with other staffing companies previously, and one thing that Plug always gets right is they always vet that to make sure that there’s good English-speaking skills so that’s not an issue with the communication across the engineers in the US and Mexico or in Latin America. So, I’d say that that’s probably a big thing. Those are big pluses. And then, of course, the affordability. You know, I mean, they are super, super talented engineers, but if we’re being honest, you can place two of those engineers for the price of what you could place for one engineer in the US. And they’re hard to come by sometimes in the US. It’s hard to hire, it’s hard to retain them. Google and Amazon are swiping up the best of them and paying them a good paycheck. So, it’s nice to be able to give these neighbors of ours in the Baja region or throughout Latin America an opportunity to work for a US-based company that’s doing really neat things for them.

**Brian:** Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point. Especially in the last few years where people can kind of choose where they want to live, right? San Diego, America’s Finest City, a lot of people would choose to live there if they could, especially if they can make, say, a Bay Area or Seattle salary working from San Diego. That’s some kind of personal compensation arbitrage that they’re taking advantage of. And then they can also have boots on the ground as well. You were talking about that idea of a pharmaceutical company, or even when I was talking with one of the big Pharma companies last year, they were talking about bringing their whole engineering team from India. He was like, “I can’t tell you how expensive it is, how difficult it is to organize that, but we try to do it once a year and get them all.” He’s like, “This would be incredible!” They were in Northern California, to have them want to jump on a shuttle and be over here in no time. So, yeah, they’re there. I mean, how long does it take to get from Tijuana, Baja area, to San Diego?

**Kristi:** Well, where I am, I’m in the Rancho Santa Fe area, and I can get to Tijuana faster than I can get to the San Diego airport. So, I think maybe the last time that I went down there was 30 minutes, and you made it.

**Brian:** Wow, incredible!

**Kristi:** Yeah, absolutely incredible. And then, even some of the other cities you mentioned, like Guadalajara, quick, very quick flight, right? Direct flights, quick flights, super fast. Yeah, and we can vet for the visas that they need in order to be able to cross the border, or sometimes they want them to come for onboarding for a couple weeks when they first start their position and things of that sort. So, those things are all really easy for us to do as well. So, yeah.

**Brian:** Now, if you’re a life sciences company, I’d imagine institutional knowledge, domain knowledge, is a huge factor, so you really want to mitigate turnover, have strong retention. And in the world of US software engineers, with the remote work, like you said, Amazon, Google sniffing around, they’re recruiting any great engineers everywhere. Talk a little about the, maybe, attrition or retention that you’ve seen in Latin America. Is it better than the US? And why?

**Kristi:** It is, because there’s not that element that’s sucking people up from those bigger companies. And also, when we talk about cultural affinity, the Latin American culture is very… they’re very loyal. So, when they start something, they tend to really stick to it and believe in it. Attrition’s a big thing, especially for these life science companies, because so much leaves the door when your senior engineer is like, “I’m going to take a different position.” And so, I always encourage them to build teams of people so that you have a balance of people that can kind of step up to the plate, learn from each other. Your juniors become mids pretty quickly; mids become seniors quickly. But we find that a lot of companies want us to prove out our value first, and so they’ll say, “You get me one good senior, and let me see what you can do.” And then we get that right person in place, and this is amazing. Then they start to build a team around that, which is fine; I understand that completely. You know, they don’t know us from holding the wall, so we’re happy to prove out our value. We’re pretty confident that we can do it.

**Brian:** If you don’t mind, maybe talk about a couple different of those staffing models. You know, maybe there’s the leverage model where a company might have all their senior engineers in San Diego on-site, and then kind of all the horsepower supporting them might be nearshore. The other model might be they have senior engineers that are from Latin America that are doing a lot of the critical work. How should companies think about that?

**Kristi:** Well, I find that a lot of the life science companies that I work with are working on, you know, version two, or version three, or version four of something. So, I’ve seen probably all of those models work differently for different companies. But I do see a lot of companies that are lobbing over projects to their engineers in Mexico or Latin America to work on that next version, and they work really in close alignment with their US counterparts, but they’re kind of working on the next, the next version of something that may be coming to market. But I mean, everybody’s different. I mean, we had one big Pharma company, a top five Pharma company, that I was in touch with last year, and they had their whole team in India, and they wanted to bring their team from India to Mexico for all the points that we were talking about earlier: affordability, time zone alignment, such. And they wanted just one. They wanted one senior, and they said, “Whoever’s going to bring us this incredible one senior engineer, we’re going to bring them to Mexico, and then we’re going to start moving our teams there after that.” And so, they wanted their whole… they wanted a full team there that was working on their projects. So, everybody does things a little bit differently, but, you know, that’s what I like about Plug: they’re really flexible and versatile when it comes to vetting and doing what people need.

**Brian:** Kristi, we’ve talked a lot about software today. And in a lot of these worlds, there’s firmware, hardware. Are these things that can also be done off-site, or is software the most common to be nearshored?

**Kristi:** I think it’s probably the most common that we do, but for sure, the other things we can do as well. The things, yeah, we were mentioning. Yeah, and it’s amazing. I mean, some of the companies that I’ve worked with, one of them was a big up-and-coming athletic clothing brand. And I was talking to their CTO, and thinking, “They need software engineers,” and thinking about, “Is it to build up their website, or what are they looking to do?” And he’s like, “Every company needs software engineers. Every company needs… no matter who you are, everybody needs developers, everybody needs software engineers.” And it just made me think about it a little differently because it was off-course from what I was typically dealing with in the life science.

**Brian:** We’re talking a lot about the budget aspect, which sounds kind of crazy because you think of these companies, they raise gobs of money, hundreds of millions of dollars. But a lot of that is for R&D, and the more that a company can allocate to R&D, the better, you know, in this world. So, maybe talk about some of the roles outside of software, like you talked earlier about VAs, maybe administrative. Can you give some specifics about other roles that companies might nearshore, so then they can allocate their budget for stateside critical roles?

**Kristi:** Yeah, I mean, we’ve done things with, you know, call stuff with virtual medical assistants. We’ve done things in the realms of even marketing and finance roles. I think predominantly what we’ve done is in the software arena or IT, a lot with just IT software development, software engineering. But, we also work with a lot of staffing companies as well, where, you know, they’re looking to hire for their clients, and maybe their clients are having budgetary constraints and they want to look to nearshore. But they don’t know how to do it. They don’t know the compliance and the legalities and things, so they’ll tap into us to help with finding nearshore talent as well. So, yeah.

**Brian:** Now, if I’m a CTO of a life sciences company, and I know you’ve talked to quite a few of them, what are some patterns of things that are keeping them up at night? What are some of their biggest worries?

**Kristi:** Yeah, I think they’re just trying to stay on track in a timeline to get things developed faster, and so they need more horsepower in the engineering department of things. But they’re also talking to their CFO, saying, “We don’t have the money for this stuff.” And I think that’s where they start to come to us and say, “Wow, this could be a huge value because I know that this year I’m budgeted for this amount for my engineering capability, but I just can’t find myself to the end of where I need to be with that much horsepower.” And so, when they come to us and think, “Gosh, I could take five engineers and turn it into 10 for the same amount of money, and they’re highly talented, and I’m getting really good quality work, and there’s not a language barrier, why not?” You know, I mean, it’s kind of a no-brainer at some point. I think nearshoring is definitely up and coming, and people are really starting to notice.

**Brian:** Totally. Yeah. As we start to close out the show, back to the food for a second, always a favorite topic of our listeners. Give us some of your favorite Mexican restaurants in San Diego.

**Kristi:** Oh gosh, I don’t even know where I would start. Javier’s is really good. I really like that. But I mean, a lot of times I’m going down to TJ as well, if I’m being honest. But yeah, a good chile relleno, I will never pass it by. Sometimes even just the trucks, the food trucks that you see, are just amazing. You can find some really good street tacos or empanadas, or yeah, absolutely good stuff.

**Brian:** Yeah, there’s nothing like fish tacos from San Diego.

**Kristi:** Yeah, exactly.

**Brian:** So, also being in San Diego, for those who haven’t been, could you just give a kind of a macro idea of how big the life science, medical device, Pharma…? Just give a broad understanding for those that haven’t, you know, driven on 5 and all the other freeways. How big is it? UC San Diego? All that stuff.

**Brian:** Awesome, well, Kristi, this has been a blast. I think our audience learned a lot about the life sciences industry. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

**Kristi:** Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, I appreciate it.

**Brian:** Absolutely. Well, thank you again for listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m your host, Brian Samson, and you can check us out at NearshoreCafePodcast.com. And lastly, another thanks to our sponsor, Plug Technologies. Plug.tech, a great way to find talent all over Latin America, including life sciences, for growing US companies. Take care, everyone. We’ll see you next time.

**Kristi:** Find me on LinkedIn, Kristi Brown on LinkedIn.

**Brian:** All right, thanks, everybody. Take care. Have a great day.

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