00:02
Jacob Petersen
I chose a painting by Per Kirbeby that he painted in my favorite place in the world, a place called Læsø.

00:12
Jacob Petersen
It's an abstract painting. It has red and blue and green colors. It's very vibrant, like Læsø.

00:19
Jacob Petersen
This small, almost deserted island, where you really can't do anything than just be. You go out and you look at the sea, you look at the dunes, and then 30 minutes later, the colors are completely changed. I'm 62 years old. I've been there every year since I was two months old.

00:40
Jacob Petersen
And we have a small family summer house, it is only 50 square meters. It was built in the middle of nowhere very close to the sea. It's where we as a family come together and for me, a place to wind down in my busy life, which is sometimes difficult with the job I have. It's a place where I can be with the people I love the most in the entire world.

01:02
Jacob Petersen
We have a funny story. My grandmother had inherited the summer house from her aunt who was Stauning (a famous Prime Minister)'s secretary. And I think they were lovers and doing their thing in that summer house away from Copenhagen. So the summer house for sure has a long history. We love being the center court of what goes on in that summer house.

01:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Jacob Petersen, a Danish scientist and senior vice president of Novo Nordisk. Welcome Jacob.

01:54
Jacob Petersen
Thank you so much, Tina.

01:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's a pleasure having you here. We are talking to you online and I only see you on my computer screen. You're in Boston and I'm in Los Angeles. Where are you at the moment, and would you mind describing the location for our listeners?

02:12
Jacob Petersen
I am in one of Novo Nordisk's research facilities just outside Boston in a suburb called Lexington, where we have been building up our research facilities over the last few years. And I'm sitting in a meeting room where there is calm and quiet so I can concentrate on this interview, which I'm really looking forward to.

02:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I've been looking forward to it too. There's a very yellow wall behind you.

02:37
Jacob Petersen
I know. I know. It's supposed to calm you down, but I don't know if that works.

02:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You came to Boston in 2023 in the capacity of the leader of Novo Nordisk's Nucleic Acid Therapy Unit in the Boston area, and you are the head of the site in Lexington there. What attracted you to this particular role?

03:01
Jacob Petersen
I'm a scientist by heart and as a scientist, you are also an explorer. Novo Nordisk had been acquiring a company some years ago called Dicerna, and there were some issues with the integrations back to the company, which there always is when the biotech culture meets with the pharma culture.

03:21
Jacob Petersen
And I was asked to get our fantastic colleagues in Boston fully integrated into the Novo Nordisk family. I worked with some fantastic colleagues to integrate the American view on doing science with a more Danish, European view. You can say in Denmark and Europe we look more at risks. In the Boston, Massachusetts area, which is the innovation capital within the biotech industry, you look more at opportunities.

03:50
Jacob Petersen
With the merger of these two cultures, you can hopefully find a sweet spot where you still look a little bit at the risk, because it is risky business, what we are doing. Most of what we set out to do fails, and it takes decades to complete, so you need to be very patient. But then you can merge that with the view of Americans, that looks very much at opportunities.

04:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Does it mean you're more cautious? What does it mean?

04:17
Jacob Petersen
Europeans are in general a little bit more cautious and look at not so much the bright side as Americans. And Americans, in general, sometimes they're too optimistic, they very much look at the bright side. What if our idea came to life, think about how it could change the way we treat serious chronic diseases?

04:39
Jacob Petersen
And we also do that in Denmark, but we say, yeah, that will be fantastic, but these and these risks may materialize. And then we seem to get sometimes a little bit stuck on that in Europe.

04:52
Jacob Petersen
I'm of course making this a little bit cartoonish in terms of the difference between Americans and Europeans, but that's part of why you could say you have the American dream that people really think outside the box and look at opportunities, which I personally love.

05:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sounds like a good combination, though.

05:11
Jacob Petersen
Yeah, it is.

05:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What does nucleic acid therapies mean? I just said it like I knew what it meant. How would you describe what you do to someone who has absolutely no clue about the field that you are in? Somebody like me, for instance.

05:27
Jacob Petersen
What we do at Novo Nordisk is we develop drugs for people that suffer from serious chronic diseases. And we have a number of tools in our toolbox to do that. For example, if you are an insulin-dependent diabetic, you would need to get insulin. We can make that molecule and provide it to patients.

05:47
Jacob Petersen
You can have rare diseases where you have genes that are missing. We can provide those genes through gene therapy to patients. So we give patients a healthy version of the gene they're either missing or there's something wrong with it.

06:04
Jacob Petersen
Then you can have genes that are causing some of the serious chronic diseases because they are maybe overexpressed. So there are more of those genes and proteins than is good for you and you get sick. And nucleic acid therapies are called RNAi, inhibitory nucleic acids, they will inhibit genes that cause diseases.

06:29
Jacob Petersen
So if you have a gene that's causing a disease, we can give you these nucleic acids and it will tune down to a normal, healthy level, or just take it out completely depending on how much you need, and then hopefully the disease will go away. So nucleic acid can interfere with your ability to make disease-forming proteins or genes.

06:57
Jacob Petersen
I know it's very complicated, but it's a tool in our toolbox to address serious chronic diseases where we can turn off genes that cause disease.

07:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That sounds good.

07:09
Jacob Petersen
It is good when it works.

07:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes. You are the leader of quite a lot of employees, a mix of American and Danish, but I assume also international.

07:21
Jacob Petersen
We are close to 30 different nationalities. So a lot of different cultures, a lot of different viewpoints, which when you do research is very important, because you are basically trying to do something that has not been done before. And if everybody came from Denmark, where most have been to the same university and most have even had the same teachers, the diversity of thought would be very limited.

07:48
Jacob Petersen
And that's why we praise having diversity in our workforce. We bring in people from around the world to represent different views, to represent different lines of thinking. And that is just really, really important when you're doing something that is as hard as what we are trying to do and takes as long a time.

08:08
Jacob Petersen
When we start development of a drug and have an idea, maybe 1% of our ideas progress. So 99% of everything I do when I go to work doesn't succeed. Well, it succeeds in us proving whether it's working or not. So we have to do 99 things before we get to something that works, and then it, by the way, takes 10 to 15 years in terms of developing a drug.

08:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So patience is a virtue for you.

08:37
Jacob Petersen
Patience is key, and perseverance. So one thing is you need to be patient. Also, and there are many examples: actually most of the drugs we have in our pipeline, they've initially faced so much resistance because it's new and it's different and it's something else. And initially people will just like more of the same.

08:56
Jacob Petersen
But we are trying to say, what will be the need of the patients that we so proudly serve in ten, 15 years from now? And sometimes we get it wrong because the needs of the patients change. Or our competitors come with a fantastic drug and then we have to start all over again.

09:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We'll talk more about what you do later, but where do you live in Boston? Which part do you call home and do you feel at home in Boston?

09:21
Jacob Petersen
The answer to that question is very much yes, but I will try to elaborate a little bit more. I live outside Boston in a little town called Lexington. It's a suburb, ten miles from the center of Boston. People are friendly, they're curious. The neighbors are absolutely spectacular.

09:41
Jacob Petersen
It's a very green place, I feel I live in a forest. When I'm driving to work, the trees basically surround the road I'm driving on. And people are really smart. It's a place where education means a lot. From this little town, I think eight Nobel Laureates have been raised, and there are 38,000 people.

10:03
Jacob Petersen
So it's smaller than the size of Gentofte in Denmark. The schools are outstanding, and the climate is nice. The summers are a little bit warmer, a little bit more predictable, and the winters are a little bit colder, so I absolutely love it here.

10:19
Jacob Petersen
Of all the places I have lived, I have never felt so welcomed. The neighbors instantly come in and invite you for dinner, for lunch. They instantly come in and they're curious. They're curious who's moving in next door. In Denmark, I have lived places where it took five years before I basically said hello to the neighbors.

10:39
Jacob Petersen
That could also say something about me, but normally, I regard myself as a friendly and curious person. It was just so nice, the welcome we got over here. And people say, Americans, they say, how are you doing? We all know that. How are you doing? when you come into a store. And they say they don't really mean it.

10:56
Jacob Petersen
And of course they don't mean to get a long story about how you're doing when you walk into a store and stand in front of a person you have never seen before. But what it does to a person like me is it says, I have seen you as a human being. I see you come into my store, and I'm ready to engage and serve you. In Denmark, you can sometimes walk a little bit around before somebody comes in and says how can we help you?

11:23
Jacob Petersen
And I really like that spirit and culture where people are interested in you as a person. And it's not superficial because my neighbors, I had more deep conversations with them than I have with many of my, you can say, more superficial friends in Denmark I have known even for years because it just takes longer to get into a real Danish friendship. It's much easier in the US and people open up a lot more.

11:52
Jacob Petersen
And I really like that, especially when you come as a foreigner, that you are really welcomed into society and it's everybody from the mailman to the garbageman. My mailman, he brings biscuits for my dog every time he comes. We have these Postman Per buses that drive around with the mail. Every time my dog sees a post office car, it stops because they then expect to get a treat.

12:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's funny. That's fantastic.

12:20
Jacob Petersen
Yeah, it is.

12:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How would you describe the intellectual pull that this city has?

12:27
Jacob Petersen
I would say it is the intellectual capital of the world, of course, very much focused around the business I'm in, and that's the science and biotech and pharma industry. There's a high percentage of people who are well educated, not only in relation to the work they're doing, but also in relation to making a difference and helping other people, being good citizens.

12:52
Jacob Petersen
When we are watching now the US a little bit from the outside and some people may disagree with the politics that goes on here, please remember that the US is a lot of other things. It is basically like looking at all the individual countries in Europe. The US is just as diverse as all of that, and I think most Americans, they are fantastic people.

13:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And it's also fairly small for US standards, less than 700,000 people. It's actually close to Copenhagen's inhabitants numbers. Does it feel like a small town? Do you like that you're not in a big city like New York, for instance?

13:33
Jacob Petersen
First of all, I love New York. I would never live there, but I love going there and it's only a four hour drive from Boston, so it's quite easy to get there. I would say Boston is probably a little bit more like New York than Copenhagen in terms of big city feel. Wonderful parks, it's very close to the water, which is spectacular. You can get fantastic seafood and lobsters cost almost nothing. Everything else is really expensive.

13:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's go back to you and your career. You have been with Novo Nordisk for almost 25 years. It seems this is a company where people stay for a long time. Why do people stay? What made you stay with Novo Nordisk for this long?

14:15
Jacob Petersen
Actually, I'm getting closer to 35 than to 25.

14:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sorry!

14:20
Jacob Petersen
No, no, no, no. Don't be sorry. I basically had a career almost entirely at Novo. I had a few biotech adventures, but I came back. The ethical standards are really, really high. We do things for the right reasons. Of course we as a company also want to make money for our shareholders, no doubt about that.

14:40
Jacob Petersen
But people first and foremost come and work for Novo Nordisk because they want to make a difference for patients that suffer from serious chronic diseases. And there is nowhere better in the world for that. This is what every employee at Novo Nordisk focuses on whether they are cleaning the carpets in the meeting rooms, or they are in our factories, or they're actually doing the innovation that makes up our drugs.

15:06
Jacob Petersen
Novo Nordisk is right now servicing over 45 million patients that suffer from serious chronic diseases. And that's why I have stayed for that long.

15:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Could you speak a little more to the ethics of Novo Nordisk and how does it fit into the American business point of view?

15:25
Jacob Petersen
I don't see anybody that's working with me or any other employees at Novo Nordisk that says, let's make a lot of money from sick people. They say let's make a lot of drugs that can help people with serious chronic diseases. And having that attitude go through the entire company all the way from executive management to the people at the bottom is fantastic.

15:51
Jacob Petersen
And I also think that is what makes Novo Nordisk competitive, because when you do things out of passion, because you care and maybe not so much from making money, then the money will follow because then you do the right thing and you will automatically make money. But if you focus only on making money and forget all the other stuff, my experience is, then you don't do as well.

16:15
Jacob Petersen
I am fully aware that the reputation of the pharma industry as a sector is not very good. And there are several reasons for that. First of all, we are talking about treating people who are sick and everybody has an opinion about that. And everybody, including myself, I come from Denmark, we are socialists, right? Education and healthcare in my mind is a human right. And how does that then go hand in hand with you making money on sick people?

16:45
Jacob Petersen
And that's where some of the dilemmas that we are facing as an industry comes in. And of course we are trying to strike a balance where we make drugs that can help as many people who need it as possible, and at the same time try to make money so we can fuel the innovation machine so we can make tomorrow's new innovation that will help people even more.

17:09
Jacob Petersen
And that's the balance you have to strike. And then unfortunately, like in any other industry, people sometimes abuse that, and do things for the wrong reasons.

17:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How easy has it been for you to bring the company's business philosophy to the US?

17:28
Jacob Petersen
It has actually been very easy, because Americans also want to help people that suffer from serious chronic diseases. And sometimes if you put that in the forefront, it's actually in my mind a competitive advantage for Novo Nordisk in the US because we really speak about it and it is really our culture and it is really what we do. In my mind, it has only been a competitive edge. Of course we need to pay people a good salary because otherwise they won't get their foot in the door.

18:01
Jacob Petersen
In Denmark, we discuss more before we start doing. So we have long discussions about is this right or is this wrong. In the US, they just go and do. And again, this is very cartoonish trying to put forward a difference. In the US they do it and then they discuss whether that was the right thing to do. In Denmark, we discuss before we start. And there are advantages to both.

18:25
Jacob Petersen
If you can merge these two things, we can think about why are we doing it, and then maybe do things a little bit faster, it's a little bit looking at opportunities versus risks that we discussed before. It is the same kind of thing. It's not a matter of which is better, which is more difficult, but a matter of learning from each other. And I think the world in general could need a little bit more of that.

18:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The reputation of the pharmaceutical industry seems to be different in the US than in other parts of the world. What are the main challenges and differences?

19:00
Jacob Petersen
The pharma industry doesn't have a good reputation and there are many reasons for that. It is maybe more polarized in the US because you have people who are left outside of healthcare, they don't have access to healthcare like we are used to in Denmark. And then of course it becomes devastating for these people. It becomes devastating to look at pharma companies. Why can't they just give their drugs away?

19:27
Jacob Petersen
The entire political system in the US around healthcare will need to change because I don't think Americans are getting enough healthcare for the money they're putting in compared to, for example, Denmark. I have the best insurance money can buy over here, it's perfect. I still like the Danish healthcare system better.

19:50
Jacob Petersen
As I said before, I think healthcare is a human right. And unfortunately that is only a human right for a certain percentage of the US population, not for everybody. And I think that needs to change. I'm not too optimistic. I think it will take a long time. There is a lot of work to do before I think the US has a healthcare system that they can be proud of, because I think too many people are left outside.

20:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I have friends who say, well, you're only five to six million people, it's not implementable in the US. What do you have to say to that?

20:26
Jacob Petersen
I think it's absolutely wrong. Of course you can implement healthcare for everybody in the US. That's a political decision. You just need a government that's willing to take that step. But it's going to be very difficult because Americans, compared to Danes, are much more heterogeneous. In Denmark, we are much more homogeneous.

20:47
Jacob Petersen
There's a higher willingness to pay for your neighbor than if you look at the US broadly. That's why I think that the US healthcare system is probably, for some time, going to remain polarized. I wish it was different because they have the money, they have the political system if they wanted to do it, but maybe not all the voters are behind it.

21:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Novo Nordisk has become pretty well known, or at least the product Ozempic has become rather famous. Everybody knows Ozempic. Has this new-found fame changed anything within the company?

21:27
Jacob Petersen
It has changed a lot of things. We have become a very, very large company very, very rapidly. And we are all trying to adapt to that. Sometimes just looking five or ten years back, Novo Nordisk was a very different company. But I think with the size also comes possibilities to do even more for the patients that we serve, invest in technologies that will change healthcare as we see it, decades to come.

21:57
Jacob Petersen
And that is a fantastic journey to be part of where because of the size we have, we can do things we only dreamt of ten years ago. We of course need to be very humble in doing this and doing things for the right reason.

22:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How has the media interest in Novo Nordisk been from your point of view?

22:20
Jacob Petersen
The bigger a company becomes, the more media interest follows. The more money Novo Nordisk is making, the more spotlight you have on why are we doing things, are we doing things for the right reasons, as we discussed, and so on and so forth. The media attention has gone from just being curious to being much more direct, much more aggressive, showing a lot more interest than ever before.

22:50
Jacob Petersen
And that sometimes can feel unfair and uncomfortable, but I guess it goes with the territory. And then we just need to, as I say, stay humble in terms of trying to follow the growth, being respectful for the patients, being respectful for the shareholders, trying to develop a sustainable business in the long run.

23:14
Jacob Petersen
And those are some of the things that you as a big company struggle with when you suddenly become very big and you get a lot of spotlight. But mostly I think that the media interest in Novo Nordisk is warranted, and the conversations I personally have been having with the media have always been respectful and curious, and a nice way to share and maybe take you a little bit into the machine room of Novo Nordisk in terms of what are we thinking about what we are doing and how we are doing it.

23:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Ozempic was and is a diabetes drug. How involved were you in this "wonder drug," like The New York Times called it, which turned out to have other abilities, to induce weight loss, for instance, which was not what you really intended it to be?

24:07
Jacob Petersen
I was very involved in developing that drug, a long time ago now. And there were many discussions about whether it was the right drug to do. It was absolutely a fascinating story of drug development and how many obstacles things that potentially can make a big difference have to go through. It's a little bit like J.C. Andersen's fairytale, The Ugly Duckling. That's how it is to be a drug developer.

24:35
Jacob Petersen
As I said initially, when you start something new that later on proves to be life changing for many people, whatever drug it is, it almost always initially faces a lot of resistance because the more groundbreaking and new it is, the more people will say, well, what's the risk, and is it really going to pan out? And there's a lot of risk of doing this and it's going to take a long time.

25:05
Jacob Petersen
That's the fascinating thing about being a scientist because, to a large degree, it is innovation brought forward by people who are extremely passionate about what they're doing. It's brought forward not necessarily because they get a huge amount of support, but because they really, as individuals, believe in it.

25:31
Jacob Petersen
And the fantastic thing about Novo Nordisk is that, even if Novo Nordisk as a company doesn't believe in a concept right away, we are still allowed to do it. That's one of the other reasons why we really like being at Novo Nordisk, that we are allowed to be curious. We are allowed to spend a certain amount of our time and efforts and money on things that we may be not, here and now, believe in. Because what if this turns out to be the next fantastic drug?

26:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes became personal for you when your daughter Vita was diagnosed. How did this affect you in your professional work that all of a sudden a patient was your own flesh and blood?

26:17
Jacob Petersen
So I've worked with Type 1 diabetes my entire career, and I worked in nonprofit organizations and patient organizations, so it was already quite personal for me. I've spoken to a lot of patients, given talks for patients, about treatment, about research, for 25 years, before my daughter got Type 1 diabetes.

26:39
Jacob Petersen
But when she got Type 1 diabetes, it was really a humbling experience for me because I thought I was really smart, I thought I knew everything about treatment of Type 1 diabetes. I thought I knew how it was to be a patient, to be honest. And when my four-year-old daughter Vita, which is eight years ago, got Type 1 diabetes, I found out I knew very little about what it was to be a patient with a serious chronic disease.

27:11
Jacob Petersen
In this case, Type 1 diabetes, where you require multiple injections of insulin every day, where you need to measure your blood glucose multiple times a day, where you have several hundred independent thoughts just around being a patient with that disease.

27:30
Jacob Petersen
Every time you eat an apple, you have to say, what is my blood glucose? Every time you get up and do a little bit of exercise, or run around and play, you have to say, how's my blood glucose? Every time you have a meal or something to eat, you have to say, how much is it? And then you need to get insulin to correct for the blood glucose.

27:49
Jacob Petersen
So basically everything you do, all day, you have to think about. I didn't know that. I thought, okay, you have to take insulin maybe five times a day. How tough can it be? It doesn't take a long time to do the injections, but it's all the surrounding things about being a patient.

28:07
Jacob Petersen
Is my daughter not able to go on play dates with her friends, because if their parents don't know how to treat diabetes, where if you take one drop of insulin, you are okay, take two, you're dead. So it's a disease where it's absolutely amazing that you leave it to patients, but there's no other choice because it's hundreds of decisions every day you have to make.

28:34
Jacob Petersen
And because my daughter was only four years old, my wife — mainly my wife — and me, became patients, and that was humbling. But if God were to put a Type 1 diabetic patient in a family, I'm very thankful that he put it into my family because it gave me a completely different perspective in terms of doing my job.

28:57
Jacob Petersen
And it gave me a different perspective in terms of why I go to work. I was very passionate about helping people before, but that deepened that perspective a lot. And it also deepened the perspective on helping others than Type 1 diabetic patients.

29:15
Jacob Petersen
And it gave me humility. If you're not a patient yourself, it is really difficult to imagine how tough it can be and what patients that we serve struggle through every day, but also gave me a direction that these patients need better drugs to be able to live a better life.

29:35
Jacob Petersen
So, it gave me a lot of things that I'm really, really grateful for. It was not just grief and agony. I cried like crazy when I found out she had diabetes. I'm really thankful today for everything that has taught me.

29:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How is she doing?

29:49
Jacob Petersen
She is the spirit of life, and she has been living with diabetes for eight years. She never, ever complains. I just try to explain how difficult this disease is and how big a limitation it has in her life, but she never ever complains. She's always happy.

30:08
Jacob Petersen
I have six kids and I'm proud of all of them. But it makes me really, really proud to be Vita's dad, the way she is conducting herself, the way she's always thinking about helping others. And I also think it gave her a lot of things, being a patient, not taking everything for granted. And also focusing on helping others that maybe don't have it as easy as he does.

30:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I will turn the subject slightly. Novo Nordisk, for the first time ever, has a non-Dane as the chief executive, the Iranian-born Maziar Mike Doustdar.

30:46
Jacob Petersen
You can call him Mike.

30:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'll call him Mike. He grew up in the States and has been part of Novo Nordisk since 1992, another one with a long history in the company. How do you think this will change Novo Nordisk, that a non-Dane takes the lead?

31:03
Jacob Petersen
I don't think it's important, whether it's a Dane or non-Dane. I think it's important who you are as a person, and Mike is absolutely a person that will carry the Novo Nordisk culture into the next century. He is a person with the right values. He is a person that wants to help treat patients with serious chronic diseases, and he's also a good businessman.

31:31
Jacob Petersen
I have a lot of admiration for Mike and a lot of trust that he is just what Novo Nordisk needs now, the place we are at. With the competition a company like Novo Nordisk is facing, with what we want to do for patients, that's what we need right now.

31:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You touched upon it. You are yourself a leader. What makes a good leader?

31:58
Jacob Petersen
I once read a book that interviewed 500 leaders in order to find commonalities among the 500 great leaders, and the conclusion was actually quite interesting. There are no commonalities. And yet again there is. And one of the commonalities is, if you are to be sustainable as a leader, you're true to yourself, you're true to the employees around you and you are authentic.

32:27
Jacob Petersen
If you are not authentic, if you go to work and are somebody else that you are not, you are not going to last and you are not going to be a good leader. And I think that's another thing why I'm very proud of being at Novo Nordisk. There are many, many authentic leaders that are true to who they are and what they believe in.

32:45
Jacob Petersen
And if you have been in Novo Nordisk for 30 years, that's pretty much a lot of the same thing for many of the leaders that we know. We have to treat our customers, the doctors and patients with respect. We know we have to treat our employees with respect, and we know we have to be authentic. And that is both promoted and encouraged, that we act as authentic leaders within the Novo Nordisk culture.

33:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Your career started in Denmark. When did you know that you wanted to become a scientist and how did you zoom in on studying biochemistry, immunology, autoimmunity, endocrinology and diabetes?

33:30
Jacob Petersen
So originally I wanted to become a scuba diver and work with Jacques Cousteau. When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau, he was a French person traveling around the world and taking people underwater. I was so fascinated about that. So you can say the natural sciences have always interested me.

33:51
Jacob Petersen
Then after high school, I didn't get really good grades, to be totally honest. I got good grades in the stuff I was interested in, and not so good grades in the stuff I was not interested in.

34:03
Jacob Petersen
And I really wanted to become a doctor, to help people. I was simply not good enough to get into med school. And then I thought, okay, what's the second best thing? And that was biochemistry. And then I started biochemistry and immunology and endocrinology and all of that. And that was really when I was awakened as a scientist.

34:27
Jacob Petersen
And then I got the opportunity to do my thesis work at Novo Nordisk at a place called Hagedorn Research Institute, which was a basic research institute that Novo Nordisk was funding. And they were only doing basic research. They were not doing product related research.

34:42
Jacob Petersen
And as a young PhD student, I got to travel the world. I got to engage with other scientists basically all over the world, from China to India to the US. And I was absolutely blown away. Meeting, as a young scientist, all these incredibly smart people that want to innovate, that want to change the world, from different perspectives and for different reasons and from different cultures, was absolutely amazing.

35:10
Jacob Petersen
And that's when I started in diabetes — Type 1 diabetes to begin with, and later on, Type 2 diabetes, and then obesity and what we call cardiometabolic diseases, like heart failure and kidney disease and a lot of other diseases. And that has been an absolutely fantastic journey to be on.

35:29
Jacob Petersen
And then I have worked in Novo Nordisk for more than 30 years now, having a lot of different roles and responsibilities, where I've been able to utilize all my scientific skills and all my leadership skills. And that has been really great.

35:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you have, at any point, a mentor of any sort, somebody who stood out and brought you in the right direction or inspired you to become what you became?

35:56
Jacob Petersen
Earlier on I had mentors at the Hagedorn Research Institute, but I never had a Nobel Laureate that I thought, oh, if I could ever become like him, it would be fantastic. It was more people working with people at that place, where there was a lot of camaraderie, where there were a lot of common goals, doing the right things, trying to make big discoveries that could change the way we treat some of these serious chronic diseases that we have been discussing, like diabetes.

36:26
Jacob Petersen
And then there were a lot of, you can say, student peers that were very inspirational. It was motivating, it was captivating because we could inspire each other. When we got good results in the lab, we could share it not only with the rest of the world, but also your close friends. So I wouldn't say that there is a person that has inspired me scientifically like that.

36:52
Jacob Petersen
But there is a person that has inspired me in terms of being a human being. And that is Nelson Mandela. Being treated like him, being in jail for decades, and then coming out of jail and treating his, you can say, opponents that had been suppressing him for decades like he did — that's a human being after my book. So he's a big idol of mine as a human being and a big inspiration for me that can also inspire me in terms of how I treat people I meet in my work and in my personal life.

37:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Ah okay. What was your first job interview like where you had to sit down and tell somebody what your qualifications were?

37:43
Jacob Petersen
I actually never had a job interview like that. When I talk to head hunters, it's more a curious conversation about what that position holds of possibilities. And then of course, you can speak a little bit about yourself, about what you can bring into the future possibilities. But it's so much about talking about yourself. It had been engaging in interesting conversations about all the possibilities that particular position held.

38:13
Jacob Petersen
That actually is a really interesting question, Tina, because normally a job interview is what can you bring and what do you want in salary and blah, blah, blah. But that has never been the case. There always has been a curious discussion about the possibilities in the position.

38:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you look for in people?

38:30
Jacob Petersen
First of all, I normally form a decision very fast, and you can call it intuition. What we look at in new leaders is authenticity, curiosity and then being a good person. And then of course, all the scientific skills that you need to bring, that of course needs to be in order. And if that is not in order — you don't have a PhD, for example, if it's a PhD-like job or if it's a leadership job, then you also need leadership experience and what have you.

39:03
Jacob Petersen
And that's of course a prerequisite that you have all of that. But that is only one part of the equation. Then there is, who are you as a person? What can you bring in terms of diverse viewpoints? How do you work together with people? How do we think you're going to fit into the Novo Nordisk culture? And so on and so forth.

39:24
Jacob Petersen
Also, being cognizant that we also want people who can challenge the Novo Nordisk culture, that can evolve us as a company. People often talk about the Novo Nordisk culture as something static. It isn't. The 30 years I've been here, it has evolved tremendously, and it should continue to do so. And we are looking for people that can be part of that journey in evolving us as a company and the way we do things.

39:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's not the first time that you worked in the US. What brought you to the US the first time and what was the transition like back then?

40:01
Jacob Petersen
I was basically a very young scientist. Novo Nordisk has acquired a biotech company called ZymoGenetics, and the head of research, Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, he asked whether I wanted to go over there because there were not that many Danes going back and forth.

40:16
Jacob Petersen
And I just thought, wow, is he really asking me? I was basically just out of school. So I took that opportunity and it was three fantastic years. It was in the heydays of, you can say, the human genome being sequenced, where we got to know all the genes in the human genome. And we thought that within a few years we would know every function of every gene.

40:43
Jacob Petersen
Now more than 30 years later, we are at the tip of the iceberg, which is the absolutely fantastic thing about science. It's so hard to predict what the outcome is. But in those days, we thought we had a few years to predict the function of every human gene, and we were so wrong. There was a strong belief that we could actually do that.

41:07
Jacob Petersen
And that's what I worked on in Seattle, at an absolutely fantastic biotech company called ZymoGenetics. And in a fantastic environment with mountains and seas and —

41:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And rain.

41:20
Jacob Petersen
No — you know what? That's a rumor that people from Seattle started because they don't want people from California moving up. So they just say it rains all the time.

41:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I've been to Seattle. It was raining.

41:31
Jacob Petersen
But I can tell you it rains more in Boston. There's more precipitation in Boston than there is in Seattle. It was just because the housing prices in California were going up and then people were saying, where can we move? And they said, we can move to Seattle. And then people in Seattle said, no, we don't want all the people from California moving up.

41:47
Jacob Petersen
So they said, it's raining all the time, you're not gonna like it here. I know that's just a fun story, but the climate is absolutely amazing. And then you're close to Canada, which is also really nice.

42:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes. That is nice. What does it mean to you personally that you get to work abroad while still being part of a Danish company? Do you feel you are growing as a person?

42:13
Jacob Petersen
It's amazing to get an opportunity to go to, in this case, both Seattle, which was my first trip abroad, but now Massachusetts. I'm learning new things every day. Every day I connect with people that are a lot smarter than me. Every day I work with people who inspire me, who give me new ideas.

42:36
Jacob Petersen
So I'm on a lifelong learning journey and I'm eternally grateful that I have this opportunity. I would also learn a lot of things if I stayed in Denmark. You just take it up a notch if you go abroad. So to all Danes that are listening, thinking about, should I go abroad and work in the US, the answer to that question is positively yes. You are never ever gonna regret it.

43:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There was just an article in Kristeligt Dagblad where it said it's very hard for Danes who've been abroad to come back. They're not as respected as they should be.

43:11
Jacob Petersen
It's funny. I will agree it's harder going back than coming over here. My own experience coming back to Denmark the first time was actually hard. And it's because of many of the things that we have discussed here. People in the US are really, really open. They are a little bit more curious. Danes are maybe a little bit more reserved.

43:30
Jacob Petersen
Schools are very different. All my kids have always been in public schools. The schools that my kids go to, they're really good. There's no noise in the classroom, there's no bullying, kids go there to learn. My kids actually are missing the Danish schools because it's maybe a little bit more loose, you have longer periods between each hour where you can go and play and be socially together.

43:54
Jacob Petersen
But it's a little bit looking at risk versus opportunities, at least in the area I'm in, which is very privileged because it has a strong focus on education. And I will tell you how strong that is compared to Denmark. They spend a lot more resources in the area I'm in.

44:11
Jacob Petersen
In the small city I'm in, they're contemplating building one high school and spending more than five billion DKK on one high school, and that's a public school. So it just shows how much emphasis they put on good education. So that's gonna be one of the hard things —

44:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
In your area?

44:33
Jacob Petersen
In my area. And that's why I also said I'm in a privileged position in the area I live in. I'm fully aware of that. And then the openness and curiosity, I'm gonna miss that.

44:43
Jacob Petersen
What I'm looking forward to going back, when that happens, is that I am by heart a socialist, and I believe that we should take care of our neighbors. I believe in my heart, as we have been discussing, that everybody should have access to healthcare. I believe in my heart that everybody should have access to education.

45:08
Jacob Petersen
And many of the social services that come from being in Denmark, I'm a strong supporter, I'm a strong supporter for the high taxes that we pay in Denmark. So there are certain things that I'm not gonna miss from the US but there are also a lot of things that I am gonna miss.

45:22
Jacob Petersen
But we can learn from each other. And I think having a foot in two cultures that you can bring the best from these two cultures with you in your further journey in life. I don't know if that makes sense.

45:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It does make a lot of sense. It rings a bell. My final question to you: do you have a bucket list of things you would like to do, both personally and professionally? What are the dreams that you still like to fulfill?

45:53
Jacob Petersen
Professionally, my dream is to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes. I have even promised my daughter I will be part of that. Whether I will succeed in that, I don't know. But I can tell you myself and a lot of colleagues at Novo Nordisk are working really hard on that specific topic.

46:14
Jacob Petersen
I work in patient organizations right now. I don't have all the time in the world to do it, but I've been part of starting up some patient organizations in rare diseases. I would like to do that a lot more than I'm doing now, give back to society.

46:28
Jacob Petersen
And then there are certain places in the world, certain places in Africa, I would like to visit. And certain things that I would like to do. But I don't have a list that I'm checking up against and saying, shit, I'm missing out because I haven't done that. I try to live a little bit more in the moment and if there are some things I really, really would like to do, then do it. Don't wait.

46:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How about scuba diving?

46:52
Jacob Petersen
Exactly. I'm an accomplished scuba diver, and I love doing it. I haven't had any time to do it for a very long time, but I have done it a lot. So I try not to sit down and when I'm one day not working at Novo Nordisk, then be bitter for all the things I didn't do. I try to do them in between.

47:09
Jacob Petersen
And that both goes for helping people that need more help than they're able to provide for themselves and working in a nonprofit patient organization. Don't wait. Just go out and do it. You shouldn't have a long bucket list because you may never, ever get to it.

47:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
On that note, don't wait, just go and do it —

47:30
Jacob Petersen
Exactly.

47:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We'll say thank you so much, Jacob, for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us today.

47:38
Jacob Petersen
It has been a big pleasure for me, and thank you for having me. It has been a really interesting conversation, Tina.

47:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you.

47:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Jacob Petersen chose Per Kirkeby's Uden titel, Læsø or Untitled, Læsø from 2001 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.