Strange and bittersweet. That’s how Claire Mazumdar describes her plan to step down from the top spot at Bicara, a biotech she helped form, and head out on parental leave before transitioning into a new role.
After creating Bicara and serving as CEO for nearly seven years, Claire Mazumdar is stepping down at the end of this year. Taking her place is Bicara Chief Operating Officer Ryan Cohlhepp—someone Mazumdar has worked with for 10 years.
“I think I always knew . . . in the hypothetical sense from the very beginning that there would come a time where his experience was best suited to take the organization forward,” Mazumdar said about Cohlhepp. “That was really [for] when we would be closer to commercial launch.”
Before Bicara, the duo worked at immunometabolism biotech Rheos Medicines, where Cohlhepp led research and development efforts. Before that, he served for more than a decade at Takeda’s oncology division, including as vice president of marketing, operations and analytics.
Starting Jan. 1, 2027, Cohlhepp will take the reins of Bicara while Mazumdar will transition into a new role as strategic advisor and vice chair of the board of directors.
The shift comes as Bicara ramps up for the potential market launch of lead asset ficerafusp alfa, a late-stage bifunctional EGFR/TGF-β antibody, as a first-line treatment for advanced head and neck cancer. The biotech is currently recruiting for a Phase 3 trial, with topline results expected in mid-2027.
With a possible product launch on the horizon, Mazumdar started to realize that Cohlhepp “was the right leader and that my lack of experience from that commercial standpoint was not what was best for Bicara.”
“My background is far more on the research and development side, having done work in cancer biology and more in clinical development,” she added.
Mazumdar isn’t stepping away from Bicara, though, viewing the change as more of an “evolution” of her role at the biotech. Before she starts her new position, though, Mazumdar is adding another member to her family.
“It’s maybe a little strange to go out on maternity leave beforehand, but you can never time these things perfectly,” she told Biospace in late August. “I’m in this purgatory state—it could be any moment, or it could be three weeks from now.”
Cohlhepp has already had a trial run as Bicara’s top leader. He served as acting CEO during Mazumdar’s previous maternity leave, taking the helm around the same time that the biotech closed a $165 million Series C in December 2023.
“Ryan at that time stepped in as interim CEO and allowed me the space and time to really have time with my family,” she said, adding how important it is for her to model work-life balance for her team.
Bicara’s executive team includes multiple women who have three children or more, Mazumdar said. She cited the company’s supportive and flexible environment as enabling those executives to “rise to the top of their careers.”
“I actually credit some of the men in our company for helping really continue to foster that environment,” she said. A lot of Bicara staffers work to maintain a new standard of work-life balance that they were able to experience for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Mazumdar.
Those leaders “had been working ludicrous hours at prior companies before COVID and finally got space and time to realize that they could be present with their families,” she said. “I think that was a really a formative time for people to realize we don’t want to go back to awful hours, and there is a balance to all of these things.”
As CEO, Mazumdar prioritized creating a hybrid work environment that doesn’t always require being in the office five days a week.
And her dedication to curating that balance seems to have paid off. “I think the best feedback I ever got about Bicara is when my employees tell me they don’t have the Sunday scaries,” she said, referring to a cultural phenomenon of dreading returning to work after the weekend.
When she thinks about leaving, Mazumdar feels a “bittersweetness” knowing she won’t be able to work with the Bicara team in such a direct role anymore. Her proudest achievement at the biotech is the team she’s helped build and support.
“Surround yourself with people that you trust and respect,” Mazumdar advised. “Know that there are going to be tough times—and times when things are good—but those are the people you want to wake up on a Monday morning and work with.”
First-time CEO surprises
Looking back on her time as a first-time CEO, Mazumdar said one of her least-expected challenges was securing funding.
Bicara launched in March 2021 with $40 million in seed money from parent company Biocon. Before founding Bicara, Mazumdar had served as a senior associate at prominent biotech VC firm Third Rock Ventures.
Given her background, she thought fundraising would be “more straightforward.” But Mazumdar quickly realized a lot of the peers she had made at Third Rock weren’t yet at the decision-maker level of their respective investment funds.
“It was a great launching off point, but I didn’t fully empathize just how big the role would be—always fundraising,” Mazumdar explained, adding that she didn’t realize how much she would internalize the “no”s initially.
“Early on, there is an aspect of being a very young female CEO that’s about building credibility,” she continued. “I had to let the clinical data speak for itself, because I couldn’t just rest on my reputation yet—it hadn’t been built.”
Ultimately, Bicara skipped series A, securing an oversubscribed $108 million series B in early 2023. Momentum picked up as ficerafusp alfa began to advance in the clinic, with Bicara closing an oversubscribed $165 million series C by the end of the same year. Less than a year later, Bicara went public.
“I got much better at building confidence once our data had matured,” the CEO said.
Lucky, multiple times over?
As for what the future holds, Mazumdar isn’t completely writing off leading another biotech one day. But for now her focus is on continuing to establish Bicara and build out a pipeline beyond ficerafusp alfa, which Mazumdar believes can serve as a best-in-class treatment for solid tumors.
“I got very lucky in helping build and found Bicara because we had a drug,” she said of ficerafusp alfa. “I don’t think people can be super lucky multiple times over, but if I feel the same way about another drug one day, maybe I’ll do it again.”
At the end of the day, Mazumdar—and her support system—are driven by the benefit that new therapeutics can bring to patients.
“My husband, by pure coincidence, works in the same field of head and neck oncology, and just what we’re seeing with these patients—we’re changing their lives,” Mazumdar smiled.
“When we get a letter from a patient about how they were able to see their 50th wedding anniversary because of our drug—that is why we do what we do.”
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a limited-time series featuring first-time women CEOs. Click here to read the first installment.
