Founder, MCZ Align

Here’s my story.

For a guy with mediocre grades on the five-year plan, I worked my way into some of the top bulge bracket investment banks. What I have come to find is that all humans desire real connection- and that comes from getting outside of yourself and making it about others. In my mind, there is something so deeply spiritual about this - and it has become my mission to make a world of opportunities by bringing people closer together.

I am an expert at this and it is truly an art form.

I have a knack for being able to regularly switch from linear to non-linear thinking, which is so important in the complexities of ideating with customers about new technologies and what is required to fill those gaps in talent.

My first experiences as a recruiter were working directly with life sciences companies placing executives within HEOR groups in pharma and data companies that were selling into pharma. This experience then progressed into working with Pharmaceutical Brands and technology companies that were supporting Commercial activity within the Life Sciences. I learned the value of staying organized and keeping track of multiple candidates, all their opportunities, and keeping everyone on the same page with shifting timelines and priorities. If there is no structure in place, things can get chaotic.

After doing this for about 14 years, I got an opportunity to become a VP of Strategic Partnerships for a seed round start up called Hu-manity.co that was creating narratives around people being able to own and monetize their health data. Multi stakeholder engagement planning was like working on an executive search on steroids. The value of prioritization, clear communication and calibration with my managers, customers, and team became paramount. These lessons were painful but necessary! This role required me to partner with retail pharmacies, foundations, associations, and societies, health systems, payers, as well as emerging business models across care delivery with the goal of user adoption.

It was during this time that I got familiar with pitching to Venture Capital and multiple use cases across care delivery.

I then went to New Enterprise Ventures, a business development focused value builder, where I built an executive search business based in business development within technology. I placed multiple cofounders of companies and made several enterprise deals for my customers. At any given time, I was working on multiple executive searches and managing an active deal pipeline for multiple technology companies all at the same time.

My organizational skills really sharpened here, this has become one of my core strengths.

Whether I was the tip of the spear in creating enterprise deals with major stakeholders or working on big executive searches, the common denominator is staying deeply organized, all while being able to shift to non-linear to linear thinking, and keeping my values at the center of it all.

Today I am launching MCZ Align. I have had so many valuable experiences as a strategic partnership professional and a knowledge builder for venture capital and private equity backed companies. I am far from perfect and have made A LOT of mistakes. I have a good understanding of what it takes to win in this market and a lot of failures along the way to be able to recognize it.

Today marks the road home after a long journey. And it marks the beginning of your travels in your career trajectory.

Get ready for a great ride!

Let’s Get To Work!

Mark Czubachowski