Student blogs

Meet the next alumni Marc Dominguez. He graduated from the Bioentrepreneurship program in 2024 and is now doing a graduate program at Novo Nordisk. In this blog you will learn about his experiences after the program and in his current journey.

⁠What was your background before starting the program?

Before starting the Master’s in Bioentrepreneurship I was very much on the “pure science” side. I did my BSc in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Barcelona, and during my last year I went to Paris to do my bachelor thesis at Sorbonne University, working on metabolic pathways related to chemotherapy resistance in glioblastoma.
Alongside my studies I was quite involved in student life and teaching. I was a student representative in several faculty committees, and I worked as a STEM and English tutor. I had also done an international year in the US during high school, so the idea of an international career was already in the back of my mind.
So when I applied to the programme, my profile was: strong scientific training, some leadership and teaching experience, and a growing curiosity about what happens to scientific ideas once they leave the lab.

What was your motivation to apply to the program?

I remember very clearly that feeling of: “I love science, but I don’t see myself spending the rest of my life at the bench.” During my bachelor’s I kept asking myself how we could actually get great research to the people who need it. I didn’t really have the language for “commercialisation”, “market access” or “business development” yet. I just knew there was a gap between the lab and the patient, and I wanted to work in that space.

When I discovered the Bioentrepreneurship programme at Karolinska, it clicked immediately. It was one of the few programmes that was explicitly about the intersection of life science, business and innovation. I liked that it was project-based, close to industry, and based at a medical university with a strong reputation. It felt like the fastest way to learn how healthcare innovation actually moves from idea to reality.
So I applied because I wanted to keep my scientific foundation, but learn a completely new “language”: strategy, business models, go-to-market, funding, all from a life science perspective.

What are you doing now after graduating from the program?

I’m currently in the Global Commercial Marketing Graduate Program at Novo Nordisk. It’s a two-year programme made up of three rotations of eight months each. You start in the global headquarters in Denmark, and then you go on two international rotations, one of which is in the field as a sales representative. So you literally get to see the business from strategy decks all the way to conversations with healthcare professionals. My first rotation is at the company’s HQ in Denmark, in a global commercial/marketing team. A typical day is a mix of project work, meetings and a fair amount of PowerPoint and Excel. I support things like brand planning, market analysis and the development of materials and initiatives for different countries. I work a lot with colleagues from medical, market access and local affiliates, so you get exposed to many functions very quickly.

The environment is very international and surprisingly open for questions. As a graduate you’re encouraged to be curious, reach out to people and take ownership of parts of projects, while still having guidance from more experienced colleagues. For me it has been a steep learning curve, but in a good way: you really start to understand how complex it is to bring a treatment to market and keep it there, and how many pieces beyond “just the science” have to work together. I’m especially excited about the upcoming rotations, because going out into the field as a sales rep and then working in another country will give a completely different perspective on the same products and strategies.

What skills or knowledge do you hold valuable from the program, and which have you found particularly helpful in your position today?

Looking back, a few things from the Bioentrepreneurship programme have been especially valuable:

1. Thinking in business models not just technologies

The programme really trains you to ask: who is the customer, who pays, what does the value chain look like, how does this become sustainable? That mindset is directly useful when working on commercial strategy at Novo Nordisk

2. Working in diverse, cross-functional teams.

Almost every course involved group projects with people from different backgrounds. Learning how to navigate different perspectives, expectations and working styles has been crucial in my current role, where I constantly collaborate with people from medical, marketing, finance, affiliates, etc.

3. Storytelling and pitching.

In the master’s we understood that different audiences require different messages, so really learning to turn complex science into a clear, concise story is something I use every single day.
Beyond specific tools, the programme gave me confidence that it’s possible to move from a pure science background into roles where you’re shaping strategy and working closer to patients and stakeholders. That mindset shift might be the most valuable thing I took with me.