September 29, 2020
On the second day of the trip, we woke up and caught a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, experiencing our first border challenge of the trip, where we discovered that our honest story, that we were conducting interviews with local pharma and other businesses about COVID-19 and healthcare, satisfied the authorities.
Upon arriving in Dublin, we met with Graham Hogan, who runs a small, family healthcare business. Our primary takeaway from that conversation and our visit to Dublin more broadly was that the most important decisions made by Irish people — family and community decisions — are typically made at the pub, and the pandemic has taken that away from people, which is having an outsized impact on daily life. As a mark of respect, our next stop was the Guinness factory, where we were able to get some amazing pictures that would likely have been impossible in non-pandemic times. After that visit, we met with Gary McAuslan, who is looking to start a viral vector company in Dublin.
We then headed north toward Belfast, Northern Ireland, where we met outdoors with Kristof Szent-Ivanyi, COO of ChainbridgePharma, to discuss COVID-19’s impact on supply chains and sustainable growth before boarding a ferry to Cairnryan, Scotland, finding ourselves an old hotel to crash for a few hours.
THE TEAM MET WITH:
Graham Hogan, Hogan Healthcare; Gary McAuslan, aCGT Vector; Kristof Szent-Ivanyi, ChainbridgePharma
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