Dear all, What a joy it is to address the Admescope 2021 Annual Letter as the new CEO. While my personal reflection to the past year comes with the flavor of few months of experience, I dare to extend it to further back – it already feels like the journey together had been longer, in all great ways!
After the very first few days, it became apparent that the Admescopians, a tribe of its own, approaches any thrown opportunity or challenge with a calm, determined “we-can-do-it” mindset, and welcomes the new by blending it to the team’s solid scientific and operational expertise in a blink. Ambition to develop and deliver is tangible. None of this should have come as any sort of a surprise to me, as I was congratulated with the very same sentiments after announcing my position and the career change, but it still made a difference to experience it firsthand. What a team!
The 2021 was significant for Admescope in many ways. We celebrated the 10th Anniversary since the foundation, and the 1st one as part of Symeres, our Dutch mother ship. The pandemic did not have an impact on our business other than postponing the celebrations from original dates, which was truly a minor nuisance. Our business continued with steady growth reaching the all-time high reflected by strong financials, number of clients, and increased number of talented personnel. Together with Symeres colleagues, we collaborated on integrated drug discovery projects across our multinational sites, teamed up for organizational developments, and found exciting opportunities and synergies across the services – what a great evolution that materialized according to plans laid out last year! As already became apparent, the year hallmarked CEO change with simultaneous introduction of a CSO position, and we look forward to 2022 with excitement and ambition, but most of all, with dedication to servicing and supporting our clients’ drug discovery and development efforts.
Our solid foundation in ADME and in vitro toxicity, and agile and flexible approach in servicing our clients is a propitious ground to build on. We will invest on expanding our services portfolio, operational digitalization, and Symeres-wide integration to provide our clients with seamless drug discovery and development services. Our team members cannot wait to return to live events and meetings with old acquaintances and getting new friends – we miss you! Virtualization has its advantages, of course, and going forward all hybrid collaboration models will continue being the norm.
Foretelling future is a funny tradition in the Finnish New Year eve, and I could not miss my chances after this exciting period. For those new to this fun, the tradition goes that a melted block of wax or tin is poured into a bucket of ice-cold water where it quickly solidifies, and the figure formed is interpreted by its’ various shapes and reflections when lighted with a candle. Whatever will come, but mine came out looking like a unicorn with a base of a rugged appearance, indicating prosperity, happiness, love, and joy. Welcome 2022 – we are ready!
Outi Kontkanen
CEO
