Q&A WITH KEVIN DE JONG

Kevin DeJong is an associate in Goodwin’s Boston office.

BMW: When you were 8, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Kevin: When I was growing up, I read all sorts of books, pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I remember spending time at the local library after school where I would read for hours. When I was around 8 years old, I distinctly remember telling my mother that I wanted to be a “reader” when I grew up. I really thought that was a profession. As a lawyer now, I do a lot of reading, so maybe I became a “reader” after all.

BMW: Interesting facts about you?

Kevin: I often think about how my family came to live in the United States. During World War II, my great-aunt and -uncle in the Netherlands hid and protected a young Jewish girl during the Nazi occupation. The young girl’s parents didn’t survive the war, but she had extended family that had escaped to the United States before the war started. After the war, she joined her family in the United States, and in a gesture of gratitude, her family offered to bring my great-aunt and uncle to the U.S. and help them start a new life on a farm in Michigan. Around twenty years later, my father left his mother and six siblings behind in the Netherlands to join his uncle. He didn’t speak English and only had enough money to get him to Michigan. My dad still worked on his uncle’s farm in Michigan when I was born.

BMW: What spurred your interest in life sciences?

Kevin: My interest in life sciences was sparked during one of my first “real” jobs during college. I had an internship in a formulation development laboratory at GD Searle, now part of Pfizer, where I did all sorts of testing on tablets and capsules. I really enjoyed the scientific aspects of formulation development, and felt like I was helping to develop a product that would improve peoples’ lives in some way. I felt the same way in my time as a process engineer working in biotech, where I designed equipment and processes used to make a therapeutic protein. Now as a lawyer, I love that I still get to work with life sciences companies.

To learn more about Kevin DeJong, click here to view his full biography.

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