Oscar Gonzalez is a consultant, entrepreneur, and the cofounder of Sigma Consulting, a firm dedicated to helping biopharma and biotech companies fix the operational breakdowns that stall progress and exhaust teams. Known as the Candid Consultant for his no-nonsense style, Gonzalez has built his career at the intersection of science, business, and operations—roles that give him a rare vantage point on how silos, inefficiencies, and misaligned strategies undermine performance.
His expertise spans research operations, clinical trial planning, portfolio operations, and business operations. Early in his career, Gonzalez often found himself pulled into undefined, cross-functional roles where leadership needed someone who could connect the dots. Those “side quests,” as he calls them, revealed systemic gaps in how organizations operated—and sparked his mission to help leaders bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Today, through Sigma Lab Consulting, Gonzalez works directly with teams in hands-on projects and implementation strategies, going far beyond the traditional consultant model of diagnosing problems without staying to help fix them.
Gonzalez’s background includes academic research roles at institutions such as Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh, Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Boston University. He later transitioned into industry, where he served in roles like lab manager, program manager, and project manager in R&D and clinical operations for companies like LifeMine Therapeutics and Karyopharm Therapeutics, Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, Lila Sciences, and Pioneering Medicines. In 2018, just a year into his role as a program manager, he earned an ICURE award for transforming clinical trial operations by enabling transparency and actionable insights for leadership and stakeholders. He has presented at the American Association for Cancer Research, Outsourcing Clinical Trials New England, and the American Society of Quality, and he frequently lectures university students on career success in life sciences and biopharma.
Oscar earned his BS in biology from Longwood University, an MS in bioimaging with a nuclear medicine focus from Boston University School of Medicine, and an MBA in strategy from Boston University Questrom School of Business. Sigma Lab Consulting has been recognized as a certified minority business by the Greater New England Supplier Diversity Council and the Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Office.
A Virginia native now living in Ayer, Massachusetts, Gonzalez shares life with his wife and two young boys. A lifelong athlete, he has coached and competed in baseball and swimming, competed in rowing in college, and still sneaks in golf or tennis when time allows. He also hosts the Lean by Design podcast and writes on The Candid Consultant Substack, where he brings his wit, curiosity, and candid style to leadership and operational topics.
Learn more at sigmalabconsulting.com or connect through linktr.ee/sigmalabconsulting.
