Tony Jones on Achieving Clarity in Quality Leadership

From rock guitarist to VP of Corporate Quality, Tony shows how principles, clear choices, and modern tools like AI can level-up how quality leaders think and operate.

In today's episode, Hemish was joined by Tony Jones, Vice President, Corporate Quality at Syneos Health.

Tony’s path is anything but typical: NHS clinical biochemistry, clinical pharmacokinetics at Beecham/GSK, a move to France, and then landing, almost by accident, in QA leadership in New Jersey. He went deep on GLP and data principles, published prize-winning work, and has since focused on education, strategy, and the creative application of regulation to help teams do their best work.

He talks about the following:

• The unconventional route from aspiring guitarist to Director of QA and beyond.
• What clinical labs taught him about data and why that matters in pharma/biotech quality.
• GLP as a canvas: distilling regulation into simple, durable principles.
• Data integrity beyond acronyms: accuracy, completeness, consistency and study reconstruction.
• Why strategy is a set of choices (Roger Martin) and leaving room for emergence (Mintzberg).
• Decision-making lenses leaders can actually use: broaden options, avoid false binaries, and think before acting.
• Critical thinking by design: two questions - “What’s going on?” and “What should I do about it?”.
• AI in the quality toolkit: daily use cases, custom agents, and why bottom‑up experimentation matters.
• Training and culture: shifting from static courses to on-demand, problem-first learning.
• Career advice: learn continuously, evidence change, take morning walks, make space for reflection.

Tony is a thoughtful, principles‑driven quality leader who blends scientific depth with practical strategy and a genuine passion for learning and teaching.

Thank you Tony for sharing your incredible journey.

Hope everyone enjoys the show!