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Up until about three years ago Kevin Lind would likely have been identified as yet another gifted private equity executive \u2013 capable of issuing business remedies from the tip of his tongue.

At least in the minds of his CFO peers, who are accustomed to listening to PE pundits routinely hand down such remedies for ailing businesses. For Lind the CFO office at Arena Pharmaceuticals is a game changer, where he no longer hands down remedies but serves as a finance leader \u2013 an individual tasked with summoning others forward and building trust across an organization even as he or she sometimes completes necessary layoffs.

\u201cGood drugs can succeed in spite of bad management and bad management can fail despite good drugs,\u201d explains Lind, who says the frequent mismatch led him to want to get \u201cone step closer\u201d to management decision making.\xa0 Lind would take that one step after receiving a call from Amit Munshi, CEO of Arena Pharmaceuticals.

At first, Lind was less than interested. Arena\u2019s past struggles were not unknown to him \u2013 but Munshi encouraged Lind to take a close look at the company\u2019s pipeline. \xa0\u201cFrom an investment point of view the pipeline was really interesting and there was a turnaround opportunity if we got the right management team together,\u201d recalls Lind, who said knowing Arena was a turnaround \u2013 and not a standard CFO tour of duty \u2013 made it far more appealing. \xa0\u2013 Jack Sweeney