When the Plan Changed: The Story of Building ABD

When the Plan Changed is a graphic memoir about what happens when professional certainty disappears and experience has to become a plan. In August 2024, Ernesto, an experienced biotech business-development leader and Johns Hopkins professor, begins to see the company around him failing. When he has to warn Laurie, a gifted former student he personally hired, that her layoff is coming, the crisis stops being abstract. Soon, Ernesto realizes his own position may be next. Set among Baltimore rowhouses, late-night laptop screens, conference halls, and difficult phone calls, the series follows Ernesto as he turns years of relationships, judgment, and industry experience into ABD. The path is unglamorous: uncertain income, hard decisions, handwritten plans, early client meetings, and small victories that slowly make the company real. AI becomes part of the process, helping transform scattered ideas into systems and execution. But AI is not the founder of this story. This is a human story about loyalty, reinvention, and what it takes to keep building when the plan changes.