 Zarling was a S. L. Brown Scholar and holds a BA with Honors in Biology, an MA in Molecular Biology/ Biological Sciences from Dartmouth College, a Ph.D. in Virology/Oncology, with emphasis on pharmaceutical drug development, from Baylor College of Medicine and an Executive MBA in Marketing/Finance from Pepperdine University.Zarling was employed at SRI International as a program director in the pharmaceutical drug development division, where he led a team which developed drug targets, oncology drug candidates and development of companion diagnostic product candidates.Some of these were developed for public international companies and others were out-licensed to public and private companies.