BioPharma leaders call for gender diversity
Posted: 12 January 2017 | | 1 comment
More than 100 prominent life sciences executives, investors, and business leaders have signed an open letter calling on the industry to increase gender diversity…
On January 11, 2017, more than 100 life sciences industry leaders outlined guiding principles and best practices to improve gender diversity throughout industry. The full text of the letter is below.
Click here to sign on to the letter and ongoing efforts to improve gender diversity in life sciences
An Open Letter to the BioPharma Community:
Now that it’s 2017, we are choosing to write this letter to provide recommendations for best practices to establish gender diversity as a priority for the biopharma industry.
Last year’s open letter to the industry sparked a dialogue that led to changes in some company practices, new training programs, regional gender diversity initiatives and much more. But we believe this is just the start of the work to be done.
Below is the culmination of recent recommendations collected from industry executives for guiding principles and a top 10 list of best practices that we believe will continue the momentum of 2016 into 2017 and beyond.
Guiding Principles for Gender Diversity as a Priority for the BioPharma Industry:
- We, as community leaders, commit to driving diversity and inclusion in the biopharma industry.
- Diversity is good for the business performance of our industry. Research proves that diversity leads to:
- Better decision making
- Increased productivity and financial performance
- Enhanced engagement, recruitment and retention of talent
- To ensure that the biopharma industry thrives and is sustainable, we, as community leaders, see it as our responsibility to drive diversity as a top priority.
- Unconscious biases are ubiquitous and difficult to pinpoint and address. Still, we need to make a conscious commitment to eradicate unconscious biases in recruitment, performance evaluation, promotion and decision making in order to improve gender diversity.
- While we recognise that there are many forms of diversity needed to ensure the future of our industry, there are clear best practices that can be implemented now to increase gender diversity.
Top Ten Best Practices for Increasing Gender Diversity in the BioPharma Industry:
- We as executives and board members declare gender diversity as a priority, as a key value and ethos. We commit to living it visibly at all of our companies and organisations.
- We will create opportunities for open dialogue on enhancing gender diversity and ensuring an inclusive environment, both within our organizations and across the industry.
- We recognize the importance of formal sponsorship programs to ensure diversity in our executive leadership pipeline and commit to building these programs in our companies.
- We also recognize that it is important to provide formal mentorship programs to encourage women to engage with executives, both inside and outside of our organization. We commit to building these programs in our companies.
- We will ask our board members to be active sponsors of women who are “board ready” to pursue board appointments. We will endorse and sponsor our high potential female talent to take part in training programs to become “boardroom ready”.
- We will measure and track promotion of female talent to senior management positions.
- We will seek out and celebrate positive role models within our organisations.
- We will review our hiring processes and train our hiring managers on diversity and inclusion as a priority.
- We agree with the importance of setting concrete hiring goals to achieve gender parity and inclusion at each level of our organizations and to measure and report regularly on our progress towards goals.
- We will support the work of our trade organizations, like MassBio, on industry-wide efforts to improve gender diversity at the macro level.
We, as community leaders, have the responsibility to ensure our biopharma industry can continue to grow and thrive. We need to take a holistic view on the next generation of leaders to prepare for the future. We believe that diversity and inclusion will deliver better results for our industry and society. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead by example, setting the tone and pace for the biopharma industry.
We invite you to join us, to sign this open letter, and to work to implement these practices to ensure the continued success of our industry.
Click here to sign on to the letter and ongoing efforts to improve gender diversity in life sciences
Robert K. Coughlin Abbie Celniker Steve Woit Sarah MacDonald David Lawrence Lucchino Kate Bingham Terry McGuire Mike O’Hara Christoph Westphal Annalisa Jenkins Steve Kafka Travis McCready William McDermott Chris Garabedian Christopher de Souza Geoff MacKay James Hoyes Robert Gottlieb Melissa Bradford Klug Antony Loebel Alice Pomponio Rick Russell Marina Bozilenko Mark Perrin Eileen Coveney Arthur Hiller Nancy Lurker Bob Linke Ailis Tweed-Kent Patrice Milos Jonathan Lewis David Moller Ed Mascioli Bram Goorden Doug Kahn Laurie Halloran Jim Jensen Carolyn Green Deborah Dunsire Patrick Tricoli Bruce Rychlik Erik Lundh Tara Schutz John Mendlein Kathy Williams Chandra Ramanathan Vin Milano Marianne De Backer Sue Dillon William Newell Steve Tregay Vivek Ramaswamy Wendye Robbins Elizabeth Franzmann Filipe Gaspar John Furey Bonnie Fendrock Glen Giovannetti Rob Perez | Cissy Young Jodie Morrison Susan Windham-Bannister David Meeker Michael J. Pellini Phillip Sharp Ann Stanesa Lisa Olson Edward Kaye Ivana Magovčević-Liebisch Suzanne Bruhn Robert Urban Scott Gillis Michael D. Ehlers Geoff Cox Lawrence S. Wittenberg Kumar Srinivasan Kathleen W. Tregoning Mark R. Bamforth Robert Ward Tina Caporale Andrea F. Rabney Christopher T. Walsh Marian Nakada Mike Rice Adam Gridley Bob Carpenter Alexis Wallace Deniz Kural Praveen Tipirneni Paula Soteropoulos Philippe Lopes-Fernandes Jennifer Wheler Sheila DeWitt Lisa McKerracher Michael Schopperle Leslie Williams Rosanna Kapeller Art Krieg Anne Deconinck Guy Villax Mary Thistle Kathy Bowdish Jody Rose Ron Renaud Joanna Horobin Cat Oyler Marion Dorsch Jay Luly Lynn Seeley Alvin Shih Arielle Jackson John Tagliamonte Jeff Marrazzo Lisa Dalton Ana Maiques Javier Barrientos Karl Simpson |
Click here to sign on to the letter and ongoing efforts to improve gender diversity in life sciences
It is unbelievable that in the XXI century we are struggling to achieve “gender diversity.” If many companies and institutions still do not understand the need to have women having the same rights in all sense as men, then those institutions from many points of view are still living in the XIV century or earlier. If some people working with scientists oppose the equal rights of both women and man, then they are in the wrong field. Indeed, history have shown us that many women working under disadvantageous conditions have excel in science and contribute to its progress. Hopefully, in a few years more, this need to ask for gender diversity will be just a footnote in the history of science.