Winning Hearts & Winning Minds

Fostering Innovation in the Biotech Industry Through Relationship Building

“I think we are all really aware in this business of how powerful it is when we get people from different disciplines scientifically to work together. When you get the computational people in the room with the wet lab people and get them to really understand everyone’s way of thinking, only then really amazing things can happen. Diversity 100% makes teams stronger and I don’t think enough emphasis has been placed on how this can happen across cultural barriers too.

We want to empower people to think about change and to communicate ideas to help bring about change. There are things that you should be aware of that are strictly tied to structural issues in our society and specific barriers for people of color, women, and being on the path of getting educated about some of those potential dynamics is really important. It’s going to take a lot of people putting in some portion of their time and energy to make that transformation.”

David Kaufman, Partner at Third Rock Ventures & Working Group Sponsor, BIIG

OUR APPROACH

The Biotech industry has long been dependent on collaboration and networking for everything from the facilitation of new ideas to opportunity creation. In order to bring about lasting change we seek to work within that same framework. Our programs prioritize, “openness to mutual influence and a commitment to unifying,” through relationship building and educational opportunities (Changing Hearts and Minds, Rusch & Horsford). In utilizing this approach we aim to win the hearts and minds of those who can make a difference and can also benefit from that change through education exposure to the issues and meaningful connection to underrepresented individuals.

WINNING MINDS

“Approximately one-quarter of the U.S. public health workforce is projected to retire in the next 10 years…As such, it is imperative that the… biomedical research community prepare to mentor a diverse population of public health researchers (United States Census Bureau, 2018). This requires first that there is collective and consistent understanding that achieving diversity in science hinges on cultivating talent and promoting the full inclusion of excellence across the entire population” (Mentorship: The Necessity of Intentionality).

The future success of the biotech industry hinges on experienced professionals sharing their wisdom of learned experience and their subject knowledge. However mentorship and networking opportunities don’t just help young professionals, throughout the mentorship and relationship building process the industry expert is also, often times, placed in to a position of expanding their own world view. Mentors intimately learn the cultural values of diverse groups, how to navigate these differences and how to help maximize the potential of mentees. Mentors intellectually benefit from their experience through, “identify[ing] their strengths and weaknesses, improv[ing] their cultural competency and interpersonal skills, and implement[ing] effective strategies” (Mentorship: The Necessity of Intentionality).

If the goal of the VC & Biotech industry is to help improve the health of patients, then a young diverse population further helps achieve this goal.

According to a report by the ‘National Academies: Science, Engineering & Math’:

  • Lack of representation may lead to lack of access to effective medical interventions. Approval and indications for new therapeutics are often restricted to the demographics of the populations included in the clinical studies. Lack of representation may therefore impede access to a specific therapeutic agent for some groups of patients.

  • Lack of representation compounds health disparities in the populations currently underrepresented and excluded in clinical trials and clinical research. While achieving health equity and reducing health disparities requires far more than just equitable representation in clinical research, failure to achieve this leaves these disparities unaddressed and reinforces inequities.

  • Lack of representation costs hundreds of billions of dollars. An economic analysis carried out by the committee demonstrates high financial and social costs — measured by life expectancy, disability-free life, and years in the labor force — projected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars range over the next three decades. If better representation in clinical trials reduces health disparities by even a modest amount, the analysis found that achieving diverse representation in research would be worth billions of dollars in savings to the United States.

WINNING HEARTS

We are looking to intentionally diversify our own networks and expand our world views, while offering educational and career insight to students and young professionals. "In our attempts to create more awake and aware environments, we’re forgetting that numbers typically don’t inspire us to change our behavior — people and stories do” (How Sharing Our Story Builds Inclusion).

Volunteers feel a sense of satisfaction in the knowledge that they have done something for the greater good. They help rectify a shared issue within the community (lack of diversity) and contribute towards a common goal within their community (the need to prepare the next generation of Biotech employees for 25% of the workforce retiring in the next 10 years).

Opportunities for connection (through volunteering for events, mentorship, informational interviews, etc.) provides students and young professionals with crucial experience by gaining knowledge of the industry, how to successfully navigate the industry and help in expanding their networks. In exchange volunteers get to know the very real issues faced by underrepresented minorities and how these individuals have often times had to overcome huge obstacles just to attend college. Additionally research shows that having a mentor increases the liklihood graduation for first-gen college students, thus our volunteers are empowering underrepresented minorities to transform their own lives and the communities they come from.

This process moves mentors and volunteers from, “passive to promoters and possibly even champions of the change, [which] is critical to delivering lasting change” (Leading Transformational Change: Winning the Hearts & Minds).

We believe in the power of of education, passion and collaboration. Our passion lies in improving public health for all - through increased diversity in perspective, leading to innovation.

We need your help and we need your voice. Innovation is waiting.

#BIIGideas #BIIGimpact

“During my time as a mentor I have learned a lot about the challenges of underrepresented, first in family students – particularly in the sciences. A couple of those barriers that are interesting are - many of these kids are really high achieving, bright kids that have become economically valuable to their family so going and working a lab job without clocking your hours in particular is very challenging. Another barrier I learned about was fear of failure and fear of asking questions. Obviously to do what we do – you have to be comfortable with failing and failing a lot. But I see now how maybe it’s harder to think about failure when you’re not used to having a safety net and your family is depending on your success.”
— David Kaufman, Partner at Third Rock & Working Group Sponsor for BIIG

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