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.
If you would like to sign on to the letter and ongoing efforts to improve gender diversity in life sciences, please contact Edie Stringfellow.
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 recognize 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 organizations.
- 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 organizations.
- 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.
Robert K. Coughlin Abbie Celniker Steve Woit Sarah MacDonald David Lawrence Lucchino Kate Bingham Terry McGuire Mike O'Hara Jay Bradner, M.D. 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 Ed Kania Adelene Perkins Jeffrey Leiden Rosa Notaroberto Kathryn E. Wengel Walter H. Moos Kevin Hrusovsky Kris Vezuli Joseph Gentile Erin Albert Ambaw Bellete Kim C. Drapkin Sheila Frame Lesley Stolz Michael D. Clayman Bruce M. Wentworth Kelly Magnuson Michael OBrien Ron Cohen Vijayalakshmi Agnani Alicia Secor Marianne Lambertson Luke Wallrich Robert Connelly Charlotte Vernhes Nina Kjellson Stacey Detrick-Lerner Kate Farrell John F. Neylan Christopher DeSimone Stephen Rapundalo E. Smelt Joel Barrish Jim Boushell Tarek Fadel Heidi Creighton Megan Aparicio John Glasspool Jen Nwankwo Gustav Christensen Jacquelyn Marsac Sarah Morrow Nina Luke Timmerman Hollie Swanson Iya Khalil Kyle Serikawa Lisa Suennen Regina Au Jeanette Kohlbrenner Alison Arter Anna Chrisman Leah Jordan Andi Cullins Laura Warwick Robin Swartz Donna Williams Vika Boyko Laura Vitez Anisa Mohammed Craig Rayner Amy Williford Yael Schwartz Clarence Friedman Donnie McGrath Katerina Fomicheva Chesley Chen Maria Talantova Will Adams Dagmar Rosa-Bjorkeson Ginger L. Gregory Bill Mordan Perry Sternberg Paul Fanning Mara G. Aspinall R. Sanders Williams, MD
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