Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to a new season and a new episode of the Few and Far between podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Alassie. Starting this month, we're focusing on how today's women leaders are navigating and shaping the future of biotech. And I can't think of a better guest to kick things off than Joanne Kamins, scientist, advisor and inclusion crusader.
As CEO of Women in Bio, Joanne leads an organization committed to promoting careers, leadership and mentorship for women in the life sciences. In this episode, we'll explore Joanne's journey through her biopharma career and advancing diversity and inclusion across the life sciences.
We'll also discuss mentorship and sponsorship, building intentional company cultures, and addressing biotech's ongoing talent challenges.
And I'll be debuting a new segment called Reflections Questions that focus on leadership, resilience and self awareness across life science.
Please enjoy my conversation with Joanne and I hope you'll enjoy this new season of Few and Far Between.
Charting the course.
Hey, Joanne. This season of Few and Far between is focused on women who are building the future of biotech. I'm so happy to be having this conversation with you. Welcome.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Wonderful.
Most of our guests are going to be leading or are leading clinical companies. And I think it's equally important that we explore the people, yourself, and the organizations that are here to help shape those leaders. I know that you've spent your career not only building organizations, but also helping build people, careers and leadership capabilities. Today, I'd love for us to talk about an aspect of our industry that is a little overlooked. It's really how leaders get built. So I'm excited for this conversation.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. And I think it's the whole path. It's not just leaders. It's the whole sustainability of a full career.
We have resources. So thank you for calling that out.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Thank you.
So let's start back a little in your career. You were about seven years into your farmer career when you realized there were very few women around you at your level or above. And you've described that as a turning point.
What changed for you in that moment?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Well, it really was like a light bulb because I had had a very equitable upbringing, if you will. You know, my parents were very supportive of any career aspirations I had. I was a. I was a high school, middle school math whiz. I was. Which was odd for a girl in those days. You know, I did. I. You know, I don't think there was any question. College. I did great in college. Got good grades, had a great mentor, worked in a lab, had very good mentors in the lab, went to grad school, super mentor. He helped me equitably, there was no issue.
Got a job with his help, entry level, and then looked around and was like, where are all the other women? It had always been pretty equal. My grad school class was quite equal.
And then I started to, you get busy, you have a life, you have children, you're doing stuff. And then all of a sudden I'm like, where did they go, the women? And you know, a lot of women had left the organization. A lot of the indirectly or directly related to the fact that they were women. And that is kind of when the light bulb went off. And then I spent a week in meetings with no women. I started counting on
[00:03:26] Speaker A: like
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Tuesday. Yeah, a week. A week.
And I was in a pharma job, so you can imagine how many meetings I had. Even in a junior, you know, mid career level. I had some eight to 10 meetings, minimally. And like on Tuesday I'm like, huh, that's funny, I didn't sit with any. And then I started to like, tally. And by Friday there had been no women in any of the meetings that I was in, except for me, of course.
And so I really. That's when I went into the office of the one director in the company who was a woman at the time, and I said, where are the women?
And she was like, I don't know, like, what happened? And so that was the beginning of a long journey, I would say.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yes. Wow. That's a compelling analysis, of course, A very data driven one.
Wow.
Yeah, that sort of taken my breath away a bit.
So let's talk a bit about building more than a career. Most people spend their careers asking, how do we advance ourselves? Right. But you seem to spend a lot of your career looking at how you can change the system around you. And I'm so curious, when did that become part of your mission?
[00:04:36] Speaker B: I mean, I have to say, and I always say this up front, I certainly got as much as I gave. You know, I mean, it is that network and those connections that gave me opportunities to practice management and leadership and communication and managing without authority and all these things.
Not to mention that every opportunity I've ever had has been through my network, including my very first job, which was my graduate school advisor, basically got me that job.
I see a huge benefit in doing it. And because I was a leader in doing it, I had an even bigger network, if you know what I mean. Because you Have a little more visibility, you meet more people, people call you and you do them favors, then they don't owe you. But maybe later someone asks them to do a favor and they pay it forward. So there's kind of an economy of doing stuff for people. So I got as much as I gave, but I think that was when I started saying, what can I do about this? And so I think it was somewhat rage fueled.
Once I started reading about what was going on for women in the workplace, I was, what is this? You know, how did I not know? And then I was angry and really wanted to change it. And so for me, and in a constructive way, I wanted to channel that frustration in a constructive way. Having seen the data on women's advancement, the glass ceiling, the glass cliff, whatever.
And so for me, if I don't do something, I'm much more upset. So taking action was really and continues to this day to be the way that I deal with, you know, current climate. Really frustrating for a person at this stage of my career, having come so far and to see so many things pulled out from under us, you know, the only way that I can deal with that is to continue to do something and not just watch it happen, you know. So I've always kind of done work on the systemic level, but also on the interpersonal level, like one on one kind of coaching, mentoring, support. And the systemic level is pretty frustrating. And I'm going to honestly say that the wins on the one on one is where I really like. It's what keeps me going, you know, it's that one person who calls and says, oh my goodness, your advice was so helpful. I got a job or, you know, I left my job and now I have a better job, you know, like whatever it is.
So that's kind of how. That's my cycle. My cycle is like frustration, but like I, I can make a difference one person at a time, you know.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Sure. And that spurs action. And I find too, in, in feeling. Where do we start?
If we start local, start at home or in our community or in our team,
[00:07:15] Speaker B: 100%,
[00:07:16] Speaker A: we, we have the ability to move in that space. And the ripple effect, of course, goes on there.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Let's look at your time at aging. I think, gosh, one of the things that fascinates me is that you weren't just running an organization, you were consciously experimenting with culture and you maintained remarkably low turnover and built a workplace that people genuinely wanted to be a part of. Share with. What did you learn about building an environment where people truly Thrive?
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it really was.
It really was. I had theories about what I wanted as an employee, what I wanted my employee experience to be like, and could I operationalize that for people there it really came to me that.
Not the realization, but brought home that every person is an individual and we can talk about inclusion all you want for women, people have racial identity, lgbtq, people with disabilities, we could talk about all those things. But in the bottom line, every single person is an individual, and their individual identities are going to contribute to what makes them happy and how you have to help them thrive in the workplace. So I have this belief that you don't want to give everyone the same thing. You want to give everyone as much you can, what they need.
And of course there needs to be equity on salary, and there's a lot of areas where you want to give the same thing and benefits. But. But when it comes to the day to day, like, what floats your boat? The managers really need to know who wants to be thanked publicly, who wants to be thanked privately, who wants a little card on their desk, who wants a flower. They have to know their people and what matters to them.
I think about. And so some of the things that people would come ask me for were so easy to do to make their workplace better for them. I'll give you an example.
We created a wellness room for all kinds of reasons. That was not just for women who were maybe making breast milk or someone who had to do their insulin, or there were somebody who needed a break and needed a quiet place. There were a lot of reasons.
And I think we had a sink in there.
And then someone came and asked me, hey, some of the employees who are Muslim or would like to put a prayer rug in the wellness room. And I'm like, of course. Why wouldn't we do that? You know, and we did, you know, like, and we, we supplied it. We were like, sure, thanks for asking. We can buy that and take care of it. Can you help us pick the right one? What would be helpful? You know, like, it was just like a small thing, but it made their workplace. So that wellness room meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people, you know, and. And you know, you can't do everything. We were a nonprofit. We didn't have. It wasn't a money thing.
The benefits we were giving people were not about a huge amount of money.
It was really about those, how can you solve my little problem?
And even just the demonstration that we were willing to do, it made them more dedicated employees.
And the Second principle was sort of like right person for the right job. So everything from we needed to make boxes in the packing room to customer service on the other side, we needed certain types of qualities that those people needed to have, you know, and when it came to making boxes in the, the, you know, in the box room, like it, the same person is not going to be the right person for that job. But can we go to best buddies and find someone who will be our box maker? And you know, Olivia has been the box maker, as far as I know, for some 12 years. And you know,
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Olivia,
[00:10:51] Speaker B: incredible, incredible staying power at a job, you know, like no turnover there. Right person, right job, you know, giving her what she needs to be happy in her role. And so, you know, I think that, and that also meant sometimes people giving them, you know, change in their job. I had one employee come to me who we had promoted to be the head of a team and he came in my office and he, we closed the door and I said, hey, how's it going? And he says, it's really going great. He says, but I can't stand my job.
I am painfully, I'm painfully introverted and this is too much for me. I do not want to manage other people.
And I was like, oh, good on you for like just saying that. And I'm like, but you're good at it. He goes, I know, I know, but it's killing me. I can't do it, I don't want to do it. It is not what I want to do. He says, I have so many technical ideas. Can't I have a different path? Not manage, but be technically in charge of xyz. And I'm like, we will make that job for you. We don't want to lose you.
And you know, so, you know, I didn't want to be the kind of boss that would just say, this is how it is, you know, we don't listen. And so it's really just listening to people, hearing them being open to out of the box solutions, you know, around employment, around jobs. I've done job sharing where I've had two people share one job because they both wanted a part time job. We need a full time thing.
We're like, okay, you could share the job, you know, and both get, everybody gets what they want.
So I think all those things combined really made it a place where people felt comfortable, they felt they saw people that were like them and they stayed. And so it made my job much easier because turnover is very expensive and very hard.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Well, I'd rather pay for it proactively.
The discussions and the interventions for retention building and culture building are much better expenditure of effort and capital than chasing turnover. Yeah,
[00:12:53] Speaker B: yeah, yeah. We also had, like, a ton of, you know, training on inclusion and how to, you know, everybody had to take a management training about how to be fair to their employees and how to,
[00:13:07] Speaker A: you
[00:13:07] Speaker B: know, culturally sensitive communication. And we just had sort of a. And if you weren't good at it, you couldn't do it. That was basically the bottom line. You know, like, you had to be good at it to. To have those roles, because manager is so important. You know, the saying, people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. Right. And so we wanted all of the managers to have those capabilities and so. And for people to feel a sense of belonging. And I think for me, the proudest thing is when I would make a mistake in these kinds of cultural things, people would come tell me. And that, to me was the pinnacle. Like, you need to correct me. We want civil correction of mistakes. We don't. We're not trying to shame people or, you know, if you make a mistake, we want to talk about it and learn from it. And that's where it got to that point where people would come in my office and say, hey, you use this phrase. You shouldn't have said that. It's, you know, and I'd be like, oh, thank you. You know, I'm going to. I'm going to work at it.
And so I think, you know, moreover, that inclusion piece was really working. And I feel like, you know, were we 100%. Of course we lost some employees that didn't fit or that we couldn't satisfy, but we did pretty well on making everybody, you know, meeting their needs, making them feel safe and included, which. How can you go to work every day if you don't feel safe? I mean,
[00:14:18] Speaker A: well. And a lot of people struggle with that.
The theme in these anecdotes that I'm pulling through, Elsa, is that that safety builds trust.
People being able to give you, as a leader, feedback or come to you and say, I don't like something that I'm currently my salary is based on doing, and I'm struggling to make it fit. Those are incredible indicators of.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Let's talk about one of my favorite topics, which is about mentorship. And you've argued that mentorship alone is not enough. That there's difference, of course, between mentorship and sponsorship. Help us understand why does that matter? Break that down for us.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So make no mistake. I'm very big on mentorship. I've spent my whole career creating mentoring programs. You know, coaching, coaching them, starting them. It was the first thing I did for women in bio, actually, was to start a mentoring program for them, so before I was even in this role as the CEO.
And mentorship is super important, but it is not sponsorship. And sponsorship is really mentorship is someone gives you advice, they listen to you, they ask you hard questions. Probably that's the biggest thing they do, is ask you hard questions, get to know you well enough to ask those hard questions.
Sponsorship is someone does something to help your career. They lift you up, they bring you to the table, they invite you to do a project with them. They suggest your name for a role. They introduce you to someone who could be important to your career. They tell other people that you are great, and then maybe you do that for them and vice versa, or not in gratitude, but as a shared kind of sponsoring one another.
And so I don't like to rationally generalize based on gender.
However, I have seen that people, generally, the majority, who are usually men in the workplace, white people, identify as men, are very used to the sponsorship model. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. We go for, you know, we go for golf. We. We talk in the hall. You know, hey, I need a favor. Can you mention me to Bob? You know, Bob's forming this committee. I want to be on the committee. I'll mention you for the committee, and then we can support each other and, you know, little bit of a tit for tat in a good way. Right? And women I speak to are something like.
They've actually voiced this to me in focus groups that they're uncomfortable. I think it's, like, dishonest to do that.
And I have spent a long time trying to teach everybody that this is how the world works.
When you do favors for people, they do favors for you. Even if it's a tiny favor, an introduction, a pass, the resume on, a thank you, a note, very small things can be considered a favor. And sponsorship is the big favorite.
And so we really need to be doing this for one another.
And if you think about it, you're much more likely to sponsor.
Based on our whole model of bias and how we see the world. And when we look at people, we're much more likely to sponsor someone who's like us.
So if you're from a small town.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah,
[00:17:23] Speaker B: yeah. If you're from a small town in a. I don't want to pick on a. In a foreign country and you meet someone from that same country in your workplace, you have a bond, and they're much more likely to do a favor for you. You know, someone that looks like you, your race, your gender, your. You know, you're much more likely to do that. So
[00:17:41] Speaker A: I
[00:17:41] Speaker B: think it's good to propagate those relationships to get those favors. But what can we do for inclusion? So sponsor someone who doesn't look like you.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: If
[00:17:49] Speaker B: everybody took, like, five minutes to tell somebody else something nice about someone in their workplace who doesn't look like them, the world would be a much different place. You know,
[00:18:00] Speaker A: there's the call to action, right?
[00:18:02] Speaker B: There's my call to action. Every day, do something nice for someone who doesn't look like you, you know, and connect them, suggest them. You know, make sure their voice is heard in a meeting. That's one of my favorite easy ways to sponsor someone is if. So, you know, this happens all the time. You hear this especially from women, all the time that they say something in a meeting and it's ignored, and then five minutes later, someone else says it, and then it gets more of attention. So if you, instead of being that second person, say, you know, I know that you're attributing this to me, but it was Joanne that said this 10 minutes ago, and I'd like her to talk more about it. It's really her idea. You know,
[00:18:39] Speaker A: those
[00:18:39] Speaker B: kinds of little favors can make.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: It's in the moment, too. It's not some grand programmatic act that you need to invest tons of time in. It's the moment of asking the person who may not speak up in a group setting to say, joanne, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and then stop talking.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
No one ever. Because I'm very good at. But, yes,
[00:19:02] Speaker A: you and I both, which is why we're on a podcast, friend.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: That's why you're doing the podcast. There
[00:19:07] Speaker A: we go.
But
[00:19:08] Speaker B: yes, exactly. That is.
And when people ask me, what can they do, you know, it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be, you know, change your life. It could just be that, and it would make a difference.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: I love it because sponsorship feels programmatic to me, like the word itself, but it is not. It is such an easy, simple thing. I feel good when I get to say nice things to people because generally you get nice feedback afterwards. I'm not doing it for that motivation, but it's a nice, nice bonus of the activity.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: And some people ask me, what do you do for someone who's sort of taken you under their wing and they're really sponsoring you in your organization. And my answer to them is always be awesome because you make them look good. If, if they sponsor you into a role, into a position, into a. You don't actually have to give them anything back. You just have to do it really good. And then everyone says, oh, it was, you know, it was Mark's idea to bring Joanne to this program and look how great it's going, you know, so that's what I
[00:20:08] Speaker A: say.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Be awesome.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: I had that exact conversation with my predecessor and host, the Few and Far between podcast, Chris o', Brien, when we were talking about transition of this activity.
And I said, well, I really appreciate the opportunity and I'm going to do you proud.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: There you go. Do
[00:20:27] Speaker A: my best, right? And make it worthwhile. Yeah. Oh, so great. That warms my heart. Hey, let's shift a little and talk a bit about biotech's talent problem. I know that we are all up under investor scrutiny, right? That's our fundraising activities result in company evaluations and looking at our science and our IP and our data cash. That's how the world works. But there's far less attention that gets paid to culture. And yet we know culture will make or break an organization or an assets development. Do you think we understand culture as a value driver in biotech? And that's a very leading question. If we do not, how can we start that conversation?
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, it's such a great question. You didn't word it this way before. I love this question.
So, you know, when I give this talk on moving out of academia and moving into a career, I speak to a lot of trainees, science trainees in particular, and they always want to know, like pharma or biotech, like big or small. You know, that's the question they always ask.
And I have this PowerPoint slide with like, big, small, big law firm, small law firm, big consulting firm, small consulting firm, pharma, biotech. You know, there's basically, there's a big and small. There's a dichotomy. There's a difference, right? And one of the things in big is that one jerk, you don't have to maybe work all the time with that jerk. You can gain a lot if you're in a big company. If you're. Unless you are directly under the heel, you report directly to someone who is not inclusive or a bully or just downright unpleasant. That's a different situation. But for the most part, colleagues who are jerks, you can kind of sidestep them. But in a small company, they are all up in your face and they can destroy an entire company. You know, one person who's a jerk or who's, you know, unethical or who is on, you know, does not, not a team player can make a huge, huge difference.
And so if you do not have
[00:22:25] Speaker A: thinking of that jerk that we've worked with right
[00:22:27] Speaker B: now. Yes, well, I have, I have a few in mind. And you know, that person who, you know, fudged my data, that person who, you know, like, presented investors with data that didn't occur, like, you know, and no one called them on it. And I was like, how can this be? You know, we have those, we have those stories.
And so what I think is you have to have a leader who's willing to cut bait and say, hey, you do too much damage.
I get that you're really good at your job and sometimes jerks are very good at their jobs, you know, but you just do too much damage in your role and I need to let you go. And if you're not doing that, I think that is a tenet of leadership and management that you have to remove the debilitating barriers to the rest of your team. And sometimes that is a person.
And so early stage founders have trouble with that.
They're moving fast. I get it. There's a lot to do. They're working way harder than anybody should work, probably.
But I think it behooves them to really pay attention because I do think the company has a much higher likelihood of failing if you have that destabilizing. And if the jerk is the head, then you're in real trouble.
But by the way, try not to go work for those people. And that's another.
Do your due diligence. Find out about the jerks, because they will not change.
They are unlikely to change if they are a full on jerk when you start with them. So
[00:23:56] Speaker A: yeah,
[00:23:58] Speaker B: so I think, and unfortunately, you know, we reward jerk sometimes, especially in men, we think it's, you know, that strength. And in women, you know, it tends to be more likely that a woman will get fired for being a jerk because, you know, in her case, it's seen as being hard to work with anger, not strength. And that's a dichotomy we know about in bias. Right. So
[00:24:21] Speaker A: the value driver is like a jerk free culture that's going to have a much stronger foundation for success and achievement.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: I think so. Yeah, I think so. I did have one employee once who was very good at their job.
And had this weird tick of asking people strange personal questions in the lunchroom.
And it tended to be that she would ask those strange personal questions of people who identified on the LGBTQ group spectrum.
And at addgene, we had a very large number of people who identify, actually not a large number, what was representative of the population. So about 20%, which is about representative of the population.
And this person would come up to them and just ask them weird personal questions. Very strange. And we had a culture where people reported it to hr and so it got to a number of different people. And so we had this person take a course and educated them on, you know, this issue and, you know, do some education. And we tried and it just didn't stop.
And we just. It seemed odd, but we just had to let them go, you know, like there was no answer for it.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: It
[00:25:33] Speaker B: just
[00:25:33] Speaker A: wasn't for you for intervening and looking for a way to remediate. But at the end, like you said a moment ago, we need to protect the culture and organizations we're building. And sometimes it does involve more intentional actions like that.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And it is worth paying some attention to the cultural issues even when you're small. Even when you're. And in fact, if you don't start when you're small, how are you going to grow into a culture that is a positive one? If you grow and by some stroke of luck, you make it as a biotech, you know, and you. You grow to be, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, you that now you have a problem if you were careful about culture when you had five people. When you have 50 people, it's going to come with you.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: I was
[00:26:13] Speaker B: really lucky.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Everyone's an ambassador now, and it's organizationally much stronger to me,
[00:26:18] Speaker B: 100%. I mean, I was so lucky at Addgene because the founders had really created a very good culture. We were quite small. I think I was like employee 18.
And then I was honored to be invited to lead. And I just had to not.
Don't mess it up. But growth is hard. We had to do a lot to not mess it up. But the goal really was to grow with that same sort of inclusive.
