LAUSR

A new study on gender diversity projects that at the current rate of change, it could take as long as 40 years for gender parity to arrive in biotech boardrooms. The report from London-based recruitment firm Liftstream found not only that women remain woefully underrepresented in biotech, but also that much of the imbalance stems from the old-boy culture that dominates venture capital firms and management circles (Nat. Biotechnol. 33, 781, 2015). Liftstream’s report, released on January 24, looked at the corporate governance structures of the 177 biotech companies that conducted their initial public offerings (IPOs) in the US between 2012 and 2015 (http://www.liftstream. com/women_biotech_boardrooms.html). It found that 58% of those newly public companies had at least one female board member, up from 48% in Liftstream’s last industry survey published in 2014. But women still held only around one in ten of all board positions. And rarely did these women serve as the board chair or sit on the committees that exert the most influence and power, suggestive of an element of tokenism in the inclusion of women. “You can have a seat at the table, but whether your voice is heard is another thing,” says Liftstream founder and CEO Karl Simpson. According to Simpson’s calculations, at the current rate, gender parity is four decades away. It is possible to speed that along but it will require putting many more female faces on board directories. Simpson has put a number to it: to ensure 30% of positions are filled by women in 2025, biotech boards would need to add 17-times more women in the next eight years than have been added in the past five. That’s a tall order, but it’s “absolutely doable,” says Nina Kjellson, a general partner at Canaan Partners in Menlo Park, California. With a growing number of female executives in the industry, “we just need to be willing to look beyond the tried-and-true buddy networks.” That gender diversity can be good for a company’s bottom line is borne out by numerous studies (https://piie.com/publications/ wp/wp16-3.pdf). The Liftstream report is no exception. Simpson’s calculations showed that companies with at least one female board member experienced an average share price increase of 19% between their IPO list price and August 2016. Companies with all-male boards showed an average decrease of 9% over the same time period. “Chairs and CEOs need to be incredibly wary about having all-male teams, because they simply won’t make as good decisions as if they have diversity,” says Kate Bingham, a managing partner at SV Life Sciences, a venture capital firm in London. Bingham and Kjellson are 2 of more than 120 biotech leaders who penned an open letter to the industry on January 10 calling for improvements in gender diversity. The letter, spearheaded by the BioPharma Executive Council, a peer group of Boston-area CEOs, and the Massachusetts trade organization MassBio, outlined ten “best practices” for promoting female talent to senior management positions. These include mentorship programs, training courses, hiring process reviews, diversity goals and promotion tracking, among other initiatives. “We’re not going to be able to build the workforce we need for the future if we continue to keep this large percentage of women out of these senior level roles,” says Jodie Morrison,