We interviewed Patti Rossman, president of Globiox and co-founder of the Life Science Women’s Conference. Patti shared her insights from a diverse career with large organizations and in consulting.
Do men and women value the same things in their life science careers? Is career progression in life sciences a different experience for women than for men? The recently published 2019 BioSpace Ideal Employer Report showed women and men both had the same top three values: interesting and meaningful work, competitive salary, and health benefits. However, the report also highlighted some of the contrasting preferences of men and women in life science industries. For example, women are more likely to prioritize diversity in leadership roles, company culture, and flexibility than men. To find out more, we interviewed Patti Rossman, President of Globiox and Co-Founder of the Life Science Women’s Conference. Patti shared her insights from a diverse career with large organizations and in consulting.
1. Can you tell us a little about your background in the life sciences?
I’ve been in life sciences my whole career. Much of the time, prior to 15 years ago, was at big companies such as The American Red Cross and Abbott (Laboratories). I spent time in the research and development department as a scientist. I spent time in the quality department and in the project management department of those organizations. About 15 years ago, I joined a consulting firm and started working with lots of different companies, mostly large companies.
About 10 years ago, I started Globiox, which is a life sciences company that provides services to pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other companies that have to be FDA approved, in order to market. During those last 10 years, I’ve been working with both large life science companies and smaller companies. I like to work with small companies. I like to work with innovation and innovative technologies. But also within large companies, sometimes there is a niche where there is innovation and interesting projects involved.
2. Do you think there are unique challenges for women in life sciences? Why or why not?
I do. As a consultant, as someone who goes from company to company with my team, we would start projects with members of upper management. To complete the project, the final meeting would be with members of management. Over the years, I was often the only woman in the room. I started wondering, ‘why is that?’ I started educating myself and found that there are definite challenges for women in life sciences. There are a lot of reasons that women leave life sciences. Recently, I saw a report that sexual harassment is most prevalent in sciences and the military of all of the industries. Even more than that I think the sexual harassment percentage kind of shows what the environment is and sets the stage for women in life sciences. That said, I think women in other male dominated industries also have challenges.
I was very surprised at this new report that shows women in life sciences experience this 30% more than other industries except for the military. Work-life balance especially for young women wanting to have children. Feelings of bias or unintended bias within a company. They’ve never seen a woman head of engineering, so they are biased in even thinking about that. There are many old school policies, HR policies. There are policies that aren’t family friendly. I think that the women themselves don’t have the skillsets to maneuver up the career ladder. I think some of their skill sets aren’t polished like men’s are because they haven’t had the opportunities.
I often say, “There are no women in the boardroom, because there are no women in the boardroom.” It’s just a vicious cycle. If there are no women who have succeeded in that company, it’s very hard for that first person to get up the ladder. And once they do, some of that bias goes away if they’re successful, because they can see that it can happen. Until that happens, it’s a very big challenge for women. Men and women after college enter the life sciences at about a 50/50 ratio, by 10 years 80% of those women are gone. Many women are told that they can’t be mothers and scientists at the same time, so we have to teach them that they can do that.
3. How can women in life sciences focus on their career development and progression?
We have to give them role models and tools on how to do that. Also, make the industry and HR policies, more friendly to be able to do that. I think the biggest thing they can do is to educate themselves. Both on professional development topics like negotiation, project management, and networking. Women need to understand that and how that works. That’s one of the reasons why we started the conference, is because we know from experience that women network differently than men. If you put women together to talk about their careers, miraculous things happen. They are much more apt to be open and honest.
I was on a panel a couple of weeks at BioFlorida and some of the things we talked about were are shortcomings, our doubts, and rocky roads in our career paths and in our companies. I made the comment, “how often would you see men doing that?” To see men opening up about their failures. I don’t see it very often in public panels. When women get together they start talking about these things and collaborating on how to help each other.
4. Please tell us about the Life Science Women’s Conference.
The conference was founded by myself and my partner Steve Fiske. Steve is not a life sciences person. He’s not a woman either. He has promotional, event planning, and sales and marketing expertise that I don’t have. I am a scientist. I’m learning all of those things, but it came about after I started educating myself about why there were no women in the boardroom. Why there were no women in upper management. I thought that there needed to be a special environment for women in life sciences to come together and get professional development, mentors, to be inspired, and to find funding for their companies.
Our conference is unique in that it includes women from all aspects of life sciences. It includes legal people, the CEO, the CFO, the person working in the warehouse, the scientist, and the HR people. I believe that all of those kinds of women have to come together for change to happen. It can’t just happen in a silo. For example, a woman who wants to be head of the engineering group, can’t just start talking about how she wants to do that, if there’s no one else to listen. There have to be people around her that have all of these different functions and different abilities, who need to have heard the same things that she’s heard. And understand that this all fits together and is what we need to do.
If you lose 80% of your workforce every year, or 80% of 50%, that’s really hard on the industry. That drives prices up and offshoring up. It’s bad for both sides, industry and the women themselves. The conference gives these women a place to be heard. At our last conference, women started doing deals together, women found mentors, women talked about how men can help and how things can change. You actually do real work there. It’s awesome, if I do say so myself!
5. Recently, the 2019 BioSpace Ideal Employer Report was published. According to the report, 61% of women rank diversity in leadership roles as important (a 15% point increase when compared to men). Is diversity in leadership important to you? Why or why not?
Absolutely, like I say, there’s no women in the boardroom because there’s no women in the boardroom. The same can be said for women of color; it can be said for women of different religious beliefs or backgrounds. It’s a bias that’s ingrained in our industry and organizations, and until people can break that bias by demonstrating that yes these people are different. And different ideas are so important. It’s not just having the different genders, it’s the different approaches and ideas that really is key. Women and men have totally different approaches to many things. That’s good and both approaches are needed and both genders need to have a voice. And the same is true for other aspects of diversity as well.
6. According to the report, 74% of women rank a company culture that aligns with my values as important (an 8% point increase when compared to men). Why do you think company culture is important to many women?
I think the main reason is flexibility and being family friendly. Having women be able to flexible in their job, to take care of children and attend children’s activities. Women still take the leads on these types of things. If you have a strict 8:30-5:30 type of job, it’s very difficult to do that and be happy doing that. I think more and more men are taking on those roles and it will be interesting to see if their assessment goes up as they take on more of those roles. I think the other thing is just the culture that prevents sexual harassment or any kind of harassment. I think that ethics are very important to women and men as well. All in all I think the company culture is probably number one, for me at least.
7. Flexible working hours and flexible working location/remote work were more significant to women. Why do you think flexibility is so important to women?
I think it goes back to the need for being a contributor to the family. They need to have those flexible working hours from a company. I know many women that work for flexible companies that get home at the same time their children get home from school and they spend a couple of hours with their children, and then they go back to work at home. They split their day and that seems to work for a lot of women.
I would say that remote work is kind of a different story as far as I’m concerned. Remote work can really work against anyone who does it, I think. Some people do it very successfully. I have an issue right now with someone who’s trying to work remotely, and take care of their 18 month old daughter. To me that is not remote work, and many women don’t understand that. They think, oh remote I’ll work at my computer and my child will sit quietly and play at my feet. They need to understand that they still need child care, external child care or someone to come in the house and take care of that child while they work. Because they still need to concentrate on their work. Women who work remotely often get forgotten by their headquarters, they get forgotten by their team. In my experience, they aren’t able to advance as well in their career as women who are working onsite. I think remote work is a two edged sword.
Porschia Parker is a Certified Coach, Professional Resume Writer, and Founder of Fly High Coaching. (https://www.fly-highcoaching.com) She empowers ambitious professionals and motivated executives to add $10K on average to their salaries.
Known by many as the leading advocate for women who work in life sciences or desire to work in life sciences, Patti Rossman is President of Globiox and CoFounder of the Life Science Women’s Conference. She has over 25 years of experience within research and development, quality, regulatory, technology, and consulting in life science organizations of various sizes and industries. Ms. Rossman is a frequent speaker, moderator and consultant on issues pertaining to career women in life sciences and regulatory matters.
