Of the 102 company launches or series A financings since October 2023, just nine had a woman at the helm, according to a BioSpace analysis. This is happening in an era of biotech where new company founders are searching for CEOs with a track record.
Where are the women?
Every single biotech that has launched or raised series A funds so far this year has been helmed by a man. The same goes for December and November. Not since October 2024 has a young biotech with a woman in charge made an early financing move.
The honor, if you can call it that, goes to Axonis Therapeutics’ Joanna Stanicka. Her spinal cord injury–focused biotech launched back in May 2020 with seed financing and added $115 million in series A funds in the fall. She was just the ninth woman since October 2023 to achieve that accolade, according to a BioSpace analysis. Meanwhile, 93 man-led biotechs have announced initial or early fundraises. Since Axonis’ raise, 20 companies led by men have successfully raised capital.
All told, since October 2023 just over 8% of biotechs with early raises have been run by women, BioSpace found. Looking at public U.S.-based biotechs with a current market cap of $100 million or more, 24 out of 198 companies, or 12%, had women in the CEO role, according to a separate analysis from S&P Capital IQ.
The dearth of women in the top executive role at biopharma companies is not new, but while there had been an uptick in their representation, the numbers now appear to be on the decline. Indeed, the percentage of named biotech executive officers at U.S. companies that were women dropped from 20.1% in 2022 to 18.3% in 2023, according to a study released late last year by executive search consultant group Bedford Group Transearch.
“It’s disappointing to see a decline in the percentage of female CEOs in our industry,” the co-founders of the Biotech Sisterhood, an organization aimed at supporting women in biotech, said in a statement. “The numbers don’t reflect the depth of incredible talent that exists, and we must work to change that.”
This is happening in an era of biotech where new company founders are searching for “proven leadership,” or executives who have exited a previous company via a high-profile M&A deal or have some other success story on their resume, several women in the industry told BioSpace. This practice, they say, results in women with exceptional experience getting left behind.
“It’s not about gender, it’s about meritocracy,” said Maha Radhakirshnan, executive partner with Sofinnova Investments and the former chief medical officer at Biogen. “And there are so many more women out there that truly deserve to be in these senior leadership roles.”
Sheila Gujrathi, a biotech board executive and co-founder of the Biotech Sisterhood, agrees. The idea of “proven leadership” being a man is the “definition of the unconscious bias.”
The Right Phenotype
Gujrathi sits on multiple biotech boards, and she has been there when the discussion circles back to picking a man to lead a company.
“I’ve been involved in these conversations around NewCo formations . . . and there’s this comfort or safety to say, well, we just want that type of phenotype of leader at the helm,” Gujrathi said on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January.
Julia Owens, fellow co-founder of the Sisterhood and also CEO of a stealth biotech, echoed these sentiments. “I do think there’s a lot of, you’re just working with your pals, and your pals often end up being people who look just like you as white men,” Owens said.
Gujrathi also sees the trend at the board member level, although Bedford’s data suggest there has been a slight uptick in women in these roles. Female board members increased from 25.8% in 2022 to 27.9% in 2023. However, recent regulatory changes have taken the pressure off of companies to appoint women, Gujrathi said.
California, which outside of the Boston region is the go-to for biopharma headquarters, began requiring gender parity on all companies headquartered there in 2021, but a court threw out the rule just two years later. Nasdaq similarly tried to require companies listed on the exchange to have at least one woman and one member of a self-identified minority serve in director roles or explain why they do not. That rule was also struck down by a court at the end of 2024.
At the Biotech Sisterhood, Owens, Gujrathi and their fellow co-founder Angie You, also a serial biotech board member and creator of ElevAAte Biotech to increase East Asian representation in biopharma, have been fighting to showcase women leaders. That includes pointing out when women are sidelined in media coverage of biotech news involving women CEOs, as occurred when Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato was profiled over Intra-Cellular Therapies CEO Sharon Mates when that deal landed on the first day of the J.P. Morgan meeting.
“Some of that false narrative about the proven leader is because when Sharon’s company gets acquired for $14 billion, if you don’t see her face, you don’t associate a proven leader with a woman,” Owens said. “Because who did they show in the photo? They showed a photo of the CEO of Johnson & Johnson instead.”
The Sisterhood has compiled lists of qualified women available for speaking positions or consideration for hiring; all the industry needs to do is ask for it, Gujrathi said. “Like you want a CFO? We have 200 candidates here.” As a visual representation of just how many women are in the industry, the Sisterhood organized a photo op at J.P. Morgan where female executives and their allies wore pink.
“Right now and when there is a retrenchment in the industry, is when we need to do this all the more,” Owens said. “This is a time to start making this visible and not let that retrenchment go any further.”
Women also must be included in events like the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference to not only talk about leadership but the issues they face every day as biotech executives: capital formation, deals, markets and so on.
“With successful outcomes in terms of acquisitions, IPOs, financings, these amazing women leaders who just know their stuff inside out and who are incredibly scientifically strong, like scientific founders—we want to highlight their stories more,” Gujrathi said. “They’ve been there, but their stories haven’t been highlighted.”
Lending a Hand
Despite the retrenchment Owen refers to, she has seen change over her years in biopharma. “We’ve come a really long way. I first attended J.P. Morgan . . . back in 1999, not to date myself, and felt so darn out of place,” she said. “I presented my company at J.P. Morgan back in 2017 on the year that there were more men named Michael presenting than women, and unfortunately, it’s only made small progress since then, but it feels different. It feels like we’re starting to get the support and recognition.”
Seaport Therapeutics CEO Daphne Zohar—herself a member of the “proven leadership” class after founding and successfully exiting Karuna Therapeutics—does not feel that things have gone backwards, but instead says there are something like 300 women CEOs across the larger biopharma industry.
“I used to the only woman in the room, and now there’s just a lot of women, really successful and impressive women leaders,” Zohar said in a December interview. “I think the venture and investment community is also improving, but there’s more work to be done.”
COUR Pharmaceuticals CEO Dannielle Appelhans chalks up her success to being “pulled up” by others who saw her potential. She took over the role from John Puisis in August 2024, rising from her perch as chief operating officer. Her resume also includes a stint as CEO of Rubius Therapeutics and rising responsibilities at Novartis, where she ultimately was head of the global supply chain and then chief technical officer at Novartis Gene Therapies.
“I always feel like when I reflect back on my experience, there’s a substantial portion of luck, and there’s a substantial portion of people who really helped pull me along throughout my journey,” Appelhans told BioSpace at the J.P. Morgan conference.
Now, as the CEO of a rising biotech, she feels a tremendous responsibility to keep an eye out for the next woman behind her who may need a little tug in the right direction. “I’m very happy to do that, because I do not take it lightly that I’m fortunate to be in the position I’m in,” Appelhans said.
The journey to being CEO obviously starts lower down at a company. Bedford’s data, which only examined U.S.-based companies, shows that just 13% of CEO roles in biotech belong to women, but that number jumps to 17% for chief medical officers and 22% for CFOs. These numbers have not budged much over the past few years, according to the firm.
Appelhans pointed to study after study that has shown that woman tend to bow out of job applications before they file them because they do not check all the boxes. She instead urged women to point to where they do have experience and value to add, “and be humbled by where you need experience.”
The same goes for once you reach the CEO position; if you lack expertise somewhere, find the right person elsewhere to fill the gap or find a mentor that can help build you up, she said. This is where men are needed, too.
Montai Therapeutics CEO Margo Georgiadis tells a story of having a lengthy video meeting with Flagship Pioneering CEO Noubar Afeyan where she categorically went through the list of companies the venture creation firm has founded and discussed why some succeeded and others failed.
Georgiadis’ journey to become a biotech CEO was unconventional. She previously served as CEO of Mattel and of Ancestry.com, so she didn’t exactly have a biotech resume when she went over to Flagship as CEO-partner. She was, however, an investor in healthcare and technology and had spent nine years at Google as president of Americas and vice president of Global Operations. Being in a male-dominated industry was definitely something she was familiar with.
“I’ve seen this movie before,” Georgiadis told BioSpace in January.
Women who aspire to lead companies need groups like the Biotech Sisterhood and access to mentorship about capital formation, being a CEO, finding talent, lessons learned, how to build partnerships and so on, she explained. Georgiadis has had access to that kind of mentorship through Flagship, but she’s happy to see a broader resource for everyone emerge with the Sisterhood. When she was asked to join, she said, “it took me one second to volunteer.”
“For most biotech CEOs, it’s a pretty lonely road, and most of these issues have been faced before,” Georgiadis said. “And so I think by having that network, we can help enable so many more women to be successful.”
