Aspiring Biopharma Communicators

Last summer, I started noticing something interesting about some of the requests we were receiving to join our Ticket to Biotech community.

Certainly, T2B is for industry comms practitioners who are veterans or already well on their way to becoming comms pros.

But in addition, there were folks who fell under two other broad categories that were asking to join us:

The first includes communicators in life science-adjacent industries.

These include tech, healthcare, maybe other consumer industries focused on helping people.

And the second includes biopharma industry executives who probably will never have “communications” in their titles.

At first, to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure if we should, in a sense, broaden the scope of who’s welcome to officially join the community.

I wondered if this would somehow dilute the power of our tribe.

And then I thought again and realized that, actually, both of these groups were already eligible to join us!

Why? Because these folks are all aspiring biopharma communicators!

They all have an interest in and a passion for what we do in our profession.

So, if we can create more awareness about the importance of our role more broadly in healthcare storytelling, that’s truly the highest measure of impact our community can have.

Extending Industry Impact

Everyone we know in the life sciences is here because they want to make a difference, improve people’s health, improve lives.

Although most orgs’ missions focus on that, there are plenty of other complementary opportunities to extend our impact.

Look at how to elevate corporate values beyond the nice posters in the hallway. Assess which causes can help you walk the talk and meet stakeholder priorities.

Whether you’re an office of 5 or 50,000, your org is operating in at least one location. In all likelihood, each location was carefully selected for the support it offers the business. Think about how your org can embed itself in the local ecosystem and what you uniquely can contribute to ensure its long-term sustainability.

Consider your current talent pool and what the gaps are. Determine how you can support preparedness for a robust talent pipeline well into the future.

Diversity is critical, full-stop, but research also shows that diversity is good for business. Although many companies are making strides in the right direction, very few, if any, can say that they’ve achieved gender parity. Keep taking that hard look in the mirror and challenging yourself to build infrastructure that facilitates all kinds of diversity and at all levels, from the boardroom to the bench.

There’s much to be said about DEI and broader impact issues like health equity, but we’ll leave you with another actionable nugget that’s applicable, regardless if you’re just entering the clinic or are an industry behemoth: Be proactive about running diverse clinical trials that as closely as possible reflect the actual target patient population makeup.

This list here comprises only a few of the many ways we can amplify the good work we in biopharma do every day.

What are you doing to seize the opportunity to achieve greater good, and as communicators, how can we support these efforts?