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Women in Biotech - Cambridge
'BIG WIB 2024' will bring together 250+ attendees in Cambridge to connect, support and inspire. Expanded to a full day, the event will provide practical workshop roundtables on key topics, inspiring keynotes and thought leadership panels addressing the two IWD themes of #InvestInWomen and #InspireInclusion - as well as heaps of networking opportunities.
#InvestInWomen: Breaking down double standards in investment
The fundraising process is tough, particularly so for female founders and teams. For every £1 of venture capital investment in the UK, all-female founder teams get less than 1p, all-male founder teams get 89p, and mixed-gender teams 10p. There is strong consensus that for innovation to succeed, founding and investment teams need to be more diverse, so how do we change the narrative and tackle the double standards that exist?
This panel will bring together female investors from different funds across the life sciences space, with a focus on demystifying investment and addressing some of the challenges that female founders face. We will cover the different types of fund, how to find your potential investors, how to prepare for a fundraise process, what investors look for when reviewing your pitch deck and conducting due diligence, and questions to ask of a potential investor. Bring your questions for the Q&A!
#InspireInclusion: Re-defining Sector Leadership
It's imperative that we retain incredible talent in the sector so it's deeply concerning that the statistics around equality and diversity at senior levels are stubbornly poor. Do we need to prepare women (and diverse leadership more broadly) better for leadership and push to make sure they are 'in the room' to be considered as contenders, or do we focus on re-defining leadership to make sure that top roles are attractive to women? Join the debate!
Allyship is something we fully appreciate and this event is open to all. Book early to avoid disappointment.
Keynote speakers
Loubna Bouarfa
Dr Bouarfa is an accomplished machine learning scientist turned entrepreneur, recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 50 Women in Tech, and by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35. As Chairwoman of the AI Innovation Board at Envision Pharma Group following OKRA.ai acquisition, she leads the development of cutting-edge AI solutions in the life sciences industry. As founder of OKRA.ai, a leading AI company for life sciences, Loubna supports the pharma industry in bringing the right drug to the right patient at speed. Currently she is the AI Thought Leader and Chairwoman of the AI Innovation Board at Envision Pharma Group and a member of the Executive Leadership Team. In this role, Loubna focuses on emphasizing the broader mission of embedding and excelling AI across EPG. With OKRA.ai transitioning to a horizontal function within EPG, Loubna’s expertise will now focus on shaping EPG’s AI strategy and championing EPG position as thought leaders in this space. OKRA.ai was ranked 9th in Deloitte’s fastest-growing tech companies in the UK and recently joined forces with Envision Pharma Group, a leading global technology-enabled commercialization, integrated medical capabilities and solutions, and data analytics partner to the life science industry. Loubna is a strong advocate for diversity and challenging the status quo. She has won several prizes, including CEO of Year 2019 at the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards and Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards in 2019. She has also contributed as a thought leader within European institutions, supporting the European Commission and member states in the drafting of ethical guidelines for the future of artificial intelligence. She has also acted as adviser in the work the UN has undertaken on AI, which will lead to the creation of guidelines for the use and application of AI by SMEs in developing countries. Loubna is constantly supporting the development of EU AI regulation.
Michelle Griffith Robinson OLY
As a former GB Olympic athlete, for over 15 years, Michelle knows what it takes to ‘reach the top’. Beyond that, she knows what it’s like to experience life outside elite sport, as a successful businesswoman and mother of three. Michelle draws on her own experiences to inspire and encourage others in her work as a Motivational Speaker, Lifestyle coach, Personal trainer and Mentor. Michelle works tirelessly as an Ambassador for Women’s Aid, The Menopause Charity, Diabetes UK and L’OCCITANE and is a Patron of the Menopause Mandate. Over the last 20 years, Michelle’s passion for ‘unlocking the potential of her clients’ has seen her successfully work with many celebrities and corporate companies. She revels in creating a climate of change, to dream big and to achieve beyond your expectations. Michelle has regularly featured in Hello Magazine around the growing topic of menopause and lifestyle, wellbeing , and spoken several times in Parliament on Diversity and Menopause. In 2022 Michelle was involved in an ‘Abuse is not love’ campaign with Marie Claire, highlighting the red flags in relationships. In July 2023 Michelle was an ambassador on ‘Every Menopause Matters’ campaign for Holland & Barrett which highlighted the importance of the needs for women of colour in Menopause. It is evident to see Michelle’s zest for life and passion when she delivers her motivational talks.
Stella Peace
Dr Stella Peace joined Innovate UK in September 2023 as Executive Director Healthy Living and Agriculture. Stella has extensive international experience in Consumer Goods, developing technology and innovations for global food brands. With an academic background in Polymer Chemistry, her industry career includes roles at Unilever, where she was Vice President Science and Technology for Foods and Refreshment. Most recently she was Chief R&D and Quality Officer at Nomad Foods. Throughout her career, Stella has led and developed diverse teams with a wide range of expertise spanning the Life Sciences. Stella is a purpose driven leader who is passionate about the role of innovation in transforming lives and driving growth.
Speakers
Kate Barclay
What does your role at BIA involve?
As an experienced Biochemical Engineer, Kate leads skills and talent programme development across STEM industries using over 30 years of experience within large pharma and small company networks. Working with BIA, she represents the sector ensuring access to the incredible talent and addressing skills gaps to start, grow and scale innovative life sciences and biotech organisations.
Previous experience & achievements
In addition to her role at BIA, Kate works as an independent consultant supporting organisations to develop their skills and talent strategies. She has oversight for quality governance of technical and professional education as IfATE Non-Executive Director and is a Board member of North Hertfordshire College. Kate holds MBA from Open University and a PhD in Bio-Chemical Engineering from UCL. As a Chartered Engineer (CEng FIChemE), she held previous senior leadership roles across diverse pharmaceutical manufacturing and R&D portfolios including Solid Dose, Parenteral & Inhaled Devices.
If you could invite any scientist or entrepreneur to dinner, who would it be and why?
Rosalind Franklin, as she made contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA and RNA. She studied science at a time when few women attended university and led pioneering work on multiple viruses. Kate would love to know what she thinks about what we know now!
Cassie Doherty
Cassie is an Investment Director at Parkwalk Advisors. Parkwalk is the largest growth EIS fund manager, backing world-changing technologies emerging from the UK’s leading universities and research institutions. She specialises in Healthcare and Life Sciences investments. Prior to joining Parkwalk Cassie worked for IP Group Plc leading investments into UK University spin outs. She holds a BSc and PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Leeds. Her interest in commercialisation started in her first role in a start-up where she led the development of drugs identified during her PhD into Phase II clinical trials. Cassie is also a Trustee of the Leeds Hospitals Charity and Chair of the Charity’s Research and Innovation Committee.
Paula Holland
Paula has more than 20 years’ experience of executive compensation and equity incentives in the UK, the US and internationally. Companies turn to Paula for advice and transactional support throughout their life cycle as they build their businesses, expand internationally and plan their exits. Paula is skilled in advising multi-nationals, both public and private, on the incentive aspects of their most strategic transactions including M&As, with a focus on private equity, IPOs, and SPACs. She also assists remuneration committees in their determinations relating to retention and incentive arrangements for board members and senior management. Paula’s key areas of work include: - Guiding late-stage private companies on opportunities to leverage equity incentives fully within their strategies for growth, exits and IPOs - Advising UK companies on the compensation aspects of preparing for and listing on NASDAQ and NYSE - Exporting US and UK equity plans to multiple jurisdictions, with the ability to provide advice on the tax, securities laws and employment law issues in more than 60 countries - Helping start-ups with their early stage incentives, key hires and first international steps Paula regularly contributes to Cooley led programs such as Comp Talks, IPO Institute, HR Network, Future50 and UpScale to ensure clients are kept up to date on the latest legal developments and best practices within the incentives space.
Anne Horgan
Anne Horgan is a Partner focusing on Life Sciences investments. Prior to joining CIC Anne was a Partner at Advent France Biotechnology (now AdBio Partners), a Paris-based venture capital firm specialising in Life Sciences seed investments and company creation, and Senior Associate at Sofinnova Partners. Anne brings over 20 years’ experience in the field of Life Sciences innovation, acquired as a Business Development Executive at Cancer Research Technology (now Cancer Research Horizons) and Senior Medicinal Chemist at Cambridge Biotechnology Ltd (now part of Benevolent AI). Anne’s experience includes equity financing, technology transfer and scouting, business development, drug discovery and biotech R&D. Anne carried out postdoctoral research at Yale University after her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Bristol. She holds a diplôme d’ingénieur (Chemistry) from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Rouen, authored several peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on eight patent families. Anne manages CIC's investment in Complement Therapeutics and Mosaic Therapeutics.
Lucy Edwardes Jones
Lucy is a life sciences investor at BGF, the most active investor in small and medium sized businesses in the UK. Her main role is to source and execute new investments, as well as supporting a number of investee companies at board level. She represents BGF on the board of Vianautis, Maxion Therapeutics, Elasmogen and Enhanc3d Genomics. Prior to BGF, Lucy spent five years in strategy consulting at CIL where she focused on the healthcare and pharma sectors.
Fiona Marston
Fiona is a biotechnology entrepreneur with a track-record of starting up and managing the growth of businesses. Her early career was in business management for Celltech plc and CRUK and in investment for the Rothschild Bioscience Unit and J&J Development Corporation. Fiona currently is Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Reading and previously was Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She is also Non Exec Chair and CEO of Erebagen Limited, Non-Executive Director for Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust, member of the NC3R CRACKIT Challenge panel and adviser to the fund Northern Gritstone.
Kirsty McCarthy
Kirsty is CEO and co-founder, along with her husband Tom, of M:M Bio, an ecosystem of Biotech companies sharing people and learning. Kirsty came to Biotech via a degree in History, an MBA and work in large corporate technology companies, before moving into the startup world in early 2000's where she started forming companies around very early speech recognition and ML technologies. In M:M Bio Kirsty and Tom have brought together their tech, biotech and startup experience and learnings to create a new way of thinking about how biotechs are run.
Harriet Oppenheimer
Harriet is the Chief Executive of RNID, the national charity for the 12 million people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. RNID is thrilled to be BIA’s charity partner of the year for 2024. Harriet leads RNID’s work to make society and employment more inclusive, and to improve health hearing through improved awareness and access to services and treatments. Prior to joining RNID Harriet was a partner at PA Consulting, where she worked across government, health and life sciences sectors, helping organisations shape and deliver strategic change. Her early career was in charities and the NHS.
Emily Pilkington
: Emily is a Director in the Global Life Science and Healthcare Team at HSBC Innovation Banking, in London. She supports innovative biopharma & diagnostic clients across the EMEA region and works with founders, C-suite and investors to provide banking and lending solutions that support client innovation and growth. Emily brings over ten years of experience supporting technology and healthcare companies with solutions across corporate banking, leverage finance, and M&A.
Rippon Ubhi
Rippon brings close to 20 years of senior commercial leadership experience in multiple countries including Japan, the UK, the USA; and more broadly at a Global level covering China, Russia, Brazil, to name a few. Rippon joined Sanofi in late 2022 after 18 years at AstraZeneca. As the Country Lead for Sanofi in the UK & Ireland, Rippon champions Sanofi's NHS and Government engagement to bring the miracles of science to people with serious and life-threatening diseases and to better support NHS teams. She has taken an industry leading role in driving improvements to the decision-making process around the differential value of medicines across multiple indications. Rippon’s membership of the PharmaTimes Marketing Board provides unique insight into key trends in the life sciences commercial environment at both UK and international level. She was a strong advocate for Women’s leadership in Japan and the US at AstraZeneca. At Sanofi, she continues to play a leading role in driving forward Sanofi's commitments and initiatives in diversity, equity and inclusion. She defines herself as “I’mPossible”, believing very strongly that anyone across the globe can turn the impossible into the possible, no matter their gender nor their ethnicity. Rippon is keen to bring her track record of challenging the status quo, pushing boundaries to make increased access and uptake of innovative medicines a reality in the UK and welcomes the opportunity to continue her work on this as a member of BIA and currently an active mentor on the BIA Women in Biotech Scheme.
Erica Whittaker
Erica is Vice President & Head of UCB Ventures, an evergreen strategic corporate venture fund which was set up to invest in innovative, longer term and higher risk therapeutic opportunities beyond UCB’s current focus areas. She is on the Board of Directors of five UCB Ventures portfolio companies: Rinri Therapeutics, ExeVir, Neurona, Splice Bio, and EsoBiotec. Erica began her career at UCB in 2010 initially in Strategy roles, and later as Head of Market Access and Pricing for EMEA Commercial Operations. Prior to joining UCB, Erica spent 10 years as a top-ranked biotechnology equity analyst for Merrill Lynch in London (1999-2009). Erica received BA degrees in Biology and in Comparative Literature from Brown University (Rhode Island USA). She obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh, and later an MBA from Heriot-Watt University Business School in Edinburgh. She enjoys running, cycling & family holidays, especially spending time with her two daughters, aged 16 and 19 years.
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MENTORING PROGRAMME COHORT 1.0 & 2.0 ONLY
09:00 – 09:30 Mentees/mentor arrival (invite only)
09:30 – 11:00 Mentoring roundtables discussions
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OPEN TO ALL
10:30 – 11:30 Registration and networking
11:30 – 11:45 Welcome
- Jane Wall, Managing Director, BIA
- Harriet Oppenheimer, CEO, RNID
11:45 – 12:30 Fireside chat with Michelle Griffith Robinson
- Michelle Griffith Robinson OLY, Olympian. Life Coach. Mentor. Trainer. Mum.
12:30 – 13:35 Networking lunch
13:35 – 13:40 Welcome back
13:40 – 13:55 Keynote speaker
- Loubna Bouarfa, Envision Pharma Group, Chairwoman, AI Board
13:55 – 14:55 #InvestInWomen: Breaking down double standards in investment – Panel and Q&A
- Cassie Doherty, Investment Director, Parkwalk Advisors
- Anne Horgan, Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital
- Lucy Edwardes Jones, Life Sciences Investor, BGF
- Emily Pilkington, Director, HSBC Innovation Banking
- Erica Whittaker, Vice President & Head of UCB Ventures, UCB Ventures
14:55 – 15:30 Networking break
15:30 – 16:30 #InspireInclusion: Re-defining Sector Leadership – Panel and Q&A
- Paula Holland, Partner, Cooley
- Fiona Marston, Chair & CEO, Erebagen Limited
- Kirsty McCarthy, CEO and Co-founder, M:M Bio
- Rippon Ubhi, General Manager, Sanofi UK & Ireland
16:30 – 16:45 Keynote speaker
- Stella Peace, Executive Director Healthy Living & Agriculture, Innovate UK
16:45 – 17:00 Closing remarks
17:00 – 18:30 Networking drinks reception
BIA members (Emerging companies): £95 +VAT
BIA members: £145 +VAT
BIA Associate members: £185 +VAT
Non-members: £225 +VAT
Emerging companies (non-member): Please contact the BIA Membership team for a discounted non-member rate.
By registering for this event you accept our Terms & Conditions.
From January 2024, please be aware we are no longer able to accept payment by invoice on bookings under £100 +VAT.
All bookings under £100 +VAT must be paid immediately by credit or debit card. For bookings exceeding £100 +VAT you can choose the invoice option. Invoices should be paid within 30 days of the invoice date.
In case of any issues registering for the event, please contact the BIA Events team.
Allyship is something we fully appreciate and this event is open to all.
Hinxton Hall Conference Centre
Wellcome Genome Campus
Hinxton
Cambridgeshire
CB10 1RQ
Download the digital banners to let your networks know you'll be joining us at #WomeninBiotech
Suggested social media text:
Join me in Cambridge on 12 March at @BIA’s #WomenInBiotech event! We'll be celebrating #IWD2024 with inspiring keynotes and thought leadership panels focused on:
✨ Breaking down double standards in investment #InvestInWomen
✨ Re-defining Sector Leadership #InspireInclusion
Register ⬇️
https://www.bioindustry.org/event-listing/women-in-biotech-cambridge.html
Suggested social media text:
Join me in Cambridge on 12 March where I will be speaking at @BIA’s #WomenInBiotech event dedicated to celebrating #IWD2024. Don’t miss out on a day of thought-leading panels and discussions and inspirational talks focused on:
✨ Breaking down double standards in investment #InvestInWomen
✨ Re-defining Sector Leadership #InspireInclusion
Register ⬇️
https://www.bioindustry.org/event-listing/women-in-biotech-cambridge.html
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