Gender diversity, or rather the lack of it, remains a problem in biotech board rooms, C-suites, and venture firms. As Polaris Partners general partner and co-founder Terry McGuire wrote in a recent op-ed, quite simply, “we need to do better.”
McGuire will join Vicki Sato—a professor of management practice at Harvard University and a former Biogen and Vertex Pharmaceuticals executive—to delve into the issue and talk about ways to close the gender gap at Xconomy’s upcoming gathering, “Boston’s Life Science Disruptors.” The event will take place on Oct. 20 at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Today we’ve posted the official agenda for the event, which you can see here.
As with the previous installments of Disruptors, you can expect a series of candid, interactive discussions with local life sciences experts, entrepreneurs, founders, and investors. This year, we’ll be discussing gender diversity; the challenges and promise of gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9, which has gone from academic labs to form the backbone of a few publicly traded companies; and new ways of conducting preclinical tests, an emerging industry struggling to upend biotech industry norms.
Some of the other speakers you can expect to see include Donald Ingber, director of the Wyss Institute; MIT professor Scott Manalis; Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NTLA]]) CEO Nessan Bermingham; Atlas Venture partner Jean-Francois Formela; and Emulate president Geraldine Hamilton.
You can get your tickets here, and still save some cash if you register by the end of the day. Space is limited, however, so be sure to act fast. See you all next month at the Koch Institute.
