HBA Honors Women Leading the Industry — The West Coast Simulcast
By Wayne Koberstein, Executive Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @WayneKoberstein
By old habit, I arrived at Genentech almost a half-hour early for the event and sat down next to some other early arrivals. Even after some pleasant conversation, I did not realize several of the women at the adjacent table were to be members of one of the best discussion panels I’ve ever witnessed. The realization came only after the room had filled and moderator, Jonathan Witt, vice president of market analysis and strategy, Genentech, let the “Leadership” panelists introduce themselves to the audience of about 50 people, mostly members of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association. We had all assembled early in the morning to view and participate in a simulcast of the annual HBA Woman of the Year award ceremony, with the main event held in New York City.
I was invited to this gathering partly as a member and journalist, and partly because of my association with HBA at its very beginning two decades ago. Because I was editing a different publication at the time, I won’t go into great detail, but suffice it to say I did my bit to support the nascent group and give it as much attention as my responsibilities allowed, helping start a tradition that continues to this day. Over the years, I have met, interviewed, and counted many of the Women of the Year and other HBAers as friends. When I went to an HBA reception in San Francisco this past January, some members recognized and invited me to the West Coast event on May 14. It was well worth the trip down from my Oregon home base for the occasion.
The video setup provided us with a two-way feed between our site and the larger ceremony in New York. After Witt greeted the New York crowd on camera, the panel at our end gave us some extraordinary inspiration from three women with very different backgrounds and careers but joined together by a common thread of leadership. Their discourse was not about men versus women in the workplace. I heard the phrase “glass ceiling” only once during the discussion. But the context was clear. Before the event started, I had heard a speaker in New York, rehearsing her presentation on screen, say that women represent about three quarters of the workforce in the healthcare business, but they hold only about four percent of top management positions in the same field. I was tweeting already, so I cited her figures and remarked, “Change so long overdue.”
The theme of the day was impact and influence (see #HBAimpact), which the West Coast panel applied to women assuming leadership roles. Jennifer Parkhurst, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, told her story of overcoming childhood poverty, rising up through her education, and learning how to lead people in business. She inspired this tweet: “Mentoring, listening, learning, collaborating — so simple in concept, so powerful in execution. Lessons from real lives.” Michele McConomy, vice president at RocketSpace, the physical center of many entrepreneurial companies in the Bay Area, stressed the importance of “bringing your real self” to the leadership role, balancing business acumen with other skills practiced at home — from the practical, such as cooking or rearing children, or creative, such as writing or playing the guitar.
Ayelet Baron, billed as a futurist and “chief instigator” at Creatingis, advocated liberation from the “culture of scarcity” that holds one person’s gain must be another’s loss. I found her message especially inspiring because, like some new theory of physics, it uncovered a basic principle, the rationale for collaboration over competition in life and work. I summarized her points in this tweet: “20th century mindset: Get things by taking them away from someone else; 21st century: get ahead together.” Although I garnered several retweets and favorites for that summary, the credit for stating the idea goes to Baron.
After the panel adjourned, our video director assembled the audience in front of the cameras for a live feed back to New York. We waited for our cues, then clapped enthusiastically for the WOTY winner, Denice Torres, president of McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, and other honorees of the day including the STAR (Strategic Transformation Achievement Recognition), Carol Wells, senior director of commercial training and development, Genentech. HBA also honored a host of “Luminaries” — industry veterans and long-time participants in the organization — and “Rising Stars” — women who are already making substantial contributions to the business early in their careers. Stuart Sowder, vice president of external medical communications at Pfizer, was recognized as HBA Honorable Mentor.
An especially moving moment came, for me, from an unexpected source. I had heard but knew little about the group “Dress for Success.” Yet I learned emphatically that it has much more to do with how women can succeed in work than about what they wear. The group’s name is a metaphor for overcoming barriers. We watched a Dress for Success video that starts with testimonials from women, once held back by age or minority status, rescued from long-term, discouraging unemployment with the group’s help preparing them for making the most of opportunity. I found myself identifying not only with their struggle, but also with their resurgence.
Later, after the formal festivities had concluded, I walked around the room, meeting, speaking with, and taking photos of the smaller groups of networkers that formed and reformed. I met one young girl who had asked one of the most profound questions of the panelists: “Does being a mother help you be a better leader?” This question, as well as the wise and compassionate answer from Jennifer Parkhurst, echoed an exchange I had earlier regarding the under-representation of women in top management: A senior scientist opined women had long limited their advancement as the main balancer of career and family, but agreed the latest generation of men seemed to be taking on more of the home-based responsibilities. The networking itself reinforced the concept of nurturing through collaboration. My last tweet was “Hey, guys, we have so much to learn from what these women do.”
As I made my way back home after the event, I pondered the ideas it had stirred up in the meeting and in my own head. Women are surely driving a new level of discussion in the healthcare-business workspace. They have introduced new issues and initiatives that the formerly male-dominated universe never considered, encompassing and de-compartmentalizing more of our entire lives. They are, I believe, leading us into the 21st century of collaboration over 20th-century competition characterized by the myth of scarcity. One person’s gain is not another’s loss, just as the businesswomen’s rise is not the businessmen’s fall. Collaboration overcomes scarcity like a tide raising all boats.