Making Diversity & Inclusion A Best Business Practice

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is not to be confused with Affirmative Action, the law signed into being in the 1960s, as D&I is tied to an organization’s mission, strategies, and practices to support a diverse workplace, and seeks to leverage the effects of diversity to achieve a competitive advantage. Further, it isn’t a law, or at least it didn’t used to be. On Sept. 30, 2020, the governor of CA signed into law Senate Bill (SB) 979, a measure requiring publicly held corporations in CA to achieve diversity on boards of directors by January 2023. As San Francisco is considered the birthplace of biotech, and a world leading biopharma hub, not to mention other large CA cities that play a pivotal role in biopharma, D&I is (and has been) an important issue for the biopharmaceutical industry. As such, we thought it would be worthwhile to gain some perspective on D&I from three biopharmaceutical industry executives. In this EVR, Peng Lu, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer (CMO), Pharvaris; Michael McCullar, Ph.D., CEO, OnQuality Pharmaceuticals; and Edith Perez, M.D., CMO, Bolt Biotherapeutics, share their D&I experiences and perspectives.