Lift Up Journeys: Women in Life Sciences Lift Up Journeys

In this episode of Lift Up Journeys, we were joined by the fantastic Brynn Scarborough, President and CEO at JK Products and Services, inc.

Brynn currently works as President and CEO at JK Products and Services, an organisation that represent industry-leading brands in the commercial, wellness, and tanning equipment manufacturing space. With over 12 years of experience in progressive leadership roles, Brynn has since been promoted to the North American CEO in 2021.

Brynn now works to advance the companies footprint, go to market strategy, and product portfolio, she continues to drive the business and industry forward, through bold leadership and continual growth.

Brynn has joined us to talk about her career journey to this point, as well as the unique skills women bring to an organisation, Brynn’s tips on hiring a diverse teams, her passion for mentoring and creating a value proposition for a business.

Some of the highlights of the conversation include:

"Women are really good at coming together, forming consensus, leading with a mix of intuition and logic.”

"I think we get stuck in this outdated idea that there’s a master plan, and you should have one, and if you don’t have one, somethings wrong. We are so many different iterations. I’m a different human than I was at 22 or 23, I will continue to be different iterations of myself in the future."

“Being able t observe myself with my peers was a life-changing experience for me, especially with my non-traditional educational background, I was never with my peers, I was always outside the space of knowing where I measured up.”

Tune in to hear from an incredible woman in life sciences.

In this episode of Lift Up Journeys, we were joined by the incredible Sarena Lin, Global C-Level Executive at McKinsey & Company.

Sarena has a strong track record in driving transformational growth across global markets, leading successful global commercial organisational and people transformation programs in the life sciences and industrial sectors.

Sarena joined us to talk about her impressive career journey, as well as current trends she is seeing in the life sciences, culture and transformation within organisations and the power of purposeful networking.

Some of the highlights of the conversation include:

"Learn about what this unique opportunity brings you and learn about particular skills and particular aspects of dealing with it that you’ve never done before.”

"Culture is the values and behaviours that’s being manifested in the organisation. How do you dig into these beliefs and say, how can we do this scientifically, in terms of understanding the similarities and differences, and have a systematic way of addressing it."

Tune in to hear from an incredible woman in life sciences.

In this episode of Lift Up Journeys, Katy was joined by the excellent Aziza Johnson, global head of regulatory and patient safety RD at Recordati Rare Diseases.

Aziza is a regulatory and development executive who's been delivering on startup and global companies missions to support patients through groundbreaking new drugs for over 25 years.

Aziza joined us to talk about her impressive career journey, as well as what it's like being a woman on the board, employee retention, and how to align your values with an organisation's values.

Some of the highlights of the conversation include:

"In a midsize company, you don't have that safety net. So you kind of have to make a lot of mistakes. Yeah. And you do make them and it's painful. But you learn from them, and you learn from them pretty quickly."

"So you learn a lot from this startup environment, you've got to pretty much worry about 20 different hats."

"So I've got to try and make make that a difference, right? So I've got to speak up, I can't be having this imposter syndrome, I am meant to be here. And just changing the mindset a little bit."

Tune in to hear from an incredible woman in life sciences.

In this episode of Lift Up Journeys, we were joined by the incredible Jennifer Chadwick, former Chief Scientific Officer at Protogene.

Dr. Jennifer has 20 years of experience leading teams in the discovery, research, and development of biological therapeutics and is recognised for her expertise in the analytical development, formulation, and stability of biotherapeutic drugs.

Jennifer joined us to talk about her impressive career journey, as well as advice for teams looking for funding, her transition from academia to industry, and future goals and aspirations she has.

Some of the highlights of the conversation include:

"I think the most important thing was to recognise, you're not going to do it by yourself. For me, the positioning that I had being in that particular department, and the connectivity I had to industry was essential."

"I actually love the translational piece, because of the growth oriented learning aspect of it for myself, and I thought this is the fit, right? It's why I went into the department in the first place because that was a better fit than traditional academia."

Tune in to hear from an incredible woman in life sciences.

In this episode of Lift Up Journeys, we were joined by the incredible Arunima Dhar. She is the Vice President of Supply Chain at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Arunima has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and consumer goods industries. She has global experience managing large investment programmes and delivering operational turnarounds, and she is adept at delivering complex and large-scale transformations.

Arunima joined us to talk about her impressive career journey, as well as how she dealt with relocating for her job and any advice she has for others, how to implement culture within a team and any barriers she has faced.

Some of the highlights of the conversation include:

"If you get an opportunity to relocate, take it, just you know, I hate to use the Nike tagline. But I always say just do it, because it opens up your breadth of experience, you learn a lot more about the culture. I think it makes you a better leader."

"It's the mission. It's the sense of purpose that drives people. And you can see that in my teams, you can see that across the organisation, it was all around the patient at the end of the supply chain for us."

"I actually now look for that trait, when I'm recruiting is how comfortable are you with ambiguity with a very imperfect data? Can you make a decision? Can you learn from it if you've screwed up and just move on?"

Tune in to hear from an incredible woman in life sciences.

In this episode of Lift Up Journeys, Katy was joined by the amazing Marta Parmar. She is the Chief Quality, Regulatory and Pharmacovigilance officer at Ferrer.

 

Marta has over 22 years of combined R&D and regulatory experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She's focused her work on driving registration and enabling early access of innovative medicines in a variety of therapeutic areas, including oncology, neuroscience, cardiovascular, and renal conditions to markets worldwide.

 

She joined us to talk about her career journey, as well as how she has supported the Life Sciences industry outside of her career, and advice for women looking to take the next step.

 

Some of the highlights of the conversation include: 

 

"I think what what really also impacted me was the, you know, the the minority of female scientists."

 

"Smaller companies are fantastic to get an exposure to a variety of areas and to, you know, to be able to get your hands dirty with with a lot of different projects and different experiences."

 

"Nurture your network, build it, nurture it. Make sure that you work on your relationships with your co-workers, have support, you know, ask for help."

 

Tune in to hear from an incredible woman in life sciences.