In Conversation With Harsha Ohri and Lakshmi Santhosh Maithel
A recap of IBLoT’s Ask Us Anything event with Harsha and Lakshmi on the topic of “Women in Biotech Business”
On the fifth of June, India Biotech Leaders of Tomorrow conducted an Ask Us Anything event with Lakshmi Santhosh Maithel and Harsha Ohri on the topic of “Women in Biotech Business” that I got to host.
With over 3 years of experience in neuroscience research in India, Japan, Denmark, and the US, Harsha made a transition into life science consulting with her recent degree in Business & Science. She currently works as a forecasting analyst for PharmaACE, and has worked with companies like Amgen, Atara Bio, and a few other biotech start-ups based out of California. Her prior education includes a BS/MS degree in Biological Sciences from IIT Madras.
With her expertise for business development in the genomics space, Lakshmi has worked for start-ups in India and the UK as well as the nonprofit GenomeAsia 100K initiative based out of Singapore. She currently works for Genedata on Business Development for their Profiler product used for precision therapy development. Her undergraduate degree is in Economics from UC Berkeley and she completed a Masters in Biotechnology from the University of Pennsylvania.
The conversation we had was extremely enlightening and interesting, especially because of the different perspectives and carefully curated insights that were shared. The following is the conversation between me, Lakshmi, and Harsha during the event, edited for clarity.
Tejashree: Both of you have had very unconventional journeys that have led you to pursue a career in the biotech business. Lakshmi, you did an undergraduate degree in Economics from UC Berkeley before your Masters in Biotechnology from UPenn. And Harsha, you were initially pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience, before deciding to do an MBS degree at Keck. I’d love to hear a bit about your journey getting here, what your motivations were, and any major challenges you might have faced making these transitions.
Harsha: My journey has been pretty consistent in terms of starting with research through undergrad and that leading to a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Drexel, here in the US. I was enrolled in the program for about a year until I realized that it was not working out for me as I had hoped it would. I took it more to be like a research assistant or research technician position here, and I couldn’t see that happening for 4–5 years just to complete this degree and then enter the industry space. At the same time, during that one year, I was also connecting to a lot of professionals based out of the US, and I was mind-boggled as to the various professional science courses that are out there, and I had no idea of those back in India. That made me think about what if I want to transition into another business course that is also connected to the science that I’ve been pursuing for 5–6 years. Would that be something that I am interested in? So I talked to a lot of professionals and the answer was yes, because this space was a bit more dynamic, in terms of getting to do various projects at the same time. That was something that was of more interest to me. So then I quickly transitioned out of the Ph.D. program into the master’s in business and science at Keck. So far the journey here has been tremendous. I love what I am doing right now, which is life science consulting and forecasting, and I get to utilize all the experience that I have, not just in neuroscience but in science in general, throughout my four or five years at IIT Madras plus the business insights that I’ve gained at Keck.
Lakshmi: I did my undergraduate degree in Economics at UC Berkeley, and I was interested in a lot of different things. I found economics resonated with me when I was a student and then when I graduated, I wanted to go into journalism. I worked at a newspaper for a year as a researcher, occasionally writing some articles. I thought that focusing on an area like science and technology, and biotechnology, in particular, would give me some advantage in the journalism career route. When I applied for my master’s in biotechnology from UPenn, I talked about journalism and wanting to write, and then when I was actually at UPenn, I explored some other career options. Ultimately I took a job at Elsevier working on their sales and marketing team because I found that I had a knack for sales and closing deals. Also, there’s an element of sales where you’re telling a story and you’re creating a narrative which resonated a bit with me because of my interest in storytelling and writing. Also, the aspect of it where you have to defend the value and all that was also very interesting to me, and gathering information from the customer became an aspect of journalism that I saw in sales. Then that became my career, moving into business development where I am now, at Genedata, helping companies in the biopharma and biotech space employ precision medicine strategies for drug development and essentially enable the incorporation of biomarker data into clinical trials so you can do better identification of patient subpopulation. So it’s been an interesting journey for sure, but I think everyone finds their path. I think, if you know you’re trying to figure out what you want to do, it’s great to consider a lot of different options and talk to a lot of different people and see the different paths that are out there.
When we talk about “Biotech Business”, we are clubbing various career paths together. What are the different ways through which someone can pursue a business career in biotech? How much of a biotech background would you think a person would need to pursue this path?
Lakshmi: It’s kind of a catch-all phrase, even take business development. It can mean being an in-licensing person trying to in-license compounds from biotech companies. If you’re working in pharma at a biotech company it can mean trying to out-license your drug candidate to a big pharma company. It can be business development in the sense that I do it, which is providing services and products to biopharma and building the business that way. So that’s just business development. Obviously, there are other aspects of business, consulting being one, which also has a lot of different types of approaches. There’s investing, which is another aspect of a business, where you could work for a VC fund, or you could work for an investment bank. That’s investing in the biotech space. So that’s another route to pursue. And in terms of how much background you need in it, there are people who do just an undergraduate degree in biotech or biology and then pursue careers in consulting. I did my undergrad in economics, so I felt like I needed at least a master’s in order to be in this space. I think there’s nothing wrong with doing the full Ph.D. You do get a lot of the academic rigor and I think that does have advantages in business, but you don’t need it, I think if you want to go into business in biotech in any of these areas. You can do it with just a master’s, for example, but if you want to also keep your options open in terms of wanting to maybe do a research track and you’re not really sure, then do the full Ph.D., and it certainly will help you also in the business context as well.
Harsha: To add to that, I visualize it in a very straightforward manner. So, for example, you can enter the business field straight out of college, after master’s, after — let’s say you’re a research assistant — after that. Maybe you’re the Chief Scientific Officer even, after that you can get in. So there are a lot of different avenues in which you can get into business at any stage, wherever you are. Even after a Ph.D., postdoc, if you’re in a scientific position or if you’re a scientist at a company and you want to transition to business, yes that’s also possible. So really it depends on where in this timeline you want to get in, what expertise you have and where you want to use that expertise, and how you can best utilize the information or knowledge that you have and keep building on that.
At an undergraduate level, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding what sort of internships and opportunities students should keep an eye out for, especially if they want to work in industry rather than in academia. What would your advice be to someone in that position, about whether they should target startups or work on projects in reputable universities, or any other options they might have?
Harsha: That’s a really wide question. I mean, obviously, there’s no right answer. It obviously depends on what the person wants to do, and honestly, undergrad is a place where you can make mistakes. You can do something and then you can learn from it. For example, if you are starting off with research internships, you don’t know right away whether you want it or not. You need to try it and I think undergrad is a great place to do that. Personally, I did all my internships in institutions outside India. I’ve tried to understand the research perspective from each way, but even then, after getting into a Ph.D. program I dropped out of it and did something else. So there’s no one right answer. It’s mostly circumstantial. To give a more direct answer, no matter what you do, you need to build a story around what you’re doing. For example, you did a couple of research internships in your undergrad, but after four years you realize that this is something that you don’t want to do, but you want to get into, let’s say bioinformatics or business, you just need to kind of make a story around why you ended up where you are today and what the decisions were that led you there. For example, you can say I did pursue a couple of research internships I thought I was really into but I realized that I like to thrive in dynamic spaces or something like that. So it’s all about the story — that’s something I learned coming to the US.
Lakshmi: I can talk a little bit about interning at or working for startups. It gives you a wide range of experience because it’s a small company, you get to do a lot of different things. You can take on a lot of responsibility quickly and in that sense, it’s great. I haven’t done as much of the research internships, so I wouldn’t be able to speak to that as much. I can also say, for startups, if you’re not necessarily doing an internship and you’re taking a full job, again it’s a great experience, but I would say it’s not like a get-rich-quick situation. I think a lot of times for startups, you take a salary that’s lower than the market rate, and they tell you in 10 years or whatever, we’re going to go public and everyone will get stock options. Actually, even if you’re among the first 10 employees that come in, the company still needs to do really, really well for you to make a lot of money. So if that’s your primary motivation for that particular job, it may be disappointing, but if you’re trying to get skills, and you’re trying to learn, and you’re trying to get to that next step in your career, and you want to grow, it would be very useful. For instance, when I joined a startup in the UK, I was working in the biotech space, I moved from working at a non-profit into actually working for a company that was working with pharma, and that was important for me to make that transition, and so in that sense, the job served the role, but a lot of startups fail. A lot of startups do layoffs, so you can’t necessarily expect it to be a rocket ship to the moon. But it’s a great learning experience, and maybe someday, if you want to found your own startup, experience working for a startup is also great in that sense.
I think a major issue among young people is this pressure to achieve success early, which doesn’t give us the space to think about what we want to pursue and where our interests lie. How have you combated this pressure to be successful, and given yourself space and time you need to work on your career?
Lakshmi: Yeah it’s tough, I think you see a lot of peers on social media, LinkedIn, all these things, and I think always comparing yourself is a dangerous game. It’s important to define as early as you can, what matters to you, and how you are defining success, but it’s also unavoidable that you’ll feel envy or jealousy when you see some other people pursuing particular tracks. Again, you’re only seeing a very limited version of whatever people are presenting, even the coverage in the news and all that. What’s helpful in that circumstance is if you find yourself feeling like you’re not sure or if you are confused about picking the right path, that kind of thing, because you see somebody else doing something different, maybe just see what it is about what they’re doing that you want, and see if you can incorporate that a little bit into your current career. If you see someone working for a startup and you really would like to work at a startup, maybe start networking with people in the startup space to see if that’s something you want to do. For me, I really like writing and sometimes you see people pursuing a career in journalism, I’d be like, oh I would like to have a bit more of that in my life and so I write on LinkedIn, I write on Medium, I find other channels to express that part of myself, and what I want to get out there. I write about biotech, I write about science, so it’s still relevant to my career as well.
Harsha: I completely agree with what Lakshmi said, and just to add my own two cents, I think it’s really important to not like she mentioned, compare yourself against others wherever they might be. Plus at the same time, it’s also really important for you to be true to yourself, not get hazed or clouded by what others are doing, what their plans might be because that’s something that we really tend to do right after undergrad. For example, some of your friends might want to do a Ph.D., it doesn’t really mean that just because you’ve studied with them, been with them for four years, you necessarily don’t want to do the same thing. That’s something that really helped me get out of the Ph.D. program. I never really compared myself, even though all my friends were doing jobs right after undergrad, that didn’t really stop me from pursuing what I thought I wanted, but at the same time I was true to myself, for example, I was doing my Ph.D. and being true to myself. Afterward, I thought that okay this is something that I definitely don’t want to do now that I’m doing it, and so then you have the chance to make a transition right after that.
How would you describe the business or industry culture in the various countries you’ve worked in? What surprised you the most? How do you think the positives could be embedded into an Indian context?
Harsha: For me personally, I do not have much business exposure in the other countries that I’ve been to. It’s mostly been research-based. But also really enjoyable, like I’ve been to Japan, and the research culture is really amazing. For example, if you know that you’re going to work from 9 am to 6 pm, in those hours they do nothing else but just that. They don’t even talk about their personal lives, they don’t even waste their time talking or chit-chatting, but after 6 pm, that’s all they do. So they really have their priorities set for certain times. They’re really punctual, they’re really focused, so that’s something that I observed during my time there. And then again there was another research internship in Denmark, a really vibrant culture, really great people. I can talk about how the business side of things is different here in the US, but also I do not have the relativeness of talking about how it’s different from India because I do not have the business exposure there, but what I really like about what I’m doing here, how I got here, is the networking culture. It’s just amazing. You get to talk to and connect with a lot of amazing industry professionals, 99 percent of whom are really helpful, and always are ready to guide you and mentor you, and I think that is a really big part of progressing or growing in a business environment here in the US. Especially in the biotech space, it’s such a small niche industry and it really helps to get to know everybody within the industry, because you know 10 years down the line you’re going to know literally everybody within the industry. So that’s something I think India can or maybe it already has, maybe I’m just not aware, but I think networking and connecting is a really important aspect of the biotech business here.
Lakshmi: I have some experience working in the UK. I was there for four years and also worked with startups in India and I’m now working in the US again and definitely there’s difference in culture. I think oddly the UK was the biggest culture shock for me. Indian culture I grew up with and also US culture since I grew up in the US and I had Indian culture at home and so I kind of came to terms with the differences there early. But UK culture really threw me. It’s very polite. People don’t ask any aggressive questions. Obviously, US culture is very open and in the UK culture, they really want to preserve other people’s privacy. They don’t want to intrude. They’re very respectful in that sense, so sometimes that makes it difficult, in a work context, to know if things are going well and if I am doing well. It’s not something that they talk about and in the UK you get a lot of people from all over Europe and I think they still also have that same tendency in Europe to not really share as much as the US, where you’re very upfront about how you’re feeling and what you think of the situation. Obviously, there are differences in individuals across the different groups but that was something I noticed at least in the UK. Both US and Indian culture are very upfront. I think there is still a lot of hierarchy in the Indian context, so you may not feel if you’re a very junior person, that comfortable speaking up, but I think generally in the culture, we try to create space for discussion. Take the The Argumentative Indian, a book that came out a while back. It talks about how we have this history of discourse and discussion and talking things through, and so I think that serves us well, and so if you can make it a discussion and a conversation, it’s something that’s really beneficial about the Indian culture. Even if you’re a junior person, you can find a way to respectfully voice your opinion. It’s still very much appreciated across all these different groups.
At a talk I attended by a director at Google, she mentioned that although diversity in the workspace is being widely focused on, there are still a lot of unconscious biases that we need to work on eradicating. As a woman, what challenges have you faced in education, or work, so far? What support systems do you think are crucial to encourage and support women in their career pursuits?
Lakshmi: Definitely there are a number of factors that come into play. I think they’ve done studies on these types of things. But I think women tend to get interrupted more in business conversations. The younger generation of men is more aware of this, but with a lot with the older generation sometimes it still happens where you are just interrupted more frequently than a male at the same level. Another aspect is that sometimes you may have women have trouble being heard. Like you could say something but then it’s repeated by a guy and suddenly it’s heard more somehow. You know, I remember reading an article about it. Just calling that out a little bit when you’re being interrupted helps a lot, you can say — you’re interrupting me, I’m trying to say something. That sometimes can work, and another is if you feel someone’s just summarizing what you’re saying, you could say, well that’s just what I said. So just kind of finding almost humorous ways to just point that out really helps. Another thing is in negotiation and negotiating salaries. They bring that up all the time like women don’t negotiate as much, and I remember the first job I had, after I’d been there a year and gained a lot of responsibility in this expanding territory, I asked for a raise and my manager responded a little bit angrily. It was kind of a shock for me because we had a very good relationship, and we continued to have a good relationship afterward, but I was like well, I thought this was what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to negotiate, you’re supposed to ask, women don’t ask and I’m asking. It wasn’t received particularly well and even just recently I read this article about that, about how whenever anybody negotiates, even men, there’s a little bit of a negative perception of that. It’s like why are they negotiating, but for women, it’s a more negative impact than it is for men. Except when you negotiate for someone else, so let’s say you’re negotiating for your team, you know if you’re running a team and you’re like you know I think so and so should get more, that’s perceived well. As for women, because we’re just seen as more communal, I guess, like society-wise, so you’re standing up for the community. So I think that was interesting to me because then it affects how you frame a negotiation. Like if I was going to negotiate my salary, I think I would frame it as more like, I think for the benefit of the company, it would make sense if I’m bringing this value to the company and so therefore it makes sense for me to get x. So some of that stuff you can try to combat yourself, but it’s just being aware of it also is helpful, I think because it’s easy to think, oh it’s all in my head, but that’s why sometimes looking at the studies that show this makes you feel a little bit like okay, here’s what’s real and here’s how I can address it.
Harsha: Even though I’m starting my career just now, I was able to relate to every point that Lakshmi mentioned. I was like — check, check, check, this is happening, but I think something that took me off guard was, so when I was applying for these positions right off, after my master’s, when we were talking about the compensation, like not even negotiation or for a raise, like even for the compensation, when I was able to compare that value with other databases that I had access to, it was just off. Like I was just really trying to explain it to myself, am I lacking somewhere? Is this why they’re paying me less? But no, that’s not the case. You just need to learn some negotiation skills. You need to say no. This is my standard. This is what other people are being paid for this job, and I deserve that. You need to be able to come up with that voice inside of you, and I think we are getting there, but not really. We still need more strategies like these to speak our voices and get what we want, because it’s time that we do that.
Seeking out mentorship in the workspace is something that’s always been encouraged, especially for women. How have you sought out mentors, and how have they impacted your career and the decisions regarding it you have made?
Harsha: Here there are a lot of mentors. So many great sources for mentors. I’d like to start off with the cyber community. There are a lot of successful, smart people you can always reach out to. You can connect with someone who has the same interests as you. You can have a few chats, and then apart from this, the IBLoT community is there, and I’ve also had the pleasure of connecting with a lot of alumni. They’re again a great source of mentors because they’ve been in your shoes and they know what you’ve gone through. They know where you want to get to. At least they have an idea, so they also form amazing mentors. I actually have one of my mentors as my alumni, but he’s really old. I think that’s an advantage because he has a lot of experience, even though he cannot relate to how my generation talks or whatever, but he knows how the industry is and how to progress, so there are some trade-offs, but I also want to have women mentors through different organizations, like Women in Bio. It’s a great place to connect with women, learn about the struggles, and challenges that they face day-to-day, and also not just be prepared for them or learn how to tackle them, but also just to get an idea of — okay this exists and we need to cross that barrier while we can. So I think these all are numerous sources to get mentors.
Lakshmi: I’ve got a few mentors from my different roles that I’ve kept in touch with, both men and women. One tip I would recommend for continuing to build a relationship with your mentors is just to update them. I would say when you change jobs when you get a promotion, just send them an email, just send them a message and say ‘hey, you know, this is what’s going on with me, here’s what I’m doing now, I just wanted to let you know, and thanks again for your advice on this and I’m still incorporating that into my day-to-day. It’s not something you have to do like every month or anything like that, but just when there’s something significant, share that with them. I think it’s good for long-term relationship building with mentors.
And to end on a slightly more personal note, what does a typical workday look like, for the roles you are currently in? What excites you the most in what you do?
Lakshmi: I really like my current role — part of what we do is figuring out how to bring this particular software into different pharma companies and biotech companies. I’ve been focusing on how to grow our customer base with the smaller biotech, in particular, researching different scientific areas where we could apply our tools, where we have especially high benefits, like in cell therapy, for example, or in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. So that’s been really interesting — that exploratory component of it. Also just trying to understand different companies and how we could provide value, how to pitch. A fair amount of what I do is also just like cold outreach through LinkedIn or different types of avenues, and we also do marketing campaigns. How do you build the messaging, how can we get people to come in as inbound leads, and then once you know we’ve got interested, building a proposal for them and seeing how you can serve their particular challenges, so it’s very interesting for me. I always had an interest in a lot of different things, so it’s nice to go from company to company and just see what’s the context here and how can we apply it there. I also have a lot of flexibility in my day-to-day, and that ultimately it’s just about delivering some results at the end of it. Nobody’s sitting on my shoulder telling me what to do on a day-to-day basis. I’m just like well at the end, here’s what I’ve accomplished, and here’s what we’ve got going and that’s a nice aspect of it as well to have that kind of control. So yeah, I would say the diversity of the activities and the flexibility is something that I really like about my role.
Harsha: For me, I think since I’m in a consulting role, I really enjoy the fact that I get to work on a lot of different projects in a short amount of time. For example, right now I’m working on a project which is like three months long, and then my next one is going to be six months long. So there’s always this change of not just the kind of work I do but I also get the flavor of each and every function within the biotech or biopharma industry which is something that I really was looking forward to after graduation. That’s again a personal choice. Some people already know what they want to go into. For example, they’re just really passionate about marketing and they look for marketing roles right after graduation. But that was something I didn’t want to do right away. I wanted to take my time, look at the industry from different perspectives, from different lenses, and work on large amounts of projects. And I think the second part that I really love about my current job is that they are investing a lot in me to develop my technical skills, and that is something that I don’t think many companies do in consulting. Especially since it’s more strategic-based management consulting. Right now I’m also learning how to forecast the revenue or forecast patients. So there’s just a big learning curve which is a big plus for me definitely since I’m just starting off my career. I want to be able to learn a lot of technical skills as much as I can, and grow from there. So those are, I think, the two aspects that I really enjoy about my current role.
The pictures in this report were sourced from Unsplash.
If you missed the live session the catch the replay on our YouTube channel here.
About the Author:
I am a fourth year undergraduate student of Biological Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, pursuing a specialization in Computational Biology, whose interests lie in sustainability, public policy, poetry, and neuroscience. I am also the Community Manager for India Biotech Leaders of Tomorrow (IBLoT). Reach out to me through my website!
