They came from far and near, all with similar purpose and ambition.
These women were a force to be reckoned with, including highly skilled strategic thinkers in the life science and healthcare sectors, from R&D to commercialization, operations, and regulatory affairs/compliance for both small and large cap companies.
Yet despite the high aptitude of this representative sample of female leaders, the stark reality is boards are only made up of 20% women.
The venue was the fourth annual meeting of Breaking into the Boardroom™ (BiB) held this past April. Deerfield, a co-founder, aims to change these statistics.
Speaker Jan Berger, MD, boiled the problem down to this when she addressed the crowd: “It used to be that the only diversity in the Boardroom was whether the male only members were sporting black, blue or grey socks.” Berger is president and chief executive officer of Health Intelligence Partners, a healthcare consultancy she founded.
The goal of BiB is to promote greater representation of female healthcare executives on boards within the public, private and non-profit sectors. Covering such topics as how to get a board seat, the role of governance, spectrum of board opportunities and legal and regulatory duties—the event lured 45 women from across the country, representing a broad cross section of experience from throughout the healthcare ecosystem.
Studies suggest that female-led companies are better run and bring greater returns[1], which begs the question why then are women still commercializing less and acquiring less venture capital when they do. On the upside, event speakers noted that men with daughters who have skin in the game tend to come around, suggesting their potential adaptability for change.
Among the reasons to account for the low number of female board members are a shrinking pool of candidates by the time the c-suite is reached with an upside down male to f