Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) | Twitter

Rebecca Robbins (@RebeccaDRobbins) | Twitter







Happy Wednesday, and welcome back to Go West, your weekly briefing on what’s new in life sciences up and down the West Coast. I’m Rebecca Robbins, writing to you from my base in San Francisco.

I want to start today’s edition with a story that I think speaks volumes about the lack of diversity in the highest ranks of biotech.

This past Friday evening, I trekked to San Francisco’s Union Square to attend an awards dinner put on annually by the California Life Sciences Association, a trade group here. The biggest honor of the night was the Life Sciences Leadership Award.

You can think of it like a Hall of Fame honoring pioneers in California’s life sciences community. This year’s leadership award went to two industry legends: George Scangos and Stelios Papadopoulos. 

When I flipped through the event program, I found the faces of all the winners since the award was first handed out in 2004. They were nearly all white men. Just two women have won over the years, compared with 31 men. The last time a woman won? 2009. (Other awards handed out at the event — honoring the industry’s educators, deal makers, and rising stars — have been more diverse over the years.)

So, how did CLSA end up with such a homogenous Hall of Fame? Each year, the public can submit nominations. An independent committee of about 15 people — about a third of whom are women or minorities — sifts through the nominations and recommends a few winners, who are approved by CLSA’s executive committee.

When I asked CLSA spokesman Will Zasadny about all of this, he told me the program’s decision-makers are “deeply committed to actively promoting diversity and inclusion” and “are always looking for ways to improve our process and include more diverse representation.”

I’m not highlighting CLSA’s Hall of Fame because it’s unusual in lacking diversity. To the contrary, I see it as a reflection of just how white and male-dominated the industry is in the boardroom, in the C-suite, and on its biggest stages — on the West Coast and beyond.