Women in Biopharma

This book provides the perspectives of many different stakeholders in the biopharmaceuticals field, who share knowledge, challenges, and solutions in an ever-shifting career landscape. Interwoven with discussions of vaccines, gene therapies, recombinant therapeutic proteins, and cell therapies are stories from female scientists working in the field. Authors come from a wide variety of areas within the biopharmaceutical market including researchers, sales, investors, and auditors and from individuals at different points in their career - from new graduates just starting their careers, to mid-career leaders to retirees. As an important part of the Women in Engineering and Science book series, the work highlights the contribution of women leaders in biopharma, inspiring women and men, girls and boys to enter and apply themselves to secure our future in.

Dr. Shae Taylor entered Virginia Commonwealth University in the Fall of 1990 as an evening student to attend college classes, with special permission from the university president, after attending high school. She graduated high school in the spring of 1991 and began taking classes full time at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Fall of 1991 as a biology major. She graduated with a B.S. in Biology in 1995 but found it difficult to get a job with a biology degree at that time. She began taking the last few classes she needed to complete her chemistry degree, and, in the spring of 1997, she graduated with her B.S. in Chemistry. While she was working on her chemistry degree, she began working as an analytical chemist. It was great experience, but she quickly became bored with the work she was doing. She began working on her next degree but did not want it to be a science degree as those with a masters in the sciences frequently were overlooked for positions. Most employers at the time viewed someone with a masters in a science field as overqualified for those positions requiring a bachelor’s degree and underqualified for those requiring a doctoral degree. There just wasn’t a lot of opportunities for someone with a masters. Not sure what to do, she began taking business classes where she soon realized that she really enjoyed her marketing classes. She joined Agilent Technologies in 2000 as a field service engineer specializing in liquid chromatography and regulated industries. At that time, only 3% of Agilent’s field service engineers were women in the United States and that number dropped significantly outside of the United States. In 2004, she graduated from the University of Richmond with a Master’s in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing. In 2007, she received an internal email asking if she would be interested in joining the Agilent delegation to attend the annual Society of Women Engineers (SWE) conference. She had not heard about SWE up to that point but was excited about the prospect of meeting other women in her field. That first conference inspired her in ways she never imagined and over the years, she has become very involved in SWE, attending annual conferences, participating in career fairs and outreach programs that encourage young women to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers and ultimately becoming the lead of the SWE@Agilent Employee Network Group. This employee network group was the first employee network group at Agilent and for years remained the only woman-focused employee network group at Agilent. That group has steadily grown and, in addition to participating in the annual SWE national conferences, now has a full complement of activities to offer employees at Agilent including a quarterly webinar series, a book club, in-person and virtual networking and learning opportunities, outreach activities and more. After advancing to the highest level she could within Agilent as a field service engineer, Shae transitioned over to the product technical marketing team in 2013 for multivendor, relocation and inventory management services. In 2018, she took the role of marketing program manager for North America covering liquid phase products, software and informatics, and the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical market segments. She is a lifelong learner and in 2019 she graduated from Temple University with a doctorate in Business Administration and as a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Honors Society. Shae loves to problem solve. Even as a child, she was drawn to puzzles, cryptograms, and other logic and math-based games. She is passionate about giving back to the world around her. She volunteers with the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Red Cross, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Atlee Church, just to name a few. She also serves on the Executive Review Board for the Responsible Research in Management Award Program. In her free time, she enjoys baking, reading, hiking, and is an avid scuba diver. She loves to travel and experience new cultures and has traveled to all seven continents.

Mary Campbell stumbled into her career in biotechnology. Armed with a degree in Fire Science with a heavy focus in chemistry, she planned a career in arson investigation. Instead, a job in an applications lab for a biotech instrument manufacturing found her. It was kismet. She spent several years helping customers solve problems and conducting workshops designed to educate researchers on technology they could integrate into their labs.

After several years of training researchers and working on applications with new products, a sales opportunity came along and a rookie sales rep was born. Various opportunities in sales and sales management delivered a fulfilling career, but when the opportunity to move into a marketing role presented itself - the chance to try out her creative side was impossible to ignore. The role brought along the opportunity of a lifetime to relocate to Europe for an international position bringing exciting new products to the global research market. Building on that experience Mary has moved to other marketing roles, each bringing opportunities to speak to different researchers about their needs. She is currently the Marketing Program Manager for Chemistries and Supplies at Agilent in North America. Mary holds a Masters Degree in National Security and will complete an ALM in International Relations in 2026.