There Was No Roadmap for Me. There Still Isn’t One for Her.
By Dr. Stella Vnook
When I started in biotechnology, there was no clear path into leadership. You learned by doing, by watching, and often by making mistakes that could have been avoided if someone had simply explained how the system actually works. What surprises me is how little that has changed.
Today, I work with founders, scientists, and early-career professionals across oncology, regenerative medicine, and complex biologics. The talent is there—exceptional, driven, highly capable. But many of them, especially young women, are still trying to navigate an industry where the path forward is largely invisible. Women make up roughly half of the biopharma workforce and nearly half of bioscience graduates, yet fewer than one in five biotech CEOs are women. Even more striking, less than 3% of venture capital goes to companies led by women. Across STEM fields, women earn a growing share of advanced degrees, but remain significantly underrepresented in leadership roles and continue to earn less than their male counterparts in comparable positions. This is not a talent issue—it’s a visibility and pathway issue. We are training exceptional scientists, but we are not showing them how to become founders, operators, or leaders. The gap became even more visible during COVID, when millions of women left the workforce as childcare systems collapsed. At one point, an estimated 7 million women stepped out of employment due to school and daycare closures.
They don’t always know what roles exist beyond the lab. They don’t understand how a company is actually built. And they’re rarely given insight into how decisions are made at the leadership or board level. So they stay where the path is defined, even if it’s not where they ultimately want to go. We’re not losing talent because it isn’t there. We’re losing it because we’re not showing people the full picture.
One of the biggest gaps I see is the space between good science and a real company.
Most early-career professionals are trained deeply in the science, but almost never exposed to how that science becomes a product, a company, or a funded platform. They don’t see how capital shapes strategy. They don’t see how regulatory decisions drive value. They don’t see how leadership teams think about risk, timelines, or outcomes. And without that visibility, it’s difficult to imagine yourself in those roles. This is where mentorship matters, but not in the way we often talk about it. Mentorship isn’t about encouragement. It’s about context, skills and showing the path.
The most impactful mentorship I’ve been able to provide is not advice—it’s helping people see what’s actually happening behind the scenes. How companies are structured. How decisions get made. Where inflection points occur. What creates value—and what destroys it.
Once someone understands that, their thinking changes.
They start asking different questions.
They start seeing paths that were previously invisible.
There are more opportunities in biotech today than ever before. The industry is broader, more interdisciplinary, and more dynamic than most people realize. There are roles in strategy, development, operations, regulatory, finance, and leadership that extend far beyond traditional scientific tracks. But opportunity alone isn’t enough. If people can’t see the path, they won’t take it.
If we want to bring more women into leadership in biotech, we need to start earlier and we need to be more explicit. We need to show how companies are actually built. We need to expose how capital and strategy shape outcomes. We need to give people visibility into leadership thinking, not just technical execution. And we need to do that before they’ve already chosen a narrower path.
The next generation is ready. The talent is already there. What’s missing is clarity.
And until we make the path visible, we shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t follow it.
