Biotech Firms Acknowledge Minority Underrepresentation

Company officials cite an unfilled pipeline as an obstacle to recruitment; some observers see need for more aggressive recruiting. Sidebar: Helpful Resources For Minority Scientists TOO FEW: BIO president Carl Feldbaum cites the pipeline issue rather than discrimination as the main reason for small minority representation. Scientists who are members of racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the biotechnology industry, according to a variety of industry observers. Minority researchers agree with company representatives and career counselors that this disparity rarely if ever arises from conscious or overt discrimination, but they disagree on what, if anything, individual biotech companies should do about it. While those in the industry say the problem is quite real, it is difficult to quantify. Large and small biotechnology companies approached by The Scientist declined to provide breakdowns on the racial and ethnic makeup of their scientific staffs. And the Washington, D.C.-based Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the industry's main lobbying group, does not collect data on this issue, although BIO president Carl B. Feldbaum says he plans to do so in the future. Despite this absence of data, Feldbaum is comfortable in charging that "there are too few minority scientists in the industry." But he's quick to add, "I haven't seen any whiff of explicit discrimination. I think [the problem is caused by] the small number of minorities in the general population who have scientific degrees in cellular biology, microbiology, and molecular biology." MANY VARIABLES: John Alderete SACNAS says the pipeline issue can’t totally explain the dearth of minorities at biotech companies. "Minorities in general are really nowhere to be found in the biotech industry in [the United States]," agrees John F. Alderete, a professor of microbiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and president of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Still, says Alderete, biotechnology is not unique among scientific fields in that respect. "I am not familiar with a particular field or discipline in which we are well represented." Some of the larger biotech companies have established programs that are explicit attempts to fill the educational pipeline with enthusiastic minority students. Biotech giant Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks, Calif., for example, has established an ongoing relationship with Spelman College, an Atlanta-based institution for African American women. Amgen has donated $1.5 million to the college to establish the Amgen Center for Molecular Biology. Additionally, the company annually provides two-year scholarships to two Spelman students and each year invites several students to its Southern California laboratories for summer internships. While applauding Amgen's efforts, Alderete comments, "I think what we need is much, much more of that by the biotech industry." Moreover, he's not convinced the problem of poor minority representation can be fully explained by a pipeline that's not filled. "That's one variable in a complex equation," he observes. Other contributing factors, says Alderete, are the lack of a critical mass of minority scientists at these companies, which leads to "hostile rather than hospitable" work environments, and the failure of many biotechnology companies to target minority scientists when recruiting. American Indian Science and Engineering Society 5661 Airport Blvd., Boulder, Colo. 80301-2339 (303) 939-0023 - Fax: (303) 939-8150 aiseshq@spot.colorado.edu http://www.colorado.edu/AISES Executive director: Norbert S. Hill, Jr. 3,000 members Hispanic Engineers and Scientists 104 Naval Architecture Building, University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, Calif. 94720 (510) 643-8416 - Fax: (510) 644-1158 hes@uclink.berkeley.edu President: Hugo Ortiz 80 members National Network of Minority Women in Science (MWIS) American Association for the Advancement of Science 1200 New York Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 326-7017 - Fax: (202) 371-9849 egvilla@aaas.org Director: Eva Gavillan 250 members National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) 525 College St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20059 (202) 667-1699 Director: Damon Larry 1,000 members Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, Calif. 95064 (408) 459-4272 - Fax: (408) 459-3156 sacnas@cats.ucsc.edu http://www.sacnas.org President: John F. Alderete 750 members "If there's nobody in the pipeline, then why can we get 1,000 students at the SACNAS conference?" asks Deborah A. Bravo, a member of the SACNAS board and a research scientist at the Berkeley, Calif.-based Bayer Biotechnology (a division of the Bayer Corp. of Leverkusen, Germany). "Where are the biotechnology companies at that conference? Why don't they have a booth right next to the universities? Why aren't they there advertising themselves? They'll go to job fairs, but they won't go to the minority conferences." (The 1997 SACNAS conference will be held October 9-12 in Houston.) 'NO INCENTIVE': Career counselor Mary Alice Yund notes the large pool of people with the technical skills needed by biotechs. "Well, why should they?" counters Mary Alice Yund, a career counselor who consults with the Bay Area Biotechnology Center in Berkeley, Calif. "What [biotechnology companies] need are people who have certain technical skills. And there is a large pool of people presenting those skills to them. . . . There's really no incentive other than community spirit to go out and try to bring more people into the candidate pool." One incentive may be the desire for diversity in the workplace. "You want diversity not just for its own sake," explains BIO's Feldbaum. "When you're dealing with scientific problems as complex as those we deal with in biotechnology, I have an intuitive feeling that the best work force is a very diverse one." Diversity seems to be particularly important to Amgen. "Diversity is not something you pursue, it's something you live," maintains Michael Murguia, Amgen's human resources manager for staffing. "You have to have a commitment and believe in that commitment." Amgen conducts many forms of diversity training among its more than 5,000 employees (see Profession, page 17), and Murguia believes that as word of this gets out, it helps the company's recruiting efforts among minority scientists. "What we're trying to do is to let individuals know that we value diversity here at Amgen. We are a diverse organization, and it's a company where diverse individuals can come in and be successful and comfortable." In addition to internal diversity training and its contacts with Spelman, Amgen attempts to recruit qualified minority scientists in a variety of other ways, says Murguia. Amgen recruiters place ads in minority publications and attend meetings of minority scientific organizations (although they haven't yet attended a SACNAS meeting). Additionally, whenever Amgen employs a search firm, as it often does when recruiting for its scientific staff, it inserts a provision in the contract requiring minority-outreach efforts. "Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are different," notes David G. Jensen, managing director of Search Masters International, a Sedona, Ariz.-based company that recruits scientists for the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. "Pharmaceutical companies have their human resource departments tuned in to this. They have regular ways of handling recruitment for minorities. They do regular advertising for minority issues. It's a planned and permanent part of their business. They're good at it." On the other hand, he observes, "the biotechnology industry consists of many small companies that don't even have a human resources department yet. They're just trying to find the best person for the job." In this respect, a large biotech company like Amgen is more akin to established pharmaceutical companies than to its smaller biotech brethren. Epic Therapeutics Inc., a tiny Norwood, Mass., biopharmaceutical company concentrating on drug delivery systems, is a case in point. With a total of just 24 employees-five of them Ph.D. scientists-CEO Carolyn Patrick says, "We're a small company that's trying to achieve the best results we can as quickly as we can, so we're looking for the very best scientists for the job without regard to their ethnic status." While the company does not focus specifically on minority hiring, two of its five scientists are Asian Americans. But even some larger and more established biotech companies pay scant attention to minority issues. According to Rebeccca Bucci, manager of employment for the 165-employee Cytogen Corp. of Princeton, N.J., for example, "We don't do anything special to recruit minorities." Several years ago the company placed a number of image-oriented ads in minority publications; however, the effort was not geared specifically toward hiring. For many companies, however, attention to minority recruiting comes when they're about Cytogen's size, or perhaps a bit smaller. "The biotechnology industry consists of so many young companies who have [fewer than] 100 employees," explains Jensen. "They'll have developed to 80 employees and they'll realize, 'Hey, we don't have a very diverse work force here,' and they'll go out and try to correct that. Larger companies have a constant eye on that, and they're always looking for good people to fill certain minority categories. They have people assigned to that, and they make a special recruiting effort." CORPORATE CONSCIENCE: Recruiter Ed Bocko notes that firms big enough to need human resources professionals become concerned about minority hiring. And there's another factor as well, in the opinion of Ed Bocko, Jr., president of PROTRAN Resources Inc., a Sharon, Mass.-based employment consulting firm that specializes in the biotech industry. Usually at 80 to 100 employees, "they get their first human resources professional. And sometimes the role we have is to be the conscience of the company." CONSTANT CATCH-UP: Amgen’s Harold Davis says biotech’s minority issues are "no different than the same issue in any other cutting-edge science arena." Harold Davis, Amgen's director of toxicology, says there are several factors in the shortage of minorities in biotech compared with the pharmaceutical industry. "One, biotechnology is newer. Two, it's smaller. Three, the people who started these companies themselves historically come out of academically oriented groups and have a tendency to hire [people] like themselves or hire who they know-either buddies or colleagues." Bravo points out that minorities often lose out in that situation, since "oftentimes minorities simply don't have the connections." She proposes as a solution that biotech companies consciously choose to hire people who have the proper training and skills but who may lack a point of intersection with the network of industry insiders. THE SIZE FACTOR: Recruiter David Jensen notes that small firms’ prime concern is "the best person for the job." Jensen thinks there's another factor keeping minorities away from the biotech industry: Academia just won't let go. "I think there are more minorities in academia. I don't know why, but when academia lands sharp students of minority descent they glom onto them and really foster their interest in the academic research area as opposed to sending them out to the biotechnology industry." Academia's lures didn't tempt Amgen's Davis, however. An African American, Davis grew up poor in the inner city of Birmingham, Ala., "during the civil rights problem years." He graduated from college and veterinary school at the historically black Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). He entered the Air Force, and eventually earned a second doctorate-a Ph.D. in cardiovascular pathology from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. After two decades in the Air Force, during which he served as chief of ultrastructural pathology at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., and as chief of pathology at the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, Davis retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He decided to make a career in the biotech industry and worked at American Cyanamid Inc. in Pearl River, N.Y., until that company was acquired by American Home Products of Philadelphia. He came to Amgen in 1995. Davis says that in his scientific career, "I've run into very little overt discrimination. But I've always been aware of the fact that I'm black. I've always been aware of the fact that in most of the meetings I sit in I'm the only one or one of the few. My interactions with people here at Amgen have been super. Do I go through the day thinking that everybody who's here is glad I'm here? No, but I've had nobody give me the impression they weren't glad I'm here." Regarding the recruitment of minority scientists in the biotech industry, "I don't think anybody's doing enough," concludes Davis. "I'm a pessimist, [given that] the industry has been around as long as it has and we haven't made more strides than we have. But that's [generally true] of race relations in this country. "At the same time I'm optimistic because I do see the numbers increasing," continues Davis. "I think the issue in the biotechnology arena is no different [for minorities] than the same issue in any other cutting-edge science arena. It's the same for astronauts, it's the same for astrophysicists, it's the same for neurosurgeons. We're faced with a never-ending catching up." Robert Finn, a freelance science writer based in Long Beach, Calif., is online at finn@nasw.org.

Biotech Firms Acknowledge Minority Underrepresentation

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