We have spent our whole careers in the pharma and life science industry. After starting in Accenture, Miriam worked in pharma companies (GSK, Roche, Allergan and Santen) and Sarah on the agency side, most recently as Founder of Wordbird, now part of Grace Communications.
Sarah had just attended an event by Diamonds – the exclusive network for high-performing business leaders. Despite a massive dose of Imposter Syndrome in a room full of ‘OBEs and CBEs’, she found the inspirational stories of the women on stage captivating. They were just normal women. Their personal circumstances of divorce, motherhood or frustration with the status quo had often driven them to achieve something remarkable. The message was I did it, and so can you. She made a proposal to Miriam - why don’t WE create a network like this for women in pharma where we can share our real human stories and inspire each other?
And so we did it! We set up Women in Pharma. And it turned out that we struck a chord. Having both been on personal transformation journeys, and trained as coaches, we are incredibly proud of the community we have built.
…Miriam decided to do some genning up and bought a couple of books on the subject. Suddenly all this unconscious bias started to make sense - our socialisation, systems and structures shaping our beliefs and expectations. She nearly fell off her chair when she then discovered that the whole of medicine was based on the masculine body and the implications that this has been having for all aspects of women’s health.
She said to Sarah excitedly, ‘we’ve got serious work to do here!’ And so our purpose was born.
To create a network where we can:
Women in Pharma is a now community of thousands in our Linkedin group.
Hundreds have attended our events. We feature in a film called TABOO, the unspoken truth about women’s health; we have contributed to a course on sex and gender research, developed by The MESSAGE PROJECT, part of the George Institute of Global Health at Imperial College London and we have our own podcast, Loose Women in Pharma. We have trialed programmes and awards and enabled like-minded women leaders to network and set up spin off groups.
We are especially proud of our vibrant Young Women in Pharma group who run their own inspirational events.
What a whirlwind! And for the most part, all as a side hustle to our day jobs. But we love it and hope you will too.
