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4 Trends Will Shape Life Sciences Executive And Board Recruitment

4 Trends Will Shape Life Sciences Executive And Board Recruitment

Source: Life Science Leader
Magazine Article | July 1, 2022
By DeeDee DeMan

The life sciences industry has been immersed in a rapidly changing environment since the beginning of the pandemic. In 2020, companies quickly pivoted to address the vast needs for COVID-19 testing, vaccines, and therapies, as well as the acceleration of remote healthcare delivery.

In an already constrained recruitment pipeline, this frenzied growth drove life sciences companies to compete ever more fiercely for top talent. Until Q4 2021, the biotech and biopharma investment pipe was wide open. Companies were going public or yielding huge financing rounds, breaking all records in Series A rounds, let alone B and C.

And just as the life sciences industry was peaking, the bottom fell out, and the entire sector quickly rotated out of favor. Investment funding plummeted to a cyclical low, forcing companies to be more judicious with their dwindling budgets. In addition, the industry is
navigating within an unstable global environment, including a war in eastern Europe, fluctuating stock valuations, and rising inflation.

There have also been big shifts in regulatory policy governing board composition. Just recently, the industry experienced a step backward in diversity mandates when a California judge struck down the state law requiring public companies to include LGBTQ+ and people of color on their boards. Largely unanticipated, these events will have significant short and midterm impacts on the life sciences industry going forward.

I think four key trends will shape executive and board recruitment in the next few years in the aftermath of these recent upheavals in the industry.

Read DeeDee’s full Life Science Leader article: 4 Trends Will Shape Life Sciences Executive And Board Recruitment