If Somerville’s city council tries to make moderate cuts to the police budget this year, the Mayor will respond by defunding the crossing guards. He’ll blame the council for making him do it. It’s classic bullying and budgetary hostage taking and it sucks. In order…
My mother used to tell stories about the 1967 race riots in Detroit. She was 17 years old, living with her parents at 7 mile and Woodward. She told me how the National Guard rolled tanks down the street while her grandfather hid in the…
Once a year, bioinformatics.org gives the “Benjamin Franklin” award to a person whose practice has “advanced open access in data and methods for life sciences.” There’s no cash prize, and the recipient doesn’t even get to give a talk. It usually gets presented in the…
People sometimes ask what motivates me to speak out publicly as an advocate and an ally to women and other underrepresented groups. Sometimes these questions are sincere. Mostly they are not. As I have found my voice on this topic, I have become aware of…
This post summarizes gender representation in the founding, leadership, board, and scientific advisory teams of 162 biotech companies – observed between October and December of 2019. Out of 162 companies listed on the “portfolio” pages of the big three Boston biotech venture firms (Third Rock…
On a whim the other day, I scraped the “portfolio” page on the websites of three of the large venture capital firms in Kendall Square (Atlas Venture, Flagship Pioneering, and Third Rock Ventures) to generate a list of 162 biotech companies. The first thing I…
This is the second in a series of three or four posts. The first one, diverse teams perform better, explored some of the research on the measurable performance advantages that diverse teams have over monocultures. This and future posts will share real world examples about…
In my next three or four posts, I’m hoping to lay out a story that goes something like this: Diverse teams outperform monocultures. Biases in hiring and retention mean missing out on that performance boost. Biased systems self perpetuate. It takes action to break the…
Climate change is real, human activity is driving it, it’s an emergency. We need to slam the brakes on carbon emissions right now to have any hope of a smaller scale catastrophe. That’s the choice. Doing nothing or putting it off is a crime against…
A few days ago, one of my professional contacts shared a list titled “rules for sons” on LinkedIn. It was filled with advice like, “the man at a BBQ grill is the closest thing to a king,” and “carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your…