About Us
Engage.
Educate.
Empower.
Our Mission
Women In Bio is an organization of professionals committed to promoting careers, leadership, and entrepreneurship of all women in the life sciences.
Who we are
Women In Bio is an organization of professionals committed to promoting careers, leadership, and entrepreneurship for all women in the life sciences.
We are an organization of professional women from all career walks in the field of life sciences. We are all volunteers and we all share the goal of enabling and empowering women to reach the highest levels of leadership, and — more importantly — to fulfill their own career aspirations.
Our members reflect the increasing spread of the life sciences. We belong to biotech and pharma companies, universities and institutes, law and accounting firms, marketing and PR firms, CROs, and CMOs. Many of our members are entrepreneurs, and a focus on entrepreneurship has remained core to WIB’s mission.
WIB’s primary focus is to provide women-to-women mentorship and leadership support through all stages of career development
- from Bench to Boardroom
- from Academia to Industry
- from First Job to Last
- from Idea to Entrepreneur
Our Leadership
Read our 2023 Annual Review
2023 was a busy year for WIB! Read a letter from our 2023 President and President-Elect, learn key achievements for WIB, and read about each chapter’s work over the year.
Thank you to our members, sponsors, partners, and the entire WIB community for continuing to support and champion the WIB mission from the classroom to the boardroom.
Our Philosophy
“Women helping women” is one of the most important features of WIB. We have found that successful role models can inspire our members to challenge themselves, aim for the top, and show that people who “walk like them and talk like them” can become leaders in any field.
Friendly, relaxing networking is key to our – and your – success. Our events are relatively small by design (under 100 attendees is common) to enable people to have meaningful interactions with each other and with featured speakers. WIB events spark friendships, business relationships, and job opportunities by taking the awkwardness out of networking and creating a fun, welcoming environment.
What We Do
WIB aims to help women achieve the highest levels of leadership, influence, and decision-making that they desire. We focus our activities on education, mentoring and networking, and on creating opportunities for leadership that can help advance careers.
EVENTS: Chapters hold events that fall broadly into two categories; professional development or educational events and social or purely networking events. Most of our events have time dedicated to meeting new people and networking.
MENTORING: Mentoring and giving back are core tenets at WIB. Our Mentorship, Advisors, Peers, and Sponsorship (MAPS) program provides a forum for groups of up to ten women with common interests to gather and exchange advice and views. Our Young Women In Bio (YWIB) program encourages middle- and high-school girls to enter STEM by creating fun, hands-on, laboratory events partnered with local biotech companies. Our Boardroom Ready program is designed to identify and amplify C-suite women who are ready, willing, and able to contribute and serve on corporate boards.
COMMUNITY: Learn more about WIB membership and join our vibrant community of entrepreneurs, leaders, business development professionals, investors, scientists, students, and others who work in the biotechnology and life sciences industries.
VOLUNTEERING: We have chapters located in key biotech hubs in North America, where volunteers come together to meet new people and help drive the events and mentoring programs of WIB. Contact us for more information on how to get involved, or reach out to your local chapter.
Our History
Women In Bio was established in 2002 to help women entrepreneurs and executives in the Baltimore-Washington-Northern Virginia area build successful bioscience-related businesses. The founders of WIB: Cynthia W. Hu, Robbie Melton, Anne Mathias, and Elizabeth Grey, wanted to provide a forum for women to come together to celebrate and support each other’s success, and created a dynamic and invaluable forum for the local community.
The mission of WIB expanded several years later, with a vision to grow it to an organization with a national footprint that would impact the careers of women in all sectors of the life sciences industry. That vision has now become a reality, as we have chapters throughout North America, led by more than 600 volunteers and a membership base of over 4,000. Thousands of women attend WIB events each year and continue to grow the organization through their ideas, activities and donations.
Thanks to our founders and past presidents, WIB has become one of the fastest-growing and most influential communities that represents women in life sciences.
A Chapter Near You
The WIB Network expands far and wide across North America. Currently, we have chapter cities that host events every month, creating engaging and inspiring spaces for all women in the life sciences.
WIB Chapters host over 250 events per year, and create deliver unique experiences and programming for high school students, executive women, mentors and mentees, entrepreneurs, and more!
FAQs
At WIB, we have a shared goal with other women’s organizations of increasing opportunities for women and creating an equal workplace. What sets us apart is:
- we include people from all sectors of the life science industry and all career stages
- our speakers and panelists are primarily women, and we place a strong emphasis on women-to-women peer networking
- our events are small by design so that people can have meaningful interactions and make lasting connections
- our Young Women In Bio program aims to inspire a love of science in middle- and high-school girls.
There are WIB chapters across North America. Chapters hold events at different venues in their area to enable as many women as possible to attend. See our event calendar for a list of current events.
As WIB operates virtually, you can make many connections by getting involved as a volunteer, which expands your network and provides leadership opportunities. In addition, many virtual WIB events are recorded and made available for viewing to WIB members in our video library.
There are many ways to volunteer with WIB. Reach out to your local chapter, or complete the WIB Volunteer Interest form.
WIB is a virtual organization, whose leaders and volunteers are located in different cities and meet by video conference, email, and in person whenever possible.
WIB is a volunteer led organization and we want to ensure that each WIB Chapter is set up for continued and long-lasting success. The process to start a chapter is rigorous and requires deep commitment from Chapter volunteers. Click here to find an overview of the process to open a WIB Chapter.
We’ve launched a new WIB Community space that will enable you to connect with other members, get member-exclusive pricing to events, access members-only content, and more! Follow these steps to set up your new profile.