At biotech's small­est com­pa­nies, fe­male ex­ec­u­tives make up on­ly a frac­tion of C-suite lead­ers — re­port

De­spite re­peat­ed calls to di­ver­si­fy the biotech in­dus­try, women and those in mi­nor­i­ty groups make up just 14% of board mem­bers at pub­lic mi­cro- and small-cap com­pa­nies, ac­cord­ing to a new re­port by the Bed­ford Group and Transearch.

“Just the to­tal per­cent­age of CEOs [who] are fe­male was much low­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed,” said Dar­ren Ray­croft, part­ner and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at the Bed­ford Group.

For over a decade, the firm has com­piled ex­ec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion re­ports in oth­er ver­ti­cals. But for the first time, they’re re­leas­ing a re­port based on 225 pub­lic biotech com­pa­nies in the US with mar­ket caps un­der $2 bil­lion — and what they found was a stark lack of di­ver­si­ty among the high­est ranks of the in­dus­try.

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