Who’s lead­ing LGBTQ+ in­clu­sion in bio­phar­ma? Nom­i­nate them for End­points’ an­nu­al re­port

For the fourth year run­ning, End­points News will high­light the biotech lead­ers who are paving the way for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Nom­i­na­tions are now open via this form for the 2025 LGBTQ+ Lead­ers in Bio­phar­ma spe­cial re­port.

This year’s re­port comes at one of the most chal­leng­ing mo­ments for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty in years.

In 2023, dur­ing the week we re­leased our sec­ond an­nu­al re­port, the Hu­man Rights Cam­paign is­sued its first-ever “state of emer­gency” for LGBTQ+ Amer­i­cans. Last year, the out­look hadn’t im­proved much. One per­son se­lect­ed as a fi­nal­ist for our 2024 re­port asked to be tak­en out of con­sid­er­a­tion be­cause they feared reper­cus­sions for show­ing up on such a list.

It’s on­ly got­ten worse.

LGBTQ+ rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly trans­gen­der and non-bi­na­ry rights, are at risk na­tion­wide. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is at­tack­ing di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion ef­forts. Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca is fol­low­ing suit and pulling back on in­clu­sion pro­grams; for ex­am­ple, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s an­nu­al re­port this year on­ly ref­er­enced “di­ver­si­ty” un­der risk fac­tors, and Genen­tech scrapped DEI tar­gets from its web­site. And the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fund­ing freezes to groups like PEP­FAR and US­AID, which help sup­port pro­grams for HIV and AIDS, slow ef­forts to help the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. The cut­backs come as glob­al or­ga­ni­za­tions were march­ing to­ward an am­bi­tious goal to end the decades­long AIDS epi­dem­ic by 2030.

We want to pro­file those LGBTQ+ in­di­vid­u­als mak­ing a dif­fer­ence across a va­ri­ety of roles — sci­en­tists at the bench­side, en­tre­pre­neurs start­ing new com­pa­nies, biotech ex­ec­u­tives who have weath­ered mul­ti­ple storms, phar­ma lead­ers nav­i­gat­ing large bu­reau­cra­cies, in­vestors who sup­port and choose what gets fund­ed, and pro­fes­sors who men­tor the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers.

Nom­i­na­tions must be sub­mit­ted by the end of the day on Mon­day, March 31. Nom­i­na­tions are con­fi­den­tial and we will ask se­lect­ed fi­nal­ists if they are OK with be­ing on the list be­fore pub­lish­ing. Late en­tries will not be ac­cept­ed. Please make the nom­i­na­tions per­son­al, and please no self-nom­i­na­tions. Fi­nal­ists will be no­ti­fied by mid-April, and stay tuned for the re­port in ear­ly June!

Please di­rect any ques­tions to klahu­cik@end­pointsnews.com.

Hap­py nom­i­nat­ing!

— Kyle LaHu­cik