The chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization has denounced a party that coincided with the group’s annual meeting in Boston last week, BioCentury reported.
The publication reported Tuesday that the party, known as PABNAB – for the Party at BIO Not Associated with BIO – featured topless female dancers with company logos painted on their bodies. The party, which occurred on June 6, has taken place every year at BIO for 14 years. Party attendee Kate Strayer-Benton, director of strategy at Momenta Pharmaceuticals, was quoted as calling the event “beyond tone-deaf.” Meanwhile, Martina Molsbergen, CEO of party co-sponsor C14 Consulting Group, said it was “edgy and artsy,” but not offensive to her personally.
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John Maraganore, who serves as BIO’s chairman and as CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, said the event was unacceptable to the organization and that any sponsor or organizer thereof should not be welcome as a member of BIO. Meanwhile, BIO President Jim Greenwood said “overly objectifying women” is “not helpful” at a time when the industry is seeking to overcome workplace discrimination and bias.
BioCentury reported that at least 10 of the PABNAB sponsors – Xencor, Nanobiotix, EpiVax, DelMar Pharmaceuticals, MaxCyte, EBD Group, Demy-Colton Life Science Advisors, Adjuvant Partners, Borden Ladner Gervais and Pact & Partners – were unaware of the planned entertainment.
Nevertheless, it’s not the first time an after-hours event at an industry conference has attracted controversy. LifeSci Advisors had to apologize in 2016 after an event it sponsored at that year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco featured cocktail waitresses for the titillation of male attendees.
Overall, the life sciences industry has long struggled with representation of women, especially at senior levels of management. A report last year by Liftstream, a London-based executive recruitment firm for the life sciences industry, found that among the 177 biotechnology companies that filed to go public between 2012 and 2015, women held only 10 percent of board positions. Meanwhile, the proportions of women CEOs and board chairs were less than 10 percent and less than 2 percent, respectively.
Photo: Alaric DeArment, MedCity News
