 Thanks very much, Lydia. My name is Gabriel Lopez. I'm professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of New Mexico. I am a colleague of Lydia and Jose on the SEOS committee. I was very happy to be invited to moderate the session today on current leaders in business. We have a really great and diverse panel to learn from this afternoon. Our first speaker is Dr. Jade Sumana. I hope I pronounced that right. Dr. Sumana is an account manager at CITIVA, a Danahar corporation life sciences company. CITIVA is the new name for the former GE healthcare life science bio pharma business. Dr. Sumana received a BS in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts and Hearst and his PhD at the University of Massachusetts medical school. He also received an MBA from Boston University. He is a board member and former student of the New England biomedical sciences career program and has been key in obtaining corporate support for students in that program. He has received many honors and awards and he's recently selected for the prestigious Danahar corporation's general management development program. Welcome, Dr. Jade Sumana and thank you very much for joining us today. I look forward to hearing to what you have to say. Thank you so much, Dr. Lopez and thank you Lydia for the kind invitation. This is an incredible topic and the timing couldn't be better. I think as we think about the life science industry, the STEM industry, it's very important for us to form leaders and secure the future leadership of the industry. Now I want to share with you a little bit more of my story how I've been given granted access to leadership at various stages of my career development and also talk about some challenges, some gaps and maybe draw your attention to certain things that we could do differently. I would like to say that everything really came into focus in my particular story right after graduate school. So as Dr. Lopez mentioned, I did my PhD at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. At that stage, I was looking for a post-doctoral fellowship. It was very challenging to obtain one. However, I was very fortunate to secure one at the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases run by Dr. Anthony Fauci within a very specific unit called the Vaccine Research Center. This is the center that discovered the Moderna COVID vaccine. The main takeaway from this story or this leg of my story is that there seems to be an association of subject matter expertise with leadership, especially in the academic institutions. And later on, when you go into the private sector, they still feed off of that. I believe that there should not be this type of association because you can find natural leaders that are not necessarily subject matter experts that do not have PhDs, that do not have these advanced degrees. Leadership is something that you can find in virtually anybody. So I want to draw your attention to that. So with my post-doc at the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH, we're doing amazing work there. And the folks from GE Healthcare basically approached me to join their sales team because of my expertise in biochemistry and antibody engineering. Now, they wanted me to work with their consumables team, not in a leadership capacity. However, that was a stepping stone to where I am today. Had I not had that experience with the Vaccine Research Center, it's very unlikely that I would have gained access to GE Healthcare, Life Sciences, and then subsequently to other roles. Fast forward a little bit. And through various engagements, I was invited to join the board of the Biomedical Sciences Careers Program, a board that Lydia runs with Dr. Joan Reed. And once I joined that organization, now I had a capacity or I'm starting to develop subject matter expertise in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now, from my employer, they see me as a subject matter expert in biochemistry. They see me as someone who's developing skills in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fast forward to 2020 when DE&I exploded and became the hot topic of the year, everything came into focus. And that became a propeller for me to step up to the plate and say, hey, folks, listen, I actually have expertise in these various areas. Come to me and I can help you solve these critical organizational problems. Now, I do believe that all of the past experiences they all fell into into place, kind of like the pieces of a puzzle. But thinking about that subject matter expertise, would I have gained all of this if I had not gone into a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship? Would I be the individual that I am today at my organization? Had I not had that experience with the biomedical sciences careers program and so forth? I do believe that many people in our space have a lot to say and share when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. They don't necessarily have the advanced degrees or whatnot, but they do have very important stories to share. So what do we do? What do we do about that? I think that it's very critical for us to think about ways to bridge that gap. And when I think about that, I like to frame it in terms of leadership activation, leadership development, and then leadership retention. Just as we work really hard to get minority students into the STEM fields, we create curriculum and programs to attract them, develop them, and retain them. We should do the same thing in parallel for leadership specifically. What do I mean by that? Think about a student who is trying to gain access into medical school. Many advisors will tell them, we want to see you lead a research program or a research project, deliver a poster presentation, so forth, lead an organizational club, you name it. Along those lines, we should reframe it not necessarily obtained leadership experience to gain access to medical school or your next step in your career journey. We should frame a leadership program or initiative in the context of preparing these individuals to become leaders of the future. Today, the life science industry as a whole, not necessarily on the pharmaceutical side, but let's say on the supplier side, so the organizations that are supplying the pharmaceutical companies with products and services to drive their innovation. There are very few leaders of underrepresented groups at the top. Why is that? Because historically, we haven't filled that funnel with individuals. So I think that it's very important to think about ways for us to create a framework, a platform to not only get students into STEM fields, but in addition to that, prepare them for leadership roles. This could be something as simple as mentorship. I always tell, I've benefited from three types of mentors. A mentor in my organization, a mentor outside of my organization, and then a mentor outside of my industry. Very specifically, giving you three examples of those three mentors and how they've helped me craft my persona as a leader and also how they've helped me develop as a leader. The mentor that I'd like to highlight in my organization, that was Celia Schiffer, my graduate school advisor. The thing that she did for me that was the best was to show me that she struggles. Today, we can look at many, many leaders in any industry. You see them, they all look like superheroes. They do phenomenal things, phenomenal work. You do not know how they do it. And it seems surreal. Celia Schiffer did all of that. In addition to that, she showed her students that she struggles and she struggles naturally. Normalizing your struggles allows the mentee to believe that what they are, the struggles that they're going to be, the path that they're experiencing is normal, is uniform. It's what everybody's going through. And what that also does is it stops them from quitting, from going into a different industry or just abandoning their dreams and aspirations. So that was the best thing that Celia could have ever done for me. And that's what allowed me to go to move from my graduate career into a post-Octoho fellowship. The next mentor that I had in my organization came from, or not in my organization, but it was through BSEP, the Biomedical Sciences Careers Program. There, I was able to observe how a superhero actually functions. There's so much to be gained from apprenticeship. We talk about mentorship. What about apprenticeship? What do I mean by that? During our board meetings at the Biomedical Sciences Careers Program, you have senior executives, C-suite executives from virtually all of the large pharmaceutical organizations driving diversity and inclusion in our industry. And there, what I was able to do is have a front seat and have a front seat and watching individuals like Lydia, like Dr. Joan Reed, and these various executives move mountains on behalf of minority students. That was very transformational. Why? Because it allowed me to gain some perspective, take some actions, and then apply those in my organization. Simple things that I could take away were soft skills, how to speak to executives, how to craft a strategy from ideation all the way to strategy execution and completion, and get an organization as big as GE Healthcare Life Sciences to become a top supporter of an organization like the SAP. It is incredibly hard to do that, and I think that many of you will appreciate that. But had I not seen how the leaders of the Biomedical Sciences Careers Program actually work, I would never had the opportunity to apply those same fundamental practices at CITIVA. So when we think about leadership development and the actual framework that we are working on and developing for future leaders, I highly recommend that we consider mentorship and apprenticeship as two things to do. Now, the last leader that I want to talk about is an individual at my organization, CITIVA, who is our Senior Vice President of Human Resources. His name is Derek O'Sullivan. During the advocacy for a partnership between CITIVA and GE and BSCP, I had an opportunity to pitch the idea of a partnership to our C-suite executives, one of whom was Derek O'Sullivan. He loved the idea, he loved the passion, and he recognized that there was a significant gap between the representation of minority individuals or underrepresented groups within our organization and the industry as a whole. So then he took it upon himself to, you know what, I'm going to be your mentor. I will mentor you, I will meet with you on a quarterly basis, chart a career vision, a career path for you, but you have to do all the work. You have to come with me, these ideas, what do you want to do, and so forth, and I'll make connections for you. So over a 12-month period, I met with Derek on a very frequent basis. Each time I would come to him with something very specific that I was curious about. I was in sales at the time, currently still am in sales. I had the biochemistry experience, so what I was trying to do is add complementary skills to my subject matter expertise, right? So I would come to him and say, I'm interested about this, can you connect me to X, Y, and Z, and so forth. Through those engagements, I learned about the general management development program at our parent company, Dana-Her, and what I started to do at that point, I got comfortable enough to advocate for myself and say, Derek, I want to be a part of this program, can you help me? This is what I've identified as the next steps to do. This is what I would potentially need from you and Citeva. How can we make it happen? And then from then on, everything just came into place. So here what I'd like to say is, many students who are already in our industry, they are ambitious, but they may not come to you and advocate on their behalf. So please, be a Derek O'Sullivan. When you recognize talent, go to the talent and offer your mentorship. If you have an ability, offer also apprenticeship. Say, I'm going to show you how I operate. Be open about any kind of struggles that you may have. That will be incredibly humbling for the mentee. It will be incredibly encouraging and you really, everybody in this panel, I believe, has an ability to significantly accelerate the career growth of these students and individuals that we serve.