ElevAAte: Cultivating the next generation of East Asian American leaders

The non-profit launches to overcome C-suite underrepresentation by helping U.S. biopharma leaders of East Asian descent advance in their careers

Biotech investor Lorence Kim found his voice at Goldman Sachs, emerging from what he described as a crucible through which he learned how to connect with clients and deliver advice. 

“If you’re not forced to develop that voice,” Kim told BioCentury, “one can end up self-limiting.”

Kim, who was CFO of Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) before co-founding Ascenta Capital, has joined with a group of fellow prominent East Asian American biopharma leaders to help other members of their community find their voice, and in so doing, develop the critical leadership skills needed to advance in their careers and deliver value to patients and their companies.

Kim is one of seven founding directors of ElevAATe, a non-profit launched in early January to provide more paths to U.S. biopharma leadership for East Asians, defined as people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Mongolian or Hmong descent.

The group’s co-founders include investors Bong Koh and Chen Yu, biotech executives June Lee, Ken Song and Angie You, and investment banker Matt Kim.

The “aha” moment for the group came when members of the group realized that there was a critical mass of East Asian American leaders in biotech across a variety of roles in industry who had benefited from mentors as they rose through the ranks, but those supporters were not necessarily East Asian Americans.

“What we all realized is that was a very individual thing,” Kim said. “The mentorship and the support networks were not necessarily coming from other East Asian Americans. And so we thought to ourselves, gee, why isn’t that the case?”

The non-profit aims to address what it says is a “critical shortcoming in the pipeline supplying talent to the most prominent positions within biopharma.”

Among a sample of 181 U.S. public therapeutics companies with market caps of more than $500 million as of last August, ElevAATe found East Asian Americans hold 6% of seats on company boards and 7% of C-suite roles. 

But the numbers drop dramatically when zooming in on the U.S.’s 15 largest biotech and pharma companies, where East Asia Americans are “notably absent,” according to the group. At these companies, East Asian Americans hold 1% of board seats and 3% of C-suite jobs.

As of January, five East Asian Americans — out of 160 positions — were in the C-suites of these large U.S.-headquartered companies. There has never been an East Asian American CEO of a U.S. “Big Pharma,” according to the non-profit.

It’s not for lack of entrepreneurial spirit. East Asian American CEOs are twice as likely to be a founder compared with a white CEO, according to the group, with white CEOs more likely to have been picked by a company’s board.

“The notion behind the organization was to come together as East Asian Americans to create more opportunities,” Kim said, and “importantly to cultivate that next generation of talented leaders in biopharma to really pay it forward.”

The non-profit said that at the 15 big biopharmas, the Asian American presence — employers are only required by U.S. law to count Asian Americans as a whole — is “robust” at the entry level, at one in four employees; however, that share “declines dramatically” the further up the ladder one goes, with 11% in the C-suite, and less than a quarter of that slice is East Asian American, the group found. That compares with 56% for white Americans at entry-level jobs and 76% for C-suite roles. 

Angie You, who is CEO of Architect Therapeutics Inc., sees parallels between her vision for ElevAAte and the goals of the Biotech CEO Sisterhood, of which she is also a co-founder. 

“One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned with my Biotech CEO Sisterhood co-founders, Sheila Gujathri and Julia Owens, is the transformative power of an authentic, collective community,” You told BioCentury via email. “Within the East Asian biotech community, there’s a similar hunger for connection. The extraordinary talent in the Asian American community is undeniable, and it’s a no-brainer to unite, support, mentor, and advocate for one another.”

The report is step one for the group, Kim said, part of raising awareness. The next step is to create leadership development opportunities. And the third piece is community building.

Executive Director Elaine Chen invited members of the East Asian American life sciences community to follow the group and connect via LinkedIn.