Empowering Careers: Gloucester Biotechnology Academy's Pathway to Biotech

I recently interviewed John Doyle, who is the education director at the Gloucester Biotech Academy, for my Building Biotechs podcast. But I wanted to share it here on the Biotech Career Coach podcast because I get the question all the time, how do I get into biotech if I have no experience? And I'm going to highlight some organizations over the next couple of months that are amazing for this. They work on reskilling, upskilling, and helping people even transition from totally different career paths into biotech. So we recut the episode to be specifically focused on what you need to know or if you know somebody who's trying to get into the industry and you want to share it with a friend. I think it's such a great organization and you'll really hear how passionate he is about helping people to make this jump into biotech. So let's get into it. I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees. So I know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach podcast to give you simple, actionable, step by step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job, then move up the career ladder. If you are exploring career paths, looking to learn about biotech, or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're.

In the right place. All right, John, thank you so much. I'm really excited for this conversation because I am a huge advocate of the Gloucester Biotech Academy, as you know, and I would love to start a little bit with, you know, what you do. And also for people who are not familiar with the academy, what is it and why should biotechs care?

Sure. Thanks for having me, Karina. I'm such a pleasure to be here. So, a little bit about what I do. I'm the education director at Gloucester Biotechnology Academy. Eight years ago, we designed a curriculum that's for recent high school graduates. So our students are anywhere from 18 to 30 years of age. They typically fall into the underserved or middle skills category of students. So they're students who've graduated high school but aren't necessarily looking for an associate's or even a bachelor's degree. And what we decided we wanted to do was put them into a program that would train them for professional careers in biotech and life science labs. So we work with them for seven months in our Labs. And we train them on three particular skill sets. Molecular biology, cell culture, and biomanufacturing. We have a second curriculum that focuses on career skills training. So things like professional communication, organization, time management, interviewing skills, cover letters, resumes, sort of those interpersonal skills that probably should be taught at the high school and college level, but aren't, but that really make you employable when once you get into the professional workplace. Students who successfully complete that seven months of training are then invited to three months of a paid internship with a local biotech company. So companies here on the North Shore, Cambridge, Boston, we send students as far afield as San Francisco, believe it or not. So they work for three months with people in the industry, they learn new skills at the bench, they network with professional scientists, and after that, you know, the vast majority of them are either hired directly by their internship or we help them with either going back to school or the next step in their career. So that was the vision eight years ago when we sat down to, to design this program.

And tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you end up here?

I was a high school teacher, believe it or not. I taught in New Jersey and Massachusetts for eight years and I taught all levels of science. And I went back to grad school for my PhD and I remember always being at the bench thinking to myself about how, how would I teach this really complicated skill set to someone who was an undergrad or high school level student? And that sort of feeling of teaching never left me. And when I, when I got out of my PhD, I was teaching at Framingham State in their physics department for their oceanography classes. And my wife had seen the ad for this job and she said, hey, this company up in Gloucester starting, and they're looking for somebody who has a background in hard sciences, specifically marine sciences, but who can also teach. And she's like, this is written for you. And so I applied and, you know, here I am eight years later.

I didn't know it started as a really focused on the marine sciences. So you obviously kind of expanded. And now in biomanufacturing, that's pretty new as well. So it's kind of encompassing now.

Gmgi, as a company, we sort of have a, a triad strategy that we follow. One is research. So we have a molecular genomics research institute that focuses on questions related to oceans and human health. The education portion, which I, I lead the idea of training students. And we also have a program where we expose middle school and high school students to lab work in our summer STEM experiences. And then the final piece is science community. So trying to build a science community in and around Gloucester, getting people to realize that commercial real estate here is cheaper. Gloucester has been rated as a platinum provider for lab sciences. The access to the marine environment, there's a trained workforce. Distance to Kendall Square is actually quite short, so it helps a lot with commute. So that's what we follow in terms of our, our triad strategy. So the original focus of what we did here, what the, the academy curriculum was all based on marine sciences. So it's marine themed, but you could actually plug in whatever, you know, model organism you wanted. In theory it should work, but we, we used cod and for biomanufacturing we use the green fluorescent protein from jellies and we use, we, we transform that into bacteria for the students to grow green fluorescent protein, which is, it's really cool. So it keeps the marine theme throughout, but they're learning really high level skill sets when they go, when they go into the industry.

Yeah, those are really transferable skills. I was always really impressed coming to visit the labs. It's a very state of the art lab. So I should paint a picture. You kind of drive up to this office park looking place and then you come in and there's this bright, shiny lab. And I think you've since expanded as well with all kinds of modern equipment. I mean these, these students are training on equipment that they would be using in a biotech. And they're so energized too. The, the puzzles that you put together are really fun. They're things that, you know, I remember doing even as an undergrad. So it's sort of pulling together that curriculum but without needing that four year degree, which I think is so valuable because what we are seeing in biotech is an unusual labor crisis. And we need people who are entry level, but they are hard to come by because the degrees are so expensive now that those individuals are sort of slotted in at a higher pay grade immediately, right out of school when we really need people who can fulfill that entry level workforce. And that's sort of where your, where your organization fills in the gap.

Yeah, so what we tried to do, you know, we were thinking about that middle skills population and really with, with companies holding to that bachelor's degree standard, they're missing an entire talent pool out there. And I'm, I'm so glad that you've been here and you know, so thankful that you've participated in so much of the career skills training that we have with the students because, you know, firsthand what our students are like. These are very capable young people who just didn't have the same opportunities that we did to enter, you know, a college or professional career. They just don't have the support at home. They didn't have the finances. So I think it serves a really valuable purpose in getting those students the same opportunities that, you know, a lot of us are afforded. In terms of the curriculum, we've worked very closely with vetting the curriculum with our industry partners. So every piece that we created, when we did the molecular biology, when we did the cell culture, when we did the biomanufacturing, we went into the industry and said, hey, you're our partner. You've helped us with, you know, these things in the past. If you were hiring an entry level technician in your company for the roles that you're looking for, what kind of equipment would they need to know? What kind of techniques would you need them to, to be proficient in what's the math like that they need to understand what would it take to hire them. And that's the way we designed the curriculum. You know, it always tells a story, which, having been a high school teacher for so long and a college teacher, you know, I have always been sick of the question of why do we need to know this and to make it tell a story. To have them start an experiment that begins at the beginning of the semester and it ends with some data set that you're trying to achieve and use to answer a question. I think it helps them understand why the next steps are being taken, why the equipment is being used, why this particular technique is needed, and it helps it put it all together in a story arc that makes sense for them. So, yeah, we, we made sure that industry was very involved in how we designed the curriculum and which pieces of equipment that we bought for the students to learn on so that when they got out there, you know, they would be ready to go as soon as they, they got in the lab.

And I think that's a nice segue into industry partnerships because I found out about you because a client, a dear client of mine, and some of you may have listened to the podcast episode with Adam Thomas from Synlogic. He actually said, hey, Gloucester is looking for interviewers. They're short an interviewer or two for this interview, kind of mock interview day. And so I said, sure, that sounds great. And that was the first year I went up there. But I know that Adam was always really impressed with the caliber of student and always participated in this internship program, which then I think they hired most, if not all of the interns that they had from your program after those three months. And so, you know, if that's not a testimonial, I don't know what is. But, you know, I think this industry partnership is so interesting because having that touch point and those close partnerships with industry partners means that you're giving better training and that the industry partner is getting fantastic candidates. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of what it takes to become an industry partner for the academy?

I love Adam and honestly, I've lost count of how many of our students he's taken over the years. It's, it's pretty simple. We work a lot with mid to small size companies. That's the vast majority of the companies who take our students as interns. And they capitalize on the Mass Life Sciences internship challenge, you know, so they, they get reimbursed up to $20 an hour for, for our students when they work in the lab. You know, we've made a lot of inroads in, in the last two years. Probably. I have to give a shout out to Laura Rasheen. She's our director of enrollment and partnerships and I, we hired her in 2022 and she's made some great inroads with a lot of the bigger companies and helping them realize that they're missing sort of that, that bit of the talent pool that doesn't have a bachelor's degree. So what we, we found is that a lot of the mid to small size companies, they'll hire our students and they might not look for anybody for another year or so. So there may be sort of a gap in time where we don't hear from them and then they, they circle back. So a lot of it is just letting us know sort of where you are in terms of your needs. We check in with everybody every year to say, hey, we're, we're getting ready. You know, we're training cohorts now, which is a little different, I think, from when you were last here. In 2022, we expanded the biomanufacturing lab with a grant from the, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And that doubled our, our lab space. So we now train 20 students in each cohort. So we have 40 students graduating every year and we say to the companies, hey, we're, we have, you know, 40 students coming out this year. There'll be a cohort of 20 in the spring and there'll be a cohort of 20 in the summer. Are you interested in being an internship partner with us? This year again, and they'll let us know. They'll, you know, they'll communicate to us what their need is for the year. And you know, that's sort of how we start to build our list of companies for that year. So it's, it's pretty straightforward. It's, it's more a matter of just keeping the communication open, letting them know that they're aware of the reimbursement for mass life sciences.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? This mass life sciences reimbursement? I'm sure that most people are not familiar with that.

It's a fantastic program. It was started under Deval Patrick's administration and then it was renewed with the Baker administration. And what it is basically is a pool of money that's set aside for that. It's basically meant to encourage companies to take on interns. And so what they do is they'll reimburse you up to $20 an hour for taking a certain number of interns in your lab. And I think, I don't know the numbers right off the top of my head, but I think it's up to four students now you can have. And it's, it's a great deal. I mean, a lot of the companies use the internship and you know, maybe what they'll do is take the $20 an hour as reimbursement and then throw a few extra dollars an hour at the student to sort of sweeten the deal, so to speak. And you get really well trained students coming into your lab for basically nothing or, or close to nothing. It's a wonderful program. It's, it's for companies have to be a hundred employees or less in order to participate. But they've recently expanded the number of companies that now can qualify. It didn't they used to not include research institutes and now they do. So they've really tried to incentivize companies to give students the, the internship experience. It's, it's a wonderful program. I can't, honestly, I can't speak enough about it.

If I'm understanding you correctly, any company under a hundred people in the life sciences space now can participate. And that includes academic labs as well as. Wow.

Yeah. Academic labs, research institutes. It used to only be when I first started, it was only startup type companies, similar to what you'd see, you know, in an incubator space. But I guess over the years there's been so many inquiries from research institutes, academic labs that they've expanded the qualifications and it includes all of these now so it really is a great, great program.

So there's basically no downside to taking interns.

Exactly.

And whoop, this. All right, well, I'm glad that we're talking about this. I did not know that that program was so wide. I actually thought it was pretty difficult to qualify, so certainly worth looking into.

Yeah. If you just search Mass Life Sciences Internship Challenge, it pops right up. And then there's a tab at the bottom, the way it works for students. You'd click on the for students tab, and you can upload your resume and cover letter. And, you know, companies basically can search your profile and they can see you and decide like, they want to hire you. And then for companies, there's another button on the bottom, and I think there's some paperwork. Like, you have to file a little paperwork, but it's basically just a registration. It's not an application process.

That's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. I think that people will definitely take advantage of that. I can't imagine they wouldn't. So candidates probably need to be Massachusetts residents in order to qualify for that program, right?

Yes. But again, through the program, all you have to do is show that you are living in the state of Massachusetts. So I've had students from out of state take part in the program because they're living with a relative or they're renting a place. So as long as you can show, you know, you either have a state ID or you know, you have a bill, like a utility bill. Right. From a city in Massachusetts, you're. You're fine.

Hey, I just want to cut in to say that if you are enjoying this podcast, you may enjoy the Building Biotechs podcast from our sister company, Recruitomics Consulting, which is a talent acquisition strategy firm that specializes in helping small biotechs hire exceptional talent. In that podcast, we interview amazing people who are building biotechs. They are industry leaders in all different verticals, and it will allow you to explore career paths in biotech and to get to know companies that maybe you've never heard about. So if you are a biotech fan, you are exploring careers in biotech, I highly recommend the Building Biotechs podcast. We'll link that in the show notes.

Or you can search for it on.

Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

And all right, back to our show. Let's talk a little bit about the program and the admission process, too. If people are out there listening and they're like, yeah, I'm listening to this podcast because I want to know about getting into Biotech. What, what is that process like? How do people find you?

The process is pretty straightforward. It is an application and it is a competitive process. But it's very standard to, you know, most school admissions processes. We have a general application form, you know, who you are, where you're from, that type of information, a personal statement about why you think you'd be a good fit in the program, your transcripts from schools you've attended in the past, and then about an hour interview with some of the teaching staff to see, you know, what you're, what you're like as a person. There are no math or science prerequisites. You know, I've had students who haven't taken the traditional biochem physics in high school and they've done wonderfully in this program. I mean, we teach them all of the science and math that they'll need to know to be successful at the bench. It's a pretty straightforward application.

That's great. And it's, it's pretty competitive. I bet you have a lot of applicants every year.

We do and it's gotten, it's gotten more competitive over the years. Our, our greatest resource is, is our alumni. And you know, as students begin to see our alumni out in the community with they, you know, making on average fifty plus thousand dollars a year and they get full medical benefits and they come back to us talking about, oh, I, I have stock options now, I don't even know what that means. Can you help me with that? And you know, when, when their friends start to see it, you know, we get, students come in and we say, well, so how did you hear about the program? And oh, my friend, such and such went through in, you know, 2021 or 2020 or whenever, you know, and the alumni tend to be the biggest draw for our students. And then obviously, you know, you start to get different groups of people and they tell their friends and it just grows. It's, it's been very organic. It's, it's been really cool to watch.

I think that's a real testament to the program when the word of mouth is what's growing it. I certainly have experienced how engaged the students are. I don't know what your vetting process is, but you do a really good job of getting really engaged students in there. I remember one student I was doing a mock interview with. He had come from a background where he was a line cook in a very busy restaurant in Boston and was worried about transferable skills and putting that on his resume. That, that would be, you Know, a mark against him. And so talking about, well, industry's all about deadlines, speed and efficiency and precision. And it sounds like you have that in spades. So, you know, how do we work that in? But what a, what a smart guy. And I hope that I'd love to keep track of some of these students because as I've interviewed them over the years, I can see them doing really, really well.

We have a whole section of our career skills that's focused just on that transferable skills piece. And, you know, what a lot of our students don't realize is that culinary, being a cook in a kitchen, managers at, you know, grocery, grocery stores, all of those things transfer really well to the industry because as you said, it's meeting deadlines, it's teamwork, it's being able to communicate, it's working under pressure. Right. Like, there's all these things that they don't even realize are way more important than arguably, you know, I can teach you how to play pet. You're gonna be able to do that with your eyes closed. I can teach you DNA transformations, We can teach you how to grow bacteria that are producing protein. The thing that is, is always the, the piece that's hardest is the career skill side of it. You know, what is that interpersonal skill set that you're gonna need to be successful. And when we, we interview students, to be honest, Karina, what I'm looking for is the person who, they're on the edge of their seat and they can't wait to go put that white lab coat on. And you can just sense that, right? There's certainly people who come in and, oh, I don't really know what I want to do. My mom suggested this to me. My grandma told me about it. You know, there's certainly that piece of it, but there's a huge difference. When you see that kid that's sitting right on the edge of the seat and is like, just let me go. I want to do this so bad. So that's, that's a lot of what we look for. And it's cool to hear that. You can see it in the lab.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It shines through. It's really obvious. And I think I wanted to highlight that because there is another side of that coin, which is that having a degree, having a four year degree or a PhD does not necessarily confer that same level of career experience or enthusiasm. And so one thing that's really nice is that these individuals by and large have gone out and they've worked in the workforce for a little while. They have a little bit of career savviness and they know they don't want to do whatever that was that they were doing, but they were successful at it. They had a career. Right. And so now they want to pivot and take those skills and bring them into biotech. Whereas I'm sure anyone listening can resonate with this. Sometimes you bring somebody into your lab straight out of a four year degree or a PhD and they don't know how to function in the workplace because they have no experience there. And so you're really getting the best of both worlds with these graduates of your program.

Yeah, I like to say to people, you know, our students are the kind of people who been poked in the eye a little by life and they realized that, you know, with just a high school diploma, you know, a lot of them will say to me, I don't want to be a line cook anymore because I just realize they're just going to chew me up and spit me out and they're going to take the next person who comes along. I don't, I'm not doing anything that really matters. Right. And what I see in our students is they have that realization and that realization is what drives them. It's what makes them so enthusiastic about succeeding in this program. And I think that's a huge difference. I think it's a huge difference. You know, I remember being an undergrad and you know, I was very traditional in my education. I went from high school right to undergrad and I worked, you know, I worked in the summers. But I always kind of knew that, you know, I was going to go on to a graduate degree and sort of follow that traditional path. And our students don't follow that path. They, a lot of them don't even know how to do it. And so they've been sort of relegated to these behind the scenes type jobs in the gig economy or in kitchens or the mall. And they realize that there's, there's this other level that's a whole lot better that they see their friends, you know, who've gone to college and they want to do it and they just can't, they can't afford it. They don't have anybody to help them do it. So that's the impetus for this program. It was to, to help those students who may not be able to follow that traditional trajectory to get there. But I think as you sort of alluded to already, it's that, it's that life experience that they already have that that drives Them.

So if a student is looking to join this program, what is the monetary commitment? What are they looking at for this seven month program before they can get into these internsh?

Yeah, so that's a great question. Two years ago we made the, the program entirely free. So there is no tuition to attend the academy. We actually offer for students who qualify financially, we, we offer them a thousand dollars stipend every month to attend. So you know, that's $7,000 over seven months, which is, is great. We, we actually are, are paying those students to, to attend the program. The other piece is we recently won a NSF National Science foundation excellent grant to provide more robust student support services. And what that means is, you know, a lot of times what we realized over the years was where our students were had food insecurity, had housing insecurity, were worried about childcare, were worried about transportation, so they weren't focusing on what we were trying to teach them. I mean how do you worry about molecular cloning when you, you're worried about what you're going to have for dinner? Right? So what we tried to put in place was support services for them that would help take care of things like childcare needs, transportation costs, food insecurity, housing insecurities and that's what this NSF excellent grant does to support the students.

So I want to talk a little bit about your middle school program because that's a huge passion area of mine. I am only sitting where I am today because I had an amazing and uniquely amazing science teacher in middle school. And I truly don't think that had I not been exposed to science and the possibilities there at that age that I would have kind of set up my life the way I did. And so tell us about that program. What are you doing there?

When we, we designed this, we knew that the vast majority of students, particularly girls in science and engineering drop off in middle school for whatever reason. I don't, I don't know if research has quite figured that out yet, but we know that interest is lost there. And what we wanted to do was design coursework week long programs that basically give them a taste of what it's like to work in a real lab. So it's seventh grade through 12th grade. Students are typically from this area, but we'll take them from wherever. I mean we've had students as far away as Nicaragua I think was the farthest we've had someone come from. And what we do is we expose them to two different scenarios in the lab. The first program we run is called Fish fraud, forensics. So they are put in a scenario where they are forensic scientists. And it kind of riffs off of the Boston Globe story from about five or six years ago where they were looking into the type of fish being served and how it was advertised in the restaurant's menu. Right. So we, we kind of came up with the fictional restaurant and we said, this restaurant just won the James Beard Award last year. And we have reason to suspect that they are serving what they think is cod, but may in fact be something else. And we had a reporter from the Globe go out and they brought samples back to you in the lab. And your job is to, by the end of the week, tell us what species of fish you have. So it's basically PCR barcoding. And we give them a species of white fish, and they have to identify what species of white fish they have using the PCR techniques that we teach them throughout the week. So that's the first one. They love that, that scenario. It's really cool. The second one we do is called It Glows Green. And in that scenario we have a fictional company that we believe is illegally dumping biological waste into a local watershed. And they are again, scientists who are trying to determine whether or not this company is telling the truth. So they're, they're all sort of investigative type themes. But that Second It Glows Green workflow teaches them the basics of cell culture and aseptic technique, which is, is really cool. And it glows. You know, they, they use the P glow plasmid and bacteria. And they love that because, you know, who doesn't love stuff that glows? So those are the two.

I want to, I want to join these programs. They sound so fun.

No, I, I can't tell you how many people, older adults, have said that to me. And like, I want to take this. The parents say it, you know, science camp for adults. Yeah. So we recently branched out. In the last three years we've been branching out and bringing this program into Boston. So we worked with the Roxbury Neighborhood Network. We worked with the South Boston Neighborhood Network last year. We worked extensively with. It was five of the nine Boys and Girls Clubs in Boston. And we brought, you know, a week at each of the clubs of this. We do fish fraud, typically with them. Biomanufacturing and cell culture is harder to, to, you know, do on the road cause the, the equipment is so specialized. But the, the molecular biology travels pretty well. So we, we brought that in and we've done it, you know, in the boys and girls club classrooms in South Boston. We did it in a bank office, which was a first for me. That was really cool to think about how we were going to set that up so that it worked. Yeah, so it was, it's, it's been a lot of fun. And we've, we've connected now with probably including our region here, thousand 1500 kids through this program, just trying to get them interested in seeing, like, what real science work is like, especially the kids in Boston, they don't have the, the resources or, you know, the, the type of equipment, and they're like, so astonished that they're, they're able to actually use it and lay hands on it. They're like, you, you are going to let us use this? And we're like, yeah, that's, that's the whole point. So I think it's, it's cool to develop these programs for the summer where the students can use real science and real equipment in the lab and see how it ties to solving a real life problem. I think once you do that, it makes it real and less abstract for them. So.

Absolutely. That, that science teacher I mentioned earlier took us out into the parking lot and of our school and just blew things up and was like, this is chemistry.

And I was like, always fun.

Cold.

Yeah. Fire. Stuff that glows in the dark. Explosions. Always fun.

Yeah. You just have to open people's minds to science is not this abstract thing that happens in these shiny buildings that, you know, is cut off from, from the real people. I love that. So I knew it was a great program. I had no idea how many things you actually provide. I assumed there was a cost. I think there might have been when I, when I was last there on site in real life. That's amazing. I mean, there is no downside. There's no downside for the employers to, to partner with you. There's no downside for the students to apply. This is fantastic. I love this program even more after talking to you extensively. I'm so glad we got to sit down and chat about it.

Yeah, I'm really, I'm really happy that I got to speak to you again and see you again. You know, I really appreciate your, your time and, and allowing me to go into some detail. A lot has changed. We've learned a lot over the years as different cohorts have gone through. We are continually trying to make the program better for our students, better for the employers. And these are, you know, some of the iterations you're seeing are what we've learned over time from, from our students and, and our, you know, internship partners.

Well, it's a fantastic program and I'm so glad we got to chat about it. How can people get in touch with you? Are you on LinkedIn?

I am on LinkedIn. You can just search John Doyle, GMGI. I am on there.

You can put all of those things in the show notes, your website, Your email, your LinkedIn so people can get right in touch if they're interested in coming to the program.

Absolutely. That would be fantastic. Thank you.

Yeah. Oh, it's my pleasure. This was so fun. Thank you so much for your time today. And I bet you're gonna have a flood of people inquiring about maybe partnering up.

I hope so. We wanna help as many people as we possibly can. That's, that's, that's what gets me outta bed in the morning.

Oh, I love that. All right, well, thank you so much.

Thanks, Karina.