Ingraining Diversity into the Business Bloodline with Tiffany Summerville at Sherlock Biosciences

Welcome to Building Biotechs, a podcast by Recruitomics Consulting. We're your hosts, Karina and Jen. Today we are privileged to welcome a powerhouse in the biotech human resources landscape, Tiffany Somerville. With over two decades of deep experience across various sectors including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, luxury retail and finance, Tiffany's expertise is a confluence of leadership development, talent acquisition and diversity initiatives. Currently steering the HR department at Sherlock Biosciences. An innovator at the forefront of molecular diagnostics, Tiffany has consistently advocated for an intentional culture of diversity, equity, engagement and inclusion. She's not just a professional, but a proponent of change, transforming workplace ethos with tangible actions. Welcome, Tiffany. Welcome to Building Biotechs by Recruitomics Consulting. We've helped over 90 biotech, life sciences and venture capital firms strategize and hire thousands of employees to scale companies that impact human health. We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground up. I'm Karina Klingman, founder and principal at Recredomics Consulting. Enjoy the show.

Thank you both. Karina and Jen. Nice to be here.

Great to have you.

Thank you.

So we always start out with the same question because our audience is a little bit diverse. We've got folks that are building biotechs and we have people who are new to the biotech scene and want to kind of understand the career paths within biotech. So what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now and how did you get there?

Great. So what I wanted to be when I was seven was actually a performer. And so I've actually been singing on stage since I was 11 years old and have done some backup groundwork for some really great people. And I performed on some historic stages. And so that's where I was back then and then went to university. I went to an hbcu, Louis State University in Maryland, and I was studying music because, again, I wanted to perform. However, they didn't have performance. It was music education. Did not want to teach music. Shout out to all the teachers just wasn't my jam. And transitioned into communications and marketing and subsequently landed a role back in New York, where I am from and still reside as a native New Yorker working with a publishing company in New York City in marketing. And I had a very good friend who was in HR at the time, and we'd talk about our days and she would complain about, you know, the, you know, whining, complaining employees while I was like, oh my gosh, that sounds so interesting. And I said, you know what? Maybe I should go into HR. And went away for the 4th of July holiday, returned and submitted my two week resignation. My boss at the time said, so do you have a new role? I said, no. So what are you going to do? I said, I don't know, I want to go into hr. And she says, wait, you don't have anything lined up and you're leaving? I was like, yeah, that's what's happening. And so a month later, I landed my first role in HR with Hermes. And for those who know me, know that I am truly an MVP of shopping. So that was a little nod, in my opinion, from God, saying, girl, you did the right thing. And that was in 1990, way early. And I have been in HR since then. And in 2000, when I had my daughter, who is this beautiful being behind me on the wall, I said, you know, I need to have more of a flexible schedule. And met with a woman and I interviewed with her for four hours. She says, listen, I'm a contingent recruiter. I work in the pharmaceutical industry. And I was like, never done that, but let me try this. And I've been in the life science industry since 2000. So whether it's therapeutics, pharmaceutical now diagnostics, I love this industry and have been here ever since.

That was a fantastic answer. First of all, I'm so curious about the stages you perform on. You really teased us with that one. Well, I have brought along today Jen to co host. Jen is our HR business partner and she's also our head of dpi.

All right, well, Tiffany, can you walk us through basically your journey in the biotech sector and how you landed at Sherlock?

Sure. So As I mentioned, 2000 started in life sciences and biotech. And when I was doing working on the contingent side, this is before, you know, this is when you were on a draw. Well, you didn't have a draw. Actually, I didn't have a draw. I was 100% commission. And so you had to be your business development, then you had to be the client services and then talent acquisition. So one of my many, many skills. I'm joking. One of my skills is certainly relationship building. And so I always treated my clients, so the client company as well as the. As well as my candidate pool as clients, both just different clients, but they were both clients. So I always built relationships and the positions that I landed on the corporate side were leveraged from the relationships that I had built on the agency side. So they'd say, can you just come and work for us kind of thing. And so that's what I've done. And I've worked in women's health, I've worked with an the central nervous system, so multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's as well as epilepsy. And you know, now I'm at Sherlock Biosciences, which by the way, literally three years ago this weekend, Labor Day weekend, I received a message from someone from Recruit Nomics who said, hey, I have a great position for you at a company called Sherwood Biosciences. And I saw it in the email. It was my parents 50th anniversary and if we remember, that was during COVID And so I was working on a remote gala for them and so I was like, I get all these solicitations all the time, but this one seems interesting. Cheryl Biosciences. And so I called and history was made in my opinion because I started in October. So that was a really quick turnaround. And have built the HR function and the people function within Sherlock Biosciences these past three years.

It's easy to move quickly with a good candidate. So. Yep, that was, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, building Sherlock was so much fun. We, you know, we bow out usually at the point where we do bring in that HR person and talent. But it's been so great to watch you all grow.

Thank you.

So Tiffany, can you tell us how has the multidisciplinary nature of biotech, you kind of touched on that a little bit already, but uniquely influenced diversity and inclusion and what challenges have kind of come with that in startups?

So to level set, from my vantage point, diversity, inclusion goes wherever I go. I mean I'm a brown woman. I'm a brown woman of a certain age. So I'm hitting like checking three of those boxes, right. So it goes wherever I go. I will say that 2020, certainly George Floyd's murder sparked a bigger, amplified the need for, for whatever reason, you know, we're going to focus on making sure that we are inclusive of all. And I'm sure that that was specific to, you know, highly melanated people. Right. And so when I joined Sherlock, our CEO at the time was also very committed to diversity. So it wasn't a big lift to say, hey, we need to focus on this and we have to make sure that we're focusing authentically and intentionally. So in full disclosure, it wasn't a heavy lift to introduce it to the organization. As heavy as it was at my prior company to do so very honestly, I'm always going to be direct and it is what it is. And so my role from a DEI perspective was to really cultivate what had been started. And what had started was, I will say, discussion, dialogue, like, hey, here are some books you can read, here are some documentaries you can watch kind of thing. And so I came in and said, okay, this is great, but we need to make sure that we are having safe spaces where people can have dialogue, have a place to seek understanding. And in seeking understanding, sometimes that means that, you know, someone else saying, hey, what did you mean by something that you said? Because this is how I interpreted it and how it lands on me as again, a woman who can. A woman of color over 40. Right? So having those very honest discussions. And I know that many companies were doing perhaps similar programs and initiatives and having ERG groups and so forth. If you were a growing company, it's too small to have an erg, but you still want to make sure you have a space to have discussions. And I had, at this point, I had formed an organization called Women of Color in Corporate America, where it's an organization where women who look like me would be able to have a safe space to have open dialogue. So it was the same thing, it was the same premise, but it was just, you know, this one, everybody looked like me. And this one, we were very diverse. Diverse, right. So I would tell my team, listen, the window of opportunity is going to close in terms of companies, in terms of processes and initiatives that are amplified and focused on diversity. It's going to close. It is not, unfortunately, going to remain static. And they're like, Tiffany, why do you think that? I said, I don't know. I'm 51 years old. I can been on the earth for quite some time now. It's going to close. I will say it has closed. It has. And so a lot of folks who are. Their roles were focused on diversity, actually have been rift or laid off. Those roles have been eliminated. And so what do we do to make sure that it is static? It is part of the bloodline in everything that every manager is thinking of within the workplace. Every executive team and senior team are thinking of when initiatives are being approved. So in my opinion, you connect it to why people are working in the first place. Money. And so you connect it to your bonus as a people leader to say, if you do not do these things, you will get dinged. Right. So these are some things that I've done in my. In my current role. I've been able to do that, implement certain things, and we can talk about other things that I've implemented but that's, that's something that I've actually implemented.

I want to just explore that a little bit. We definitely have been hearing BBJ just ran a big article about, you know, these rifts for DEI professionals and that those roles are being cut. I know in biotech we're especially seeing that we're seeing rifts all over the place. But in your opinion, how do we move forward? How do we keep this alive as much as we can? I know tying it to the bonuses is a great step, but we have really small companies where we are coming in super early stage and we're trying to affect this job change. Any thoughts on that?

Sure. I think that growing companies and all companies should not look at it as, you know, an expendable function. It should be built in to the HR function which maybe some companies look at as expendable as well. But we can also explore that. But it shouldn't be viewed as expendable. It should not be viewed as a nice to have. You know, there are studies and there's data that states that companies that are really and truly committed to diversity, true diversity and inclusion and engagement, engagement and equity and we can talk about that in a moment as well. They flourish. And you know, there I think it's about 33% of, you know, higher retention rate. I mean there's data to show to support the importance of having a diverse workforce. So not using, not, it's not. It shouldn't be a nice to have, it should be a must have. Just like folks say I cannot be without my finance team. But you cannot be without your HR team. That includes diversity.

Yeah, that's a really interesting point you brought up. I think that especially in the biotech sector can be very data driven and very, you know, head driven and I think DEI work is very heart driven and empathy. So how do you help leaders and startup folks kind of bridge that gap between the numbers and the heart?

Yeah. So it's very technical. I tell them to just do the right thing. Right. Do the right thing. Think about this, look at this person as a human and think if this person were your child, your mother, your sister, your brother, whatever, whomever means something to you, if that person, you, if you look at this person as a human being, you're just doing the right thing and accountability. Right. I have been asked, I have been asked like hey Tiffany, do you, are you ever a victim of microaggression? And I'm like, well, microaggression, that's really interesting because I call it macro Aggression, and I think it's a nice word because I call it bigotry, bias and racism. But that's just me and the victim. No, I, I've been on the side of that for sure. And then I've been asked, okay, can you prove it? Like, give me examples and I'll say, okay, I just want to make sure I'm, I'm going to make sure I document all of the times in a day that I actually, if microaggressive behavior has been inflicted upon me, I make sure I'll document those things since you're asking me to prove racist behavior towards myself. So if you're an hr, you would dissect everything that I. My response. And if you're a smart business person, you would say, oh, I know what this woman is saying to me. You know, are you looking at, are you assessing whether it's hiring, whether it's, you know, promotion, whether it's disciplinary actions? Are you assessing everyone equally? If you have different standards for different people, there's a problem there. Right. And so it should be, and those questions should be asked. I, you know, if there's a pattern, we look at patterns and I ask questions and it may make people feel uncomfortable, you know, but that's okay if, you know, 30 minutes of discomfort versus 24 hours times, you know, seven days a week, 365 days a week, 51 years, I think 30 minutes, you know, sounds exhaustive.

The burden of proof is just ridiculous. So how so we know that this comes from the top? When a successful DEI initiative is introduced, it has to come from the top. So when, you know, when we work with really small companies, luckily we have access to the top really quite, you know, quite early in the process. But, you know, you come into organizations often when they're ready to hire in somebody at your level. And so it's more of an established organization. How have you dealt with that sort of building from the top or getting buy in from the top early on?

I approach it in the same manner of it's going, I am going to always make sure that there's equity. So again, you hire me, you're pretty much okay. I have a DEI built in because I'm always going to make sure that there's equity and I'm always going to do the work. The compensation analysis, which is, you know, the gap analysis, that's just part of the ecosystem in terms of how the model that I utilize within, on my HR teams. But it's just having those frank conversations, those candid Conversations with my colleagues, my boss and colleagues to say, again, this is important. Representation matters. And so, you know, it's quite important within our organization I've established where even people, leaders, you have to attend at least two of our DEEI sessions in a calendar year. Right. So it's a commitment from the top because you know, when folks see that their managers and their managers. Managers are attending these sessions, their then it gives them also a nod to say that, all right, I can take out an hour, an hour and a half a session to folk a month to focus on this. Right. So it gives that validation. You have to start at the top because that's what's going to set the stage. And certainly the top of the house needs to attend as well. And you know what? The population also notices. They'll say, you know, I never see this one or always see that one. I mean, they notice. And so these are little things that, you know, you can do again, we try to do it during lunch where you're feeding people and you're gonna have lunch anyway, even if you come in and just. It shows that validation that you also believe that it is essential, crucial and important.

Really good answer. Also in thinking about engaging from the top and hoping that there's a trickle down and making sure everyone else. Elsa's engaged. How do you engage employees who represent marginalized communities and are obviously in the minority? I know a lot of times in this work folks that are represented as minorities feel like a lot of this work is very surface level and they don't engage and they don't think it's going to make a difference. So how do you kind of disrupt that type of pattern and what kind of methods can companies use to engage their minority employees?

So thank you for that, Chen. Certainly not curating sessions where you have discussion points and they're not sessions where those marginalized individuals are not in some sort of, you know, quasi therapy session where they're like spilling their, you know, here are my experiences. Oh my goodness. Like, I need you to come into my role and share my experiences because that takes a lot. That puts it on that individual and it shouldn't be on that individual. Right. So curating topics that are broad enough where you can also have very laser focused discussion, again, it has to be in a space where people feel safe. And that sounds very easy. And I will tell you, it's been, we've had to evolve and pivot in terms of how do we get participation. You know, if we have slides, we're not making a presentation we're utilizing these slides to, you know, spark thoughts. So breaking out into small breakout groups is something that's very helpful because I noticed that folks, if they're in a smaller group, they'll feel they'll be more inclined to participate. Something that. I think that sounds relatively innocuous, but it does make a big difference. If you're attending sessions and you're attending remotely, turn on your camera. Because when you don't have your camera on, first of all, we don't know if you're, you know, again, if it's just listening, like it's background noise to you. But when you turn on your camera, at the very least that we can see you so that we at least see that you're engaged. Or if I see that, you know, someone makes a face or something, I can just say, hey, do you. Would you like to say something or would you like to participate? That kind of thing. So I think creating being very fluid and adaptable to your audience without sacrificing the content and not putting the burning and the onus on the marginalized to, you know, bear the weight of the discussion. Does that make sense?

You're speaking our language very good. Cameras on was one of the first things that we. We implemented. I mean, we've always been remote, but I'm sure a lot of you came into a remote company. So it's just. You can't connect. I don't think you can connect, especially on deeper matters where you have half the folks with their cameras off. I just. And maybe that makes me old school, but I just can't.

Yeah.

You want to see all the individuals, and I'm someone who picks up on nonverbal cues. And so it's helpful. And it doesn't. It's not like calling you out when you were in school and the teacher knew you didn't know the answer, but they called you out. That's not what I'm saying. That's not. Because that's not creating a safe environment. But if I, you know, get a sense, and sometimes I'll ping them, you know, in a zoom and say, hey, do you have any questions or something? Again, sometimes it's just a matter of giving someone the space and the license to say, to speak. One of the biggest challenges, I will say it's just having that open dialogue where it's like, what if you don't agree about, on a certain topic. Right. You know, it takes courage to be able to say, you know, I don't agree with that. So then we can have a discussion about that. And it's not right, wrong or indifferent, but we want. That's how I believe we will move the needle. Honestly, that's how. Having discussions, having the place to have respectful discussions. That's how. Even if you don't agree.

Hey there. Just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which it turns out quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the Biotech Career Coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the Collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our Career Coach column that we write monthly in Biospace. But we go a little more in depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes or search for the Biotech Career coach on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts back to the show from a talent acquisition standpoint. Now we're going to talk about recruiting here because I think this is a very salient point with this discussion is the top end funnel and it's attracting a diverse candidate pool, reaching out to a diverse candidate pool. Do you have any strategies there that you're currently employing?

Sure. I mean, I definitely tell my recruiters, when you're looking on LinkedIn and you're searching, you know, here's a list of the Divine Nine sororities and fraternities. And I love it when, you know, a recruiter is like, what I'm like now. You know, they learned something new like Divine Nine. I'm like, yeah, our sororities and fraternities are very different. Like, it's for life for sure. So if you pop that in now, that doesn't mean that you're, you know, it's open to everyone, but I feel like you're going to, it's more targeted. Certainly here are lists of HBCUs. And I know this is going to be shocking to some of your listeners, but There are more HBCUs beyond Howard Morehouse and Spelman. There's so many other HBCUs beyond those. Right. So just giving a list of that again. When you're, when you're doing your searches, pop that in because then you're going to generate a larger pool and a more focused pool. I think that it's very important whether it is a virtual career fair, whether it is an in person career fair that folks go. If you can at least try to go to two or three a year where you can get the names of your organizations out to, you know, a larger group of individuals because this is only going to enhance your company further. And like I said, the data that speaks to true diversity, you know, it's the data, it's unrefuted. Those are facts. So just expanding from beyond going to the same universities, beyond what we've done in the past, that has for some excluded, been exclusive. And I would say that this was, I wouldn't say that this was like a nefarious plan to be exclusive, but it's relatively exclusive. And I'm not saying that there aren't people of color who don't attend Harvard and mit. Of course there are, but the pool is smaller. And so when you just think beyond think, you know, a little bit outside of the box, you know, go to a Bowie State University, go to an Xavier, go to Jackson State, there's so many other, you know, grams, they go to other universities where you can partner with them as well, calling their career services and getting a partnership there, they that doesn't cost anything. And you're again, not only are you building relationships with these communities, but you're also getting brand recognition of your organization. So it's a win win.

Those tactics work, I will say. But in that same vein, we're talking about getting your recruiters to kind of do sort of targeted searches, how do you help them to sort of get over the discomfort that can come with that? It sort of feels like it's reverse discrimination or we're targeting a certain demographic for this specific role. How do you get that mindset to switch, to be more open and to encourage folks to be targeted in their searches?

So I ask a simple question. When you go to, when you're searching out of a Harvard or certain universities where you're gathering a slate of Anglo Saxon candidates, are you comfortable doing that? And if they say to me, Tiffany, I am, then I say, well, I don't understand what makes you uncomfortable doing it. Going to other universities.

Yeah. With your hiring managers. We find that there's a lot of education, especially with some of the more junior hiring managers. For better or worse, a PhD program doesn't really prepare people to come in and be a great hiring manager. They don't really understand that. And so we get a lot of hiring managers that say things like, I know that Harvard is very strong in this skill set or there are a lot of labs at MIT doing this and I would like a candidate from mit. So we end up doing a bit of educating there about how important diversity of thought is as well. And if you're going to the same place to get all the same candidates, your company's not going to do as well. How much of that have you done internally with Sherlock? You have a program for that?

Yeah, again, I think it's organic. And the things that I'm telling you that my suggestions are implemented and they're applied in my organization. Again, I'm not saying that you're not going to garner. You may get some melanation in that school if you just go to Harvard. But again, there are other very bright people that weren't able to afford to go to Harvard who are Melaniemic. Okay, that's a white person, by the way, that, you know, there are some very intelligent people, white folks that can't even go to Harvard or MIT and they weren't able to get in. So you're really, really not doing yourself. You're doing yourself a disservice and you're doing your organization a disservice when you are, you know, doing that horn halo effect, in my opinion. You know, they have to be great if they come from this school and you know, not as great if they come from that school. So I think you're doing a disservice, in my opinion. And you have to educate. We're always having to educate. That's not gonna. Unfortunately.

Job Security started a new program where all of our hiring managers are gonna go through a short training. We were doing it selectively, but now all of them are gonna do a short training. It'll be a brush up for some hiring managers. But you know, it's, it's got some implicit bias training, it's got some equitable hiring training, it's got some, hey, you can't ask this question because it's illegal training. So it's a good reminder.

One thing I do just want to make sure that I do include. So our program is diversity, equity, engagement and inclusion. So it's deei and I, I was very intentional about adding that, that second e the engagement because great, you've gone out and you've done the Boolean search with the Divine Nine or the HBCU or the Hispanic University or put that in there. And then, yeah, great, you've interviewed them and now you've hired them. So now we want to make sure that we're engaging them right and that their career trajectories are not on A different path than their. Than their peers and colleagues. So just again, being intentional about engaging engagement as well. So I just wanted to add that because I think it's really important component of holistic initiative, in my opinion.

We like to ask everybody a really important question because we find that communication is so important and it's also a problem in most organizations, or at least it's cited, that communication is always difficult. How are you handling communication? Have you restructured things? You know, how do you find, you know, communicating change or anything like that goes in your organization?

So I work very closely with our corporate communications department, and in my experience, I've always worked very closely with several functions and that's always been one of them. I absolutely tap into this team to say, listen, here's what I'm trying to say from a people perspective. I need you to help me help, you know, help me so that we can send this correct message. Does it sound good to you? Or how would you edit this? So tapping into your colleagues is super important. And now I have to tell you, like AI using it for good, that's another great way to modify communications. If you use AI, they'll generate something for you that'll get your brain sparked. And you have to edit it. You always have to edit still. But I think that utilizing the resources that you have available is really, really key. And that's. Those are things that I absolutely. I've always got a chatgpt and utilize exactly for almost every sort of going.

In line with the communication piece. You talked a little bit before about engagement being a big part of DEI as far as communicating strategic goals of the organization and tying that to people's everyday work. How have you found that to be in your current organization or within your experience?

Yeah. So again, it's just keeping it very simple. I think that that's the best way to do things. And always from my model, from an HR perspective is saying, all right, so here are the company goals. If you as a manager or a leader in the organization is your responsibility. Let me give you the tools, by the way. But it's your responsibility to simplify this for your team as it trickles down. Right. And so they can see our corporate goals. 2023 didn't have an HR goal, didn't have a people goal. But I was able to dissect it for my team so they could see where we each role then fits into that. So I do think it's really key for managers to have those discussions. I am such an advocate on feedback one on One consistent conversations. I have weekly one on ones with everyone in my team. I have which are typically 30 minutes and that I have a standing monthly development discussion with everyone on my team, which is an hour. And during the development conversation we're only talking about, it's up to them, whatever they want to talk about. What do you want to learn more about? You know, it's all about them. It's not a catch up. And our one on ones, usually, you know, we get off of one zoom because they pinged me and we just, okay, we have a one on one, let's just stay on. I'm always in communication with my team because it's really important that we're all on the same page. Doing same page exercises is another great thing to do. But it's really important that we're on the same page. And I learn in this way and have learned. So I certainly teach my folks, like if I need you to do something, I'm going to give you perhaps a 30,000 foot view of why. Because I feel as though find that when people understand sometimes why they're doing it, even if they feel like it's a small piece of the little of the machine, then it gives them more context and it's like, oh, this small piece. But if this small piece wasn't there, the machine would absolutely fall apart. Right. And so being very, very accessible and communicative and giving your leaders the tools to do it I think is so important. So I'm always pushing for my leaders like, hey, we're gonna do this. You know, whether it's communications training, we're gonna do these types of things so that you have the tools to have these conversations. And if your person still has questions, they should be able to come to you. Come to me, anyone. But I'm always gonna make sure that I'm pushing folks to have these discussions with their managers so they can force that, build that continue to build that relationship. Yeah.

So along those lines, what does Sherlock or other organizations that you've worked for do for continuing development in terms of like reimbursement for courses, certifications, things like that. Is that high on your list?

Sure. I mean, you know, tuition reimbursement we've gotten. Not gotten there yet because just from the stage of the company. But I tell all of my leaders, of course when they're doing their budgets, you have to put in time, you have to build in money for training for your team. Right. So what I will typically do during a budget season when we're working on the Next year's budget, which is this time of year, right. I'll say, hey, what are you interested? What kind of certifications are you interested? What are you interested in taking? Or I think you should really probably learn a little bit more about compensation or something. And I will say, so take a look at a couple of programs, give me the average of that cost and I can build it into a training budget for hr, for my team, for finance, for, you know, marketing and you know, R and D and so forth. So I always advise my, my, my leaders to do the same because of course we have corporate development and that's where I'm responsible for offerings to the organization from a leadership perspective. But it's really important that managers build it in. And you know what, if you can't have a big budget, $300 to $500 for each individual. Right. But at least it's something where they feel as though that you as a leader are invested and as a company are still invested in their growth.

When you're thinking about developing up and coming leaders in your company, how do you approach that?

Sure. So in a blended learning model. So I have curated some phenomenal facilitators that I've worked with for years. When facilitating any sort of manager training program, whether it's new manager, a seasoned manager, like a refresher, I make sure that my facilitators really understand my culture. And it's custom, it's couture training where it's custom to the organization because that's how it's in my opinion, you know, it will really, you know, land and they can apply and then I also create to some instructional design. So educational leadership development is one of my favorite functions within hr. So I love coming up with training myself and delivering them and you know, using tools that I can just come up with the training and send it out to them so that they can have again, self training, self guided and then in person. So it's just coming up with multiple different ways that are also cost effective for the organization as well. But so again that the employee feels like we're investing in their development, that they can utilize it here at home or you know, throughout. That's priceless. Throughout their careers.

Yeah, that ties into a lot of focus on employee well being and feeling like they can grow in an organization and that they're not just being stagnant. And there seems to have been a push lately, at least I think to destigmatize mental health. And so a lot of companies are implementing like mental health Days and flexible work environments. What do you think about that? Or what is your company currently doing in that realm?

Yes, so I implemented unlimited paid time off, I want to say, I don't know, within the first six months of me joining Sherlock. And I was very surprised that there are some people that didn't like it because they were like, so you mean to tell me when I leave the organization, I'm not going to get a paycheck? And I was like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even think about that. I didn't know that was the thing that people did. I'm like, well, yeah, that's what it means. But it also means that if you have that go to, you know, 12 weddings this year, you don't have to worry about taking the time either. Right. And so those are, to me, certain things that, that we. I've actually implemented.

Okay, so we'll move to our closing questions. So what is next for you in the next maybe 10 years? What do you want to be when you grow up?

Well, in the next 10 years, I want to be looking towards retirement. I'm just joking. So I will be, you know, I'm a mom of, you know, I have an only child, which is my daughter. I will be working to 120. But yeah, so my next step, I want to be a chief HR officer. That is in my professional career, to be a chief HR officer and continue to effect change throughout within an organization, but not only limited within that organization, I'm definitely someone who thinks bigger and broader. And so hopefully the work that I do that it will affect change in other companies by mentorship or just being that innovative, focused. But then how can it have a bigger footprint on, you know, a legacy about leaving a legacy from my perspective of not just, you know, doing my job, having the accolades, but it's also how has Tiffany affected change? And that's really important to inform me. And I'm someone who. I too, am an only child from two beautiful parents who will be celebrating their 53rd anniversary on. On Tuesday. And they are so much in love to this day. And they hold hands. And my mother doesn't even know how to make coffee because my father brings her coffee every morning. And so. But my parents grew up, you know, in Jim Crow, Alabama, and raised by these two individuals. My mom was an executive at Xerox and not an easy thing to do in the 1970s and 80s and my father an entrepreneur. And so I literally, I would go to work with my mom before there was a bring your daughter to work day. Now it's bring your child. But it was before then and I would go to, you know, work with daddy. So I always had that in me. And so I feel as though I have transferred this also onto my daughter. Like she was. Amber started having sexual harassment prevention training at the age of 10 because any training or anything that I was doing, she was like my focus group and leadership development training. So it's like, you know, so it's a. I'm saying this to say for me, it's, it's about my legacy. And so again, another long winded answer.

But that's beautiful. Well, we're here for it, so, yeah, count us in on that journey.

So what's one piece of advice that you would give to emerging leaders in biotech or even folks that might want to go in your same pathway?

Stay focused. Make sure that you always keep the human and human resources and think of the people and understand that it is, you know, same as I said, my clients when I was on the search firm side, my clients were the actual client company as well as the candidates. Understand that your internal clients, you know, you, the company and the people and be innovative. Don't just say, you know, well, the policy says you are going to be consistent, but you also have the humanity to listen and to say, okay, here's a policy, but this is a person and what do we need to do? Because we hear more things in our roles than most therapists probably hear. So it's very important to always be humane and keep people. And I would also say make sure you mentor folks and then require them to give back as well.

I love the mentorship circle. Okay, this next and last question is very self serving. We are a bunch of readers over here and we are always looking for new books. So if you have a favorite fiction or nonfiction book that you can put on our list, we'd love to hear it.

Okay, so I have a bunch of books here. So I am reading Bias. I don't know if you pull it out of my. What you don't see show and Tell. Have you read this one? This is by Jennifer Eberhard Bias.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean this is like, you know, because the dei, but I do. That's my reading now. And then I'm also reading Manifesting the Chief HR Officer.

I love that. So we're curating a little reading list that's gonna go on our website and we'll put some books on there. We've got, we've gotten such fantastic editions. I have a great list of books to put out there. Do you mind if I include you?

Absolutely. Something else I just, you know, just as a go to Jane Elliott's website and her book list is amazing. And Dr. Dr. Black, I had to get his first name out. Ping it over to you. Another amazing author. So I'll email those to you too. But yeah, that's great.

Yeah. Just in case anybody wants recommendations, we'll put them all.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you. This was so much fun. We really enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you so much for your time.

Tiffany, thank you for inviting me. This a lot of fun.

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