Jessica Wagner Keliher

I attribute my success to grit, for sure. But I think at the end of the day, it is that I've sown into other people. It comes back to this servant mentality, this stewardship of others, really focusing on relationships and connectedness. Because I did that, people wanted to work with me, and that's important. I'm also just a problem solver. People have often told me, like an old boss who said she just knew that she could always just throw everything at me and I would just figure it out. I'm such a curious person that I love to dig into these complex things that nobody else wants to touch. There's a lot of things that you encounter in business and HR and in life that you don't always have the answers to. You encounter that every single day, and just the ability to be like, oh, hmm, okay, that's interesting, let me tackle this, I think has really served me well. So I come back to the relationships, the servitude, the grit, and the problem solving.

The best career advice I've ever received is to be yourself. I think authenticity and being genuine is a superpower. Oftentimes, a lot of people find themselves in situations, in environments, where they don't feel that they can be genuine, authentic, vulnerable, and trusting. I think you can't do your best work when you're not doing those things, when you're not truly yourself, when you're not honoring your own heart, your own values, and your own philosophies. That puts you at odds with who you are as a person, and you're never gonna show up as your best. You're never going to achieve the best that you can achieve when that is your reality. I always have really taken that to heart. Earlier in my career, it was challenging. You know, somebody would say you've got to be yourself, you've got to be genuine, and I'm sitting in this environment where I feel like I can't speak up, I have no power in this situation. It takes a lot to be able to find the courage to do that, but once you do, you understand why you have to, and why you never not do it again.

My advice to women entering my industry comes back to authenticity and being yourself. It is such powerful advice that was given to me early in my career. It is a journey to get to it, to actually live that day in and day out, but that is my advice to women: know who you are, know what you value, know what you stand for, and pursue it relentlessly. Everything else is noise, and it should be treated as such. That's sort of my motto.

In the biotech industry, I think there's a lot of cash coming into the industry, which is great, because it means that there's a lot of really great science out there that people want to see brought to market. The opportunities that creates is to build businesses, and I think that's the most fun thing. You have to love doing that to be in biotech. There's tons of opportunities for people to get exposure to different things and help build a company. The challenges are around talent. Sometimes it can be tough to find people when you're going into a new disease state - there's not always going to be a lot of people in the industry that have that specific expertise. I think that can be challenging. Not everybody's getting the funding, so while that creates an opportunity in some cases, in other cases it does create challenges. The financial stability of biotech can be challenging.

My values sit at the intersection of a few concepts. Kindness is first and foremost, and a lot of people mistake kindness for being nice - it's not the same thing. Kindness is rooted in trust and accountability and vulnerability, in partnership, so kindness is really paramount for me. Relationships are another core value, because you don't accomplish anything alone or in a silo. We are a community, and we have to accomplish things as a community. Strategy is another value of mine - being clear on where you're going. Clarity is a part of kindness, but knowing where you're going and pursuing that, I think it's really important for each person to have that, to have a direction to follow so that they can be their best selves. Grit is another important value - the stick-to-it-ness. I think that couples really nicely with being your authentic self and just knowing that you can do hard things.