Her Story
About Pooja
Pooja Sharma is pursuing an MBA with a focus on mergers and acquisitions and business strategy as she expands her skill set in the business aspects of her work. She is committed to growing as a leader in biotechnology by advancing innovative medicine and helping shape the scientific direction of programs that make meaningful differences for patients. Pooja has benefited from mentors throughout her career who taught her critical thinking as a scientist, encouraged leadership responsibilities, and demonstrated the value of collaboration and resilience. She now enjoys mentoring junior scientists and supporting more women entering STEM fields by encouraging confidence, curiosity, and resilience. Pooja views key challenges in biotechnology as translating scientific discoveries into therapies that reach patients, which requires collaboration across diverse teams including biology, chemistry, regulatory, and finance. She sees ensuring diverse perspectives in scientific leadership as an important opportunity, noting that innovation is stronger when people with different backgrounds contribute to solving complex problems.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Pooja
01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The bigger challenge in biotechnology is translating exciting scientific discoveries into therapies that successfully reach patients. We have incredible advances in areas like targeted therapies, AIs, and genomics, but many promising discoveries still don't make it through clinical development. Bridging that gap requires great science and collaboration across diverse teams like biology, chemistry, regulatory teams, finance, and many more. Another challenge is ensuring diverse perspectives are represented in scientific leadership, which I see as an opportunity because innovation is stronger when people with different backgrounds contribute to solving complex problems.
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