In June 2026, Julie Kim will officially take over Takeda Pharmaceuticals, breaking the last gender barrier of this Japanese pharmaceutical giant with over two centuries of history.

Since Takeda acquired Shire for $62 billion in 2019, Kim joined Takeda and has held multiple leadership positions including President of the Plasma Derived Therapy Business Unit, President of the US Business Unit, and Head of the US Region. He has now received this historic appointment.

Nowadays, under the leadership of Kewarramani, Fotile is much more than just a cystic fibrosis therapy company. Casgevy, in collaboration with CRISPR Therapeutics, has become the first FDA approved therapy based on Nobel Prize winning gene editing technology; Journavx, approved in early 2025, pioneered the first non opioid analgesic with a new mechanism in over 20 years; The research and development pipeline extends to the fields of neurology, blood, kidney disease, and autoimmune diseases.

We are a disease first company, "said Kewarramani." We are not driven by the treatment field or technology type. "This strategic vision has enabled Fotile's market value to exceed $100 billion and made Kewarramani one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world by 2025.

In 2019, when Bahija Jallal took over Immunocore, the British biotech company was on the brink of a cliff: with only six months of funding left, a two-year vacancy in the CEO position, and an empty executive team.

They entered the market twice but didn't raise anything, "Jallal recalled." The company's valuation was too high, and the $320 million Series A financing was one of the largest at the time, but they didn't produce any results to prove it

This biochemist, who received training at the Max Planck Institute, came to Immunocore from AstraZeneca because he was optimistic about the company's "promising science". On her first day as CEO, she started talking to investors. Less than a year later, Immunocore completed a Series B financing of $130 million.

That was the most difficult Series B financing I had to raise. I have to go find investors and tell them what I have seen in those sciences. Make them believe me, because I have done it before. ”Jallal added.

She did indeed do it. In AstraZeneca's biologics department, she led research and development, submitting at least one new biologics license application annually. But even with such a resume, the challenge has just begun.

In 2020, COVID-19 broke out. Amidst unprecedented challenges, Immunocore persisted in clinical trial recruitment and ultimately completed a $297 million IPO on NASDAQ in 2021. In the same year, the FDA approved Immunocore's Kimmtrak - the world's first approved T-cell receptor therapy and the first treatment for unresectable or metastatic uveal melanoma.

Nowadays, Immunocore's platform has expanded to include infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases, including a clinical candidate drug aimed at functionally curing HIV. I have been in my career for 30 years and I am not interested in doing incremental things. This is high-risk, but if successful, the returns are also high

Lina Polimeni, who has been working at Lilly for over 20 years, has a unique leadership philosophy.

Polimeni's father was a commander in the Italian army, and his mother was a Latin and Greek teacher. My leadership philosophy is always explained to me through military strategy and Greek mythology, "Polimeni said," but the compassion and empathy from Greek mythology give different subtle differences, and my leadership always puts people first

This people-oriented philosophy has been present throughout her entire career.

In the sales position, she is willing to take the time to understand the experience. After entering the marketing department, she devoted herself to "bringing real people back into conversations". In 2021, she led Lilly's first corporate branding campaign, reshaping the company into a medicine company, emphasizing its fundamental existence as "serving life". Polimeni stated that it may be the first time in the industry that "life" has been brought to the forefront of creativity in this way.

One of her proudest achievements is her participation in a group investigating the underrepresentation of women in the leadership of Lilly. The group applied the same rigorous method as the "patient journey" analysis to study the career path data of female employees and created a "women's journey within the company" model.

Their discovery not only facilitated the achievement of gender balance in management at Eli Lilly, but also became a blueprint for inspiring the creation of similar models for other groups, opening up inclusive dialogue within Eli Lilly and truly changing the situation.

Polimeni is well aware of the challenges faced by women in the workplace. Her research found that women are often over guided and under sponsored. Therefore, she is committed to finding people who are experts, passionate about what they do, and hope to become better when building a team, and encourages them to cultivate their own lives outside of work.

Leadership and creativity are more built by what you invest in yourself and your soul outside of work, "she shared." The more you expand yourself outside of work, the better we all become, and the better our work becomes.

Recursion Pharmaceuticals CEO Najat Khan, her story begins in the hospital hallway.

As the daughter of a trauma surgeon and radiologist, she spent a lot of time in the hospital during her childhood, witnessing firsthand the power of innovative drugs to change lives. When she was in her teens volunteering in Bangladesh, she met a teenager of similar age who was emaciated due to leukemia. This left a deep impression on Khan about the unequal access to medical resources and made her give up her plan to become a journalist, determined to help patients.

During college, my mother's diagnosis of Parkinson's disease made this commitment personalized. Twenty years have passed, but there has still been no significant breakthrough in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, which reinforces Khan's belief that the industry needs to rethink the way drugs are discovered. She self-taught programming and studied computational chemistry, using these tools to accelerate molecular design during her doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

The arrogant response of a pharmaceutical executive changed the trajectory of her life. In a lecture, Khan asked the company how to make drug investments, and the executive confirmed that she was a scientist and said, "You don't have to worry about this, it's up to the business leaders to make what they decide

This answer ignited Khan's fighting spirit. After graduating with a PhD, she joined the Boston Consulting Group and spent seven years as a partner, collaborating with most top pharmaceutical companies and many biotechnology companies. Subsequently, she joined Johnson&Johnson and Recursion, and has now become the CEO of the latter.

Many times, people will put you in a box, "Khan explained. Fighting against traditional norms is like moving forward against the wind. The only way to create a favorable wind is not to be trapped in the original concept, to create one's own box, and to redefine what that box should look like.

When Kewarramani was appointed as the CEO of Fotile, the media hailed her as the "first woman to lead a large biotechnology company in the United States," but she initially did not want gender to be the focus.

I used to avoid discussing these things and instead hoped that my work would become the core. However, I gradually realized the importance of being seen. I am proud to invest time, speak up for the next generation, and show them possibilities

This sense of "inheritance" almost appears in the stories of every female leader. As the former president of the Women's Science Association, Jalal firmly believes that mentorship can empower the next generation of women. Lande Diner participates in the "Teacher Founders" program at MIT, encouraging female lecturers to transform research into business opportunities.

I don't think there is a talent gap for female leadership in the industry, but there may be an opportunity gap, "Kewarramani said." I see that we are making progress, but we still have a long way to go

Returning to the opening: What happens when women wield the scepter of life sciences?

We see that Futai provides paid summer internships for high school students to explore the biotechnology industry and develop laboratory skills; Alnylam's Greenstreet was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to the industry and received the Golden Gate Award for his contributions as an immigration leader; Khan is leading Recursion as CEO to redefine drug discovery with AI .....

Their stories tell us that the answer is not singular.

Today is the 116th International Women's Day. We pay tribute to these disruptors, not only for breaking the glass ceiling, but also for rebuilding new possibilities on the ruins. As Kewarramani said, "Our industry has numerous opportunities, and we need the best and brightest talents to successfully bring the next wave of innovation to patients

And among these most outstanding and intelligent talents, half are women.