Panel Discussion: Leaders in Biotech and Engineering

Yes, good evening everyone. I'm Maritza Diaz. I'd like to introduce myself first as telling you who I am. I'm a mom. I have two little girls who are my inspiration. I'm also an immigrant, and it has a lot to my why, but I'll tell you that later. And what I do for a living is I'm a software engineer. I love computers and all this stuff that we can do with it. I've been in the industry for almost 30 years in software, and 20 plus of those years in life science, where I really learned to love the fact that geeks like me can combine computers with science to make an impact in people's lives. And so that's what drives me. Nice meeting you all and excited about having the conversation here with the team.

I loved that. I had a very similar situation too, where the first things you learned were if-else statements, so I can definitely relate to that. I guess I could share my experience, and I wish it was better. I grew up in Ecuador where, as you can imagine back in the day, there were not many computers, especially at home. I never owned a computer. However, my parents were always telling us, all my siblings and I, that we needed to have an education, that we needed to go to university. They didn't have that chance, so they were really making sure that we would. The day to register for university came, and I'm standing in front of this person and she's telling me, 'What career are you going to choose?' And I'm like, 'I don't know, I'm not sure.' It was an accident, like you. And she said, 'Well, I see you have good grades in math and this and that, and we have a lab with computers. Do you like computers?' I'm like, 'I don't know.' So anyway, long story short, it was luck, it was an accident, and I wish it wasn't that way. Role models are very important and part of the reason why we're here today, I think.

My experience with how I got into life science, I will describe it as similar. It was an accident again, because you know what happens is that we don't think about life science as a first choice when you're in technology. The first thing you think about is Google and AWS and all of those tech companies. So I was still in college, and this company called PricewaterhouseCoopers was recruiting the best students to become their trainee program. So I went to work for them, and as part of this program, they assigned me to a client, which happened to be Agilent Technologies. And I was like, 'Oh, this is interesting, I never heard of this company.' Long story short, I moved to the US when I was 22 to work for a project at Agilent, and I really enjoyed my time there. And then later I started working for Life Technologies out of Rockville, close to Baltimore, and then they became Life Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific. So that's how my journey started. And in the beginning, I was literally just doing back-end stuff, ERP, CRM, that kind of thing. But as my career progressed, I really had the opportunity to work in R&D, product development, and that's when my love for this industry became real, because I was seeing the impact firsthand of the work that I was doing. So again, it's something that I didn't plan, just happened to be at the right time at the right place. And once you find that industry, it's very hard to leave.

For us at ITJ, we work with life science companies to help them deliver their product to market. One of the biggest challenges and also things that we're proud of is that these products are in fact saving lives. Think about a patient who is wearing a device that's dispensing medicine in the body, and this is all controlled by software, which sounds great. But if that software has bugs, that patient could die. So having that sense that this has to be really high quality, the engineering that we're doing, the code that we're writing needs to be working 100% of the time, every single time. So it is exciting to be able to work on products like that, but it's also a lot of responsibility. Hence, as an engineer, you need to double check, triple check, make sure that your testing is correct, make sure you're writing the right types of testing. And again, some patient is benefiting from this high-quality product. So that's very exciting. It's challenging as well to make sure that everything is ready. The FDA is always making sure that these products are safe, so working in a regulated environment is challenging, particularly for software engineers who are used to CI/CD, release your code immediately. Not so much in our industries, because again, the criticality of the product. So it can be a challenge for folks who are used to just move fast; in our industries, it's not so fast.

Similarly, for many things, it's the network. Surrounding yourself by people who are in the industry and really listening, learning from them. I'm very fortunate to have clients that are working on the most fabulous products, and so when they're telling me about their products and the technologies that they're using and the innovation, it's just very inspiring. I think that's probably the best way to learn, by creating these networks. Very important. You can always read and go to school and whatever else, but the best way is to talk with people, network, be curious, ask questions.

I can share a success story with one of our clients. They were two years—no, three years ago now—they just got an approval from the FDA to release this new and revolutionized insulin pump delivery for insulin. When you get the FDA approval, that's when the rush comes because you have to deliver first to the market. Now, in those days, COVID started, as you all remember, and this client of mine couldn't hire fast enough because everybody else was trying to hire the same software engineers. So anyway, we came in and helped with the software engineering part of it. But as this device also has a hardware component, we needed to collaborate with the mechanical engineers, with the electrical engineers, and then we needed to know the science of it: what is the algorithm for diabetes in the human body? So it truly became a combination of all of the hardware, the science behind it, and the software piece that combined to deliver this product. Not being able to be in person was a little bit of a challenge, I would say, but we did it. We delivered the product. Today, that product is one of the fastest growing for any medical device in recent years, and they're accelerating the use in the US and globally. So we're all very proud of what we did in the end, but it was very challenging, particularly because of the real-time connection and the close functionality. But similarly to what you guys just mentioned earlier, we had one goal: we needed to deliver this device, and that drove us.

So I mentioned I have my two daughters, and they are my inspiration. And the bottom line is, it sounds cliche, but my advice is do what you love, because when you do what you love, you don't work a single day. Everything becomes easier. And so that's how I drive the company. I left Thermo Fisher after almost 20 years. It wasn't an easy decision for me, and I remember my husband was completely opposed when I told him I'm going to leave Thermo Fisher to go create this ITJ company. He was like, 'No, you're crazy.' A little bit of crazy is good. You know, you follow your passion. So I convinced my husband that it will all be okay, and if all fails, I can always find another job. So also be confident about your skills and what you can bring to the table. Take risks. So I did. It was a very risky move, and later COVID came, and I was like, 'Oh my God, my husband was right. How do I tell him he was right?' But again, it was that motivation that I really wanted to be able to tell my kids, look them in the eye, because they always ask me, especially now that they're in college. They walk in the door as I'm in a Zoom meeting and they're like, 'Mom, what are you doing?' I'm like, 'I'm in a meeting.' So they always ask me what do you do at ITJ, and I could try to explain to them, 'We're writing software, we're trying to build this product to market,' but they wouldn't understand that. So now I can honestly look them in the eye and say, 'You know what? Mommy is changing people's lives.' And so they ask me why and how. The way I found my passion is in two fronts. One is the products that we are building are impacting people's lives directly. That's right, so wow, what an impact. But the second passion that I found as I started working more and more in this is that my company provides jobs for people in Tijuana. And I don't know about you guys, but every time I ask somebody about Tijuana, they would never tell me, 'Oh, that's a great software or tech hub.' And so the result of that perception was that nobody would provide jobs for engineers in Tijuana, so they were overlooked always. And with my company, we are bringing these great jobs for people who are hungry for it, who will do their best and will appreciate it forever. So I realize I have this fantastic opportunity to give back in some way to my community. I'm Hispanic, I'm not Mexican, but I'm Hispanic, and now I'm bringing these jobs of the future to people that were overlooked, and they do a fantastic job. And so I love when Thanksgiving comes or Christmas day comes and I get a text or two from engineers that I have worked with in my company and they tell me, 'Maritza, thank you, you changed my life.' So follow your passion.

Very competitive marketplace, that's not a surprise. But I think what works for people who want to be in the long run here, it actually applies to me as well, is the impact. The job you do will impact life. Somebody will benefit from the work you do, and that is priceless. You cannot pay anywhere enough to do that kind of work. So that's very important. That's why we partner with life science companies always, because we can attract people who are passionate about making an impact. The second thing is we do hire a lot of students and kind of young engineers, and for them to be able to have a career path and have somebody that really cares for their development is very important as well. And so we spend a lot of time on coaching, mentoring, training, and making sure that every day they become better and better. So we invest in those two things. Those are my two major factors why people will want to be with us. Money is not a good indicator, because next month somebody's going to offer them a few more dollars, and if they decide to go out, they're probably not the right person for this industry. I stayed at Thermo Fisher for 20 years because of that passion, the impact. And so that has worked great for us.

Sure. Well, it's no secret women in technology are too few. In fact, when I went to college, I was one of three in our classroom, and when graduation came, I was the only one. And that has been for many years. I am the only one, whether it's I'm the only woman or I'm the only Hispanic. Certainly I never met anybody that was a CEO of Hispanic, so no role models. And that needs to change. When I think about that today about my own path, I made it, right? I am, quote unquote, successful. But I had to always rely on not just me but others, and it would have been much easier if there was somebody that I could relate to, that I could have a conversation about how did you do this because you're kind of like me. But that wasn't the case. I did have a lot of mentors and sponsors. Sponsors are very important; sponsors are not mentors, they're very different. And they believed in me, they saw something, and then they helped me progress my career. But it is always a challenge, and it's very lonely to be the only woman in the room, to be the only Hispanic or whatever minority you identify with. How do I go about it? My way to go about it is just don't think about it. When people ask you, 'What does it feel like to be a woman leader?' I don't want to be labeled as a woman leader. I'm a leader regardless of what gender. And that's my view, and that's kind of how I overcame and kind of ignored that loneliness, and it has worked out for me.

I would agree with that. And the reality of today is that the C-level are men, so they need to have that conscious mindset that we have to make a change to bring more women to those types of roles. I mentioned earlier I did have people who believed in me, and they were sponsors and champions and mentors; they were all men. So men are fabulous allies, and I wish we had more men here tonight. This is Women Who Code, but again, men are in those key positions and they are willing and open to help. My experience was that right. I think of who were my best managers, and they were men. They absolutely need to be our allies, otherwise there will be no change. And we also need to, at least when we are in positions of leadership and when we are hiring people, I hire people all the time. I make sure that I always bring women into my company, even when the perception maybe they don't know much. They always think that the women for some reason knows less than the same student male. I bring them. This is something leaders can do today, managers. In my organization, we have 50-50, because I want those women to also make the same impact, the same decisions. As they are hiring for their new teams, they should remember that they need to bring women, so kind of create that network effect. But we're far from it. I think it's at all levels, women and men leaders, and let's bring more men to this type of events because they need to hear it.

One example I could share is it's actually very eye-opening as you start working with products that you think will work for everybody. Software just should work for everybody. When you work with patients, you start to realize that there are other things that we as software engineers don't ever think about. We build the screen and the UI, and the UX designer says, 'Well, what about colorblind people?' and we're like, 'Oh my God, we never thought about it.' As software engineers, you just don't think about those things that are very important to other groups. Similarly, with cultural differences, as these products go into markets in Latin America compared to Asia or compared to the US, some of the labels need to be on this other side because it's just all eye-opening when you're building a product that is going to be used across the globe by everybody. And if it's a patient that needs to get this medicine or this treatment, it has to be able to be understood really well by each patient. So for us, as we develop software and we started to learn about these different factors, it has been really 'wow, we needed to think about these types of users that we never thought existed.' So it's a lot more work to do across. It's not just gender, right? This is an example of different types of groups that are so many cases are forgotten.

Okay, let me try answering that. And honestly, I don't think it's a question of male or female. I do recruit a lot of people; I recruited almost 1,000 software engineers, so I think I have a pretty good idea what we look for in software engineers. And I can tell you it's not about the hard skill, the Python or Java or whatever technology. That you can learn at any time, and technology changes so frequently that that hard skill is not necessarily as important as the type of soft skills that you have. For example, for a software engineer, we look at learning agility. Why? Again, technology changes so fast, and if you have somebody that can easily learn on their own, that's not expecting somebody to give them the answer, then that's the one that engineering your team wants, because he or she can quickly learn. So that's just one example. We have a variety of soft skills. Another one is collaboration, team collaboration. Software is a team sport. We don't write code alone; we use practices like pair programming or even code reviews. So being able to have a conversation with your peers, with your teams, about how are you going to solve this user story and who's going to take what task, that's team effort. And again, in the software world, we have a common goal, and so we have to be able to collaborate with the senior, with the mid-level, with the associate, with the product owner, the scrum master, all sorts of different roles and personalities. So if someone can't collaborate and wants to be in this corner working by himself or herself, then that's not a good match. So focus on your soft skill abilities; it will be very important. Technology you can always learn.

Yeah, I would love to see that come true. But I do see some changes that I didn't see when I was a software engineer. Organizations like Women Who Code, phenomenal. This is all volunteering, so we are passionate about helping other women. Things like Women Who Code, there are many other organizations, Girls Inc., and all sorts that did not exist before. So we all need to support in any way. That's why we're all here. Empowering, creating those role models, very important. The hiring, right? Some of you will be in leadership positions one day, and remember to bring more women, be mindful and conscious about it. So I do also share your vision that someday there will be more women in leadership roles in science and technology. And we are awesome; we have a lot to bring to the table. We just have to believe it, and I think to believe it we need to have those role models and those people who are bringing us closer together in organizations like this are making a difference.