Business-y Career Options for STEM Grads and Early Career ProfessionalsSTEM degrees open doors far beyond the lab, engineering bench, or technical team. Join WEST, BU GWISE, and the GMS Professional Development office to meet Women in STEM across career stages who have built impactful careers in business-oriented roles that drive innovation and bring ideas to life. Our panelists work at the intersection of science and strategy supporting the development and commercialization of new products, advancing life-saving treatments, launching innovative startups, and delivering creative solutions to organizations through consulting and strategic leadership. They will share insights into how they leveraged their STEM backgrounds to transition into and thrive in business-focused careers. Following brief introductions from each panelist, attendees will participate in a structured speed networking session. Participants will rotate to three different panelists for 18 minute rotations of meaningful small-group conversations and the opportunity to ask targeted questions. To ensure thoughtful group sizes and maximize your experience, please indicate in the registration form which panelists you are most interested in meeting so we can assign tables accordingly. Panelists to include: Amanda Bolgioni-Smith, Medical Science Liaison at GSK The last 15 mins of the evening will open into free mix-and-mingle networking. This informal time allows you to continue conversations with panelists and connect with fellow attendees, expanding your network of Women in STEM who are shaping business and innovation across industries. Whether you are exploring new career possibilities or looking to broaden your professional network, this event will provide insight, connection, and inspiration. Space is limited, so if you cannot make it anymore, please email at [email protected] ASAP so someone on the waitlist can be let in. Thank you!
Date and Time: Agenda: Location: Cost:
Free
Parking: Only a BU office can pay for occupied parking slots. It must be done internally because the parking lot is private, not a public parking lot. So, BU is asking that anyone parking at 43 Hawes St bring a check or cash to cover the $12 parking costs.
Register HereAbout the Panelists Ariana Harris is a seasoned patent attorney with more than ten years of experience counseling life sciences companies on the full spectrum of intellectual-property matters that drive scientific innovation from the laboratory to the marketplace. As a trusted strategic partner, Dr. Harris collaborates closely with scientists, in-house counsel, and executive leadership to align patent strategy with business objectives, secure pivotal exclusivity, and create leverage for licensing, partnership, and financing transactions.
Drawing on her doctoral training in molecular medicine from Boston University School of Medicine, Dr. Harris bridges complex biology with sophisticated legal strategy, enabling clients ranging from emerging biotechnology start-ups to mature pharmaceutical enterprises to secure, and monetize high-value patent assets. Dr. Harris’s practice centers on building and managing global patent portfolios for cutting-edge modalities, including monoclonal antibodies, nucleic-acid therapeutics, cellular therapies, diagnostics, and immuno-oncology platforms. She routinely conducts patent-landscape and freedom-to-operate analyses that illuminate competitive positioning and inform research, development, and commercialization paths. Investors rely on her incisive due-diligence assessments to evaluate target IP strength, validity, and enforceability, while R&D teams depend on her guidance to design around third-party patents and mitigate infringement risk.
Her combination of scientific acuity, legal insight, and commercial perspective empowers clients to advance transformative therapies with confidence and speed in an increasingly crowded and competitive biopharmaceutical landscape. Maria Lalioti is a human molecular geneticist with a strong interest in personalized medicine and ethical use of genomic information. She is a scientific consultant specializing in target discovery and portfolio strategy in therapeutic areas of expertise (renal, metabolic, neurodenerative, reproductive, and orphan diseases). She held positions spanning from target discovery to clinical trials, and has supported programs using diverse modalities including novel ones such as gene therapy and gene editing, and leveraging human genomics discoveries. She has previously held positions of increasing responsibility at Beam Tx, Goldfinch Bio and Biogen. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Athens, Greece and her PhD in Human Molecular Genetics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She did her postdoctoral training at the University of Birmingham, UK and at Yale School of Medicine. She was an assistant professor at Yale before joining the biotech industry. She has been a member of WEST for more than 10 years, and currently serves as a Board Member. She is a mentor with WEST and other organizations where she helps women and girls reach their full potential. She is also very involved with American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), where she is a member of the Career Development Committee. In her free time she enjoys cooking, fishing, skiing, and traveling with her husband and 3 children. She is an expert cake decorator and her kids have the most unique birthday cakes! |
