Cultivating Corporate Connections: BMEB Hosts Particles for Humanity for Roles in Biotech Panel
March 21, 2024
By Ciara Meyer, published by Brown University
This panel featured the Directors of Finance, Business, and R&D at Particles for Humanity, PBC: Marc Bassil (Director / Financial Planning & Analysis), Sam Brady (Director / Research, Development, & Program Management), and Judith Ternes (Director / Business Development). Panelists discuss mission-oriented work, collaboration, and career development. Don Chickering (Chief Technical Officer) and Haisong Yang (Research & Development Engineer II) were also in attendance. Photo credit: Jean Jerome.
Last week, the Corporate Outreach Committee of Brown Biomedical Engineering Board (BMEB) sponsored a Roles in Biotech Panel with speakers from mission-oriented biotech start-up, Particles for Humanity (PFH). The event offered students an opportunity to network with career experts and learn about PFH’s innovative work supporting essential health developments in low and middle-income countries.
“Our focus is entirely on global health,” PFH’s Director of Business Development Jet Ternes said at the beginning of the panel. “Often in biotech, technologies are developed for high-resource or high-income settings first and then fit in retroactively to something that works in middle- or low-income countries.”
This development process often leads to technology that doesn’t exactly fit into the low- or middle-income setting. By developing products specifically for those countries, PFH hopes to provide better solutions to serious global health challenges. For example, funded entirely by philanthropy, PFH has been working specifically on formulating Vitamin A to address widespread vitamin A deficiencies in less affluent countries.
Now, in the final stages of commercializing their technology, PFH’s Vitamin A Palmitate (VAP) can be added to staple foods and remain stable when exposed to humid environments. So, when those foods get to someone’s table, they gain more Vitamin A than the current commercially available commercial VAP.
“This represents a huge potential advantage in how much Vitamin A can actually get to people that need it,” said Director of Research, Development & Program Management Sam Brady B.S. ’15 M.S. ’16.
For Brady, her experience at Brown helped inspire her desire to work in global health. “Because of the open curriculum, I was also able to take a few courses in global health, which was really impactful on my decision to work on Particles for Humanity,” she wrote in a comment after the panel.
According to PFH, 50% of PFH employees and 100% of the research and development department are Brown alumni. Brady said her time at Brown made her want to “pursue a career in something that felt very translational, with a direct path towards improving health as opposed to early-stage research.”
PFH’s humanitarian mission and desire to create a direct impact is clear in everything they do as a public benefit corporation. To Marc Bassil, this means the company has “the ability to prioritize the mission over other considerations…Typically, in most organizations, profitability and shareholders would play a much bigger role.”
This aspect of PFH’s work appealed to Graylen Chickering, one of BMEB Corporate Outreach Commitee’s Co-Chairs. “I’ve wanted to bring corporate outreach more toward focusing on…the culture and the history of biotech,” said Chickering. Chickering noted that biotech and pharmaceutical companies sometimes overlook or mistreat low-income communities in their research. “Just having a company that is looking at low-resource areas is huge.”
Chris Shin ’24, a BME concentrator who attended the panel, said he was inspired by the company’s mission-driven practices and said, “you can definitely tell that from the culture that they shared.”
Alec McCall, another BMEB Corporate Outreach Committee Co-Chair, said that learning about how the different biotech roles interact was the panel's primary goal. “We know the (research and development), but we don’t know the business and finance” side of things, he said. Students attending the panel got a sense of the deep collaboration that must occur in biotech start-ups.
As a small organization, the members of PFH “all wear many hats,” said Ternes at the panel. Working at a small company, Bassil wrote that he enjoys “having the opportunity to work very cross-functionally and understanding how each person’s contribution leads to the overall organization’s success.”
“The size of the company is kind of perfect for this event,” said Chickering. The company’s size meant that leaders from all departments were at the event and able to share their experience working together. What are the keys to their success? Relationship building, staying organized, and being able to translate science to non-technical audiences.
Even though PFH doesn’t currently have open job postings, Ternes didn’t entirely close the door to working with recent Brown graduates. “If any of you are interested in the business strategy side of things, we need lots of help and we’d be delighted to talk to you,” she said at the panel.
Whether or not students will end up at PFH, the event posed a great networking opportunity. Chickering noted that after meeting just one person “you can be connected to 5,000 people in biotech.”
The panelists also discussed their previous industry experiences and tips for finding a company that is a good fit. “I think the interview process shows you how companies are,” said Ternes. “Do they ghost you? Do they generally show up on time to the interviews you’re having? Do they seem engaged?”
“Make sure you like the day-to-day job not just the company’s mission,” wrote Ternes in a comment after the panel. “Pursue what you will like and what makes you excited,” advised Brady.
When a student asked about the process of getting a visa sponsored as an international applicant, Bassil spoke of his own experience. “I am not an American,” said Bassil. “I was interviewing with a company before I joined Particles for Humanity and they decided not to give me an offer because I did not have a green card.”
“Particles for Humanity…was willing to have a conversation around sponsoring a visa if needed,” said Bassil. Brady added that PFH has sponsored visas for other team members, and noted that “it’s a green flag for [a company’s] inclusivity and culture” if they say in a job posting that they are willing to sponsor a visa.
“When you’re an organization like Particles for Humanity that is based in the U.S., primarily doing work outside of the U.S.…we have to operate in a way that we’re trying to bring in as much perspective from outside of the U.S. as possible…it’s core to our work,” Ternes said.
This panel is just one of many efforts BMEB’s Corporate Outreach Committee is taking to connect students with industry professionals. “This year, the goal is to have something once a month,” said McCall. These events include skills workshops, panels, and Q&As with external companies, and a joint talk with the DEI panel at the end of April.
Chickering said the Committee hopes to host events that are “a combination of telling people what is out there and what role we can play in it…[how] we can change the culture a little bit and improve it.”