The biotechnology industry has a diversity problem that goes far beyond representation numbers. While women comprise approximately half of the biotech workforce, they hold only 30 percent of executive roles and 18 percent of Board of Directors seats. Most telling? Nearly 90 percent of surveyed biotech CEOs are white men.
But Leen Kawas, Managing General Partner at Propel Bio Partners, argues that the real issue isn’t just about fairness—it’s about innovation. Her experience leading biotechnology companies and investing in diverse startups reveals how inclusive leadership directly drives better scientific outcomes and breakthrough discoveries.
“There’s a lot of research showing when you have a woman on the helm (or part of the executive team), returns are higher, cultures are more inclusive, and innovation has a different, unique flavor,” Leen Kawas explains. The question is: what does that “different flavor” actually look like in practice?
The Data Behind Diverse Innovation
The evidence supporting diversity’s impact on innovation isn’t theoretical. A November 2022 report from As You Sow and Whistle Stop Capital analyzed 277 companies, comparing their Equal Employment Opportunity diversity data to 14 core financial performance indicators. The findings were clear: companies with diverse management teams consistently outperformed their peers.
More representation of black, indigenous, and people of color in management roles positively impacted cash flow, net profit, and stock performance. Three- and five-year revenues and return on equity also benefited from higher diversity numbers. McKinsey’s analysis of over 1,000 large firms in 15 countries reached similar conclusions—companies with diverse executive teams were significantly more likely to exhibit strong financial performance.
Leen Kawas has observed these patterns firsthand. Women-led companies, she notes, demonstrate 60 percent better performance than similar businesses led by men. But in biotechnology, where innovation can literally be the difference between life and death, the stakes go beyond financial metrics.
How Diversity Drives Scientific Breakthroughs
At Propel Bio Partners, Leen Kawas invests specifically in diverse founding teams because she’s seen how different perspectives lead to scientific innovations. Her portfolio companies provide concrete examples of how inclusive leadership translates to breakthrough discoveries.
Persephone Biosciences exemplifies this approach. The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover biomarkers in patient datasets, but their competitive advantage lies in their methodology. As Leen Kawas explains, “Persephone’s technology platform is based on diverse and inclusive, population-scale, observational clinical trials in conjunction with advanced multi-omics analyses and machine learning.”
This isn’t just good ethics—it’s good science. The company’s Argonaut trial, the United States’ largest-ever study of its kind, leverages diverse patient populations to find biomarkers for cancer prevention and treatment. The diversity of their dataset directly impacts the quality and applicability of their discoveries.
Inherent Biosciences presents another compelling case. The Salt Lake City-based company uses machine learning to identify epigenetic biomarkers, but their breakthrough came from studying diverse populations. Leen Kawas details their approach: “Inherent uses machine learning to identify epigenetic biomarkers (epimutations) for use in diagnostics and potential therapeutic targets.”
The company’s sperm vitality calculator, which integrates DNA methylation signatures to predict biological age, revealed crucial insights about lifestyle factors affecting aging. But these discoveries only emerged because the team studied diverse populations and lifestyle factors, finding that smoking and BMI affect biological age differently across different groups.
The Clinical Trial Challenge
Perhaps nowhere is the innovation impact of diversity more visible than in clinical trial management. Leen Kawas identified a critical problem during her time as a CEO: potential trial participants were consistently disappointed to find that white men most often serve as clinical trial managers.
This wasn’t just a representation issue—it was directly impacting scientific outcomes. “If we want our clinical trials to be more successful as companies, to be more successful, to recruit the right patient population, we need diversity in our management team,” Leen Kawas observed.
The lack of diversity in clinical trial management was creating a cascade of problems. Reduced patient participation meant smaller, less representative study populations. This, in turn, limited the generalizability of results and potentially missed critical safety or efficacy signals that might only appear in specific demographic groups.
Leen Kawas’s patient-centric approach at Athira demonstrates how inclusive thinking drives innovation. By considering the actual needs of diverse patient populations—such as arranging onsite meals for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers during clinical trials—the company improved both participation rates and data quality.
The Innovation Multiplier Effect
The relationship between diversity and innovation in biotechnology operates through multiple channels. Leen Kawas emphasizes that artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are most effective when they can process diverse datasets. “AI enables us to bring a number of different data (like omics, metabolomics, proteomics, epigenetics, and clinical presentation) to empower more accurate and comprehensive decision-making.”
But the power of AI is only as good as the data it processes. Homogeneous datasets produce biased algorithms, while diverse datasets—collected and analyzed by diverse teams—produce more robust and applicable results. This is particularly crucial in biotechnology, where treatments must work across different populations with varying genetic backgrounds, lifestyle factors, and disease presentations.
Leen Kawas’s investment philosophy at Propel Bio Partners reflects this understanding. “I’m not just investing in women or minorities—I’m investing in diversity because this will bring the best innovation and the best returns.” Her approach specifically seeks out diverse founding teams because she’s seen how different perspectives lead to breakthrough innovations.
The Collaborative Innovation Advantage
Diverse leadership teams bring different problem-solving approaches to complex scientific challenges. Leen Kawas notes that diverse managers are better equipped to establish rapport with varied stakeholders, leading to more productive relationships with internal and external partners.
This collaborative advantage becomes particularly important in biotechnology, where innovation often requires coordination across multiple disciplines, regulatory bodies, and patient populations. Teams with diverse perspectives are better positioned to identify potential challenges and opportunities that homogeneous teams might miss.
The innovation impact extends beyond individual companies. Leen Kawas observes that diversity-focused managers often serve as brand ambassadors, helping to reflect their companies’ commitment to inclusive innovation. This reputation attracts top talent from diverse backgrounds, creating a positive feedback loop that drives continued innovation.
Measuring Innovation Impact
The financial performance benefits of diverse leadership teams provide measurable proxies for innovation impact. Companies in the top quartile for diversity behaviors were 50 percent less likely to experience bankruptcy, according to McKinsey research. But in biotechnology, innovation metrics go beyond financial performance.
Leen Kawas’s portfolio companies demonstrate how inclusive leadership drives measurable scientific outcomes. Persephone Biosciences’ diverse clinical trials are producing biomarkers that could transform cancer treatment. Inherent Biosciences’ diverse population studies are revealing new insights about aging and disease prevention.
These outcomes aren’t coincidental—they’re the direct result of diverse teams asking different questions, collecting different data, and approaching problems from multiple angles.
The Path Forward
The biotechnology industry’s diversity challenge represents both a moral imperative and a strategic opportunity. Kawas’s experience demonstrates that inclusive leadership isn’t just about representation—it’s about harnessing diverse perspectives to drive scientific breakthroughs that benefit all patients.
Companies that recognize this connection between diversity and innovation position themselves for superior performance in an increasingly competitive landscape. As Leen Kawas continues to demonstrate through her work at Propel Bio Partners, the future of biotechnology innovation depends on embracing the full spectrum of human talent and perspective.
The data is clear: diverse leadership teams produce better financial outcomes, more innovative solutions, and more robust scientific discoveries. The question isn’t whether biotechnology companies can afford to prioritize diversity—it’s whether they can afford not to.
