Increasing Representation in Pharma
This May, Roivant Sciences and Roivant Social Ventures (RSV) partnered to launch our inaugural Diversity in Pharma Internship Program, providing real-world drug development experience to qualified PharmD students from diverse backgrounds.
This summer Dahye is interning with Roivant Sciences' Program Management Team, where she will:
Develop a R&D playbook for use with new drug development programs.
Develop program budgets to guide capital allocation.
Help run internal R&D initiatives.
Assist in leading cross functional meetings.
Originally from Busan, South Korea, Dahye began pursuing her work in pharmacy with the goal of applying her chemistry expertise to healthcare development. When studying abroad in Madrid, Spain, she saw first-hand the significant impact that one local pharmacist had on the lives of the people in her community. Through comparatively analyzing the healthcare systems in Spain, South Korea, and the United States, Dahye began to understand the full implications of how medicine access and social determinants directly impact the treatment and outcomes of patients.
We sat down with Dahye to learn more about her accomplishments to date, what personally drives her work, and how her summer internship will impact her career development.
Dahye has developed her leadership experiences to date through:
Creating educational materials that have helped improve health literacy for 115 Guatemalan high school students through PharmAlliance.
Sitting on the Diversity & Inclusion Committee on UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Student Senate.
Winning 1st place in PharmAlliance's International Case Competition through creating written and visual deliverables for gender health awareness.
Mentoring fellow PharmD students through Eshelman's Mentoring Future Leaders in Pharmacy (MFLIP) Program.
Volunteering to build out the Young Generation Technical and Leadership (YGNITE) Conference for the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA).
Are there any particular areas of medicine that you’re especially interested in?
“Yes, I am particularly interested in working to develop treatments for rare diseases, feeling that medications addressing these needs can drastically impact the lives of patients that are often over-looked.”
What caught your interest about the internship department that you will be working with this summer?
“I am itching to better understand the research and development process, and how the applications of standards and values impact drug development.
What are you most looking forward to about your internship this summer?
“By far getting my first opportunity to have hands-on drug development experience!”
Dahye is excited to see how her background and the leadership skills will continue to develop through this opportunity to work with seasoned experts at Roivant Sciences.
Diversity in Pharma Internship Program
Equal access to medicine and medical care should be a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, people of color, women, low-income populations, and the uninsured often cannot access the medicine they need either– because they cannot afford it, or because it has not been developed.
Biopharma offers a solution to healthcare inequities, but systemic issues exist within the space– including a lack of diversity in leadership. The pharmaceutical industry is overwhelmingly white and male, especially in the C-suite. Biopharma executives in North America, Europe, and Australia are less than a third female, according to a 2021 report from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. About one in five CEOs is female only one in four is a person of color, and in the broader healthcare field, only 1% of CEOs are women—the lowest of any industry (Korn Ferry).
By increasing racial and gender diversity in future leaders of the biopharma industry, we can start to dismantle these inequities.
During the Spring 2023 semester all interns completed RSV's "Making Medicines" course at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the top ranked School of Pharmacy in the United States. This innovative course was designed to introduce PharmD students to the new drug approval process and key issues in drug discovery, pre-clinical testing, clinical trials, FDA approval, and global access to medicines. The course is taught by Lindsay Androski, RSV Founder & CEO, and Scott Singleton, Associate Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.