2022: Reflecting on a Remarkable Year of Progress
Reflecting on a Remarkable Year
of Progress
A Letter from Roivant Social Ventures President & CEO Lindsay Androski
Dear Friends and Supporters of RSV,
At Roivant Social Ventures (“RSV”), we have introduced a new model for corporate philanthropy. We believe the best way for corporations to be agents of positive social change is to allow employees to contribute their professional expertise and time to initiatives that can make a lasting impact in the world. We also believe this model creates an ideal charitable vehicle for impact-minded philanthropists, because it couples donor dollars with expertise not normally available in non-profit organizations, and thereby amplifies the impact of charitable donations. We are personally focused on improving healthcare access and outcomes for historically underserved patients, but we believe this model holds promise across industries and urge other companies to adapt this charitable model to address the unique social issues relevant to their industry.
The year 2022 brought remarkable progress, which we couldn’t have achieved without your support!
Some of our proudest moments include:
Partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Eshelman Center for Innovation, on our initiative to improve diversity in senior leadership in the biopharma industry. The first step in this partnership involves a spring 2023 “Making Medicines” class, co-taught by myself and UNC Professor Scott Singleton, and featuring industry leaders as guest speakers. The class will be coupled with paid summer internship opportunities for select female and BIPOC students interested in a career in biopharma.
Launch of our partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Drug Repurposing Program, focused on development of existing “shelved” drugs for unmet patient needs.
Co-founding CARER (Catalyzing Access to Research and Equity in Representation), which has developed a “Clinical Trial Diversity Scorecard.” The scorecard grades biopharma companies that receive new drug approvals from the FDA by evaluating how well the company represented the real-world patient population (based on sex, age, ethnicity, and race) in its pivotal clinical trial. In the future, we intend to give awards to the companies that best represent real-world patients in their clinical trials.
Appointing Dr. Theophelus Hill, Dr. Diane Nelson, and Clifford Samuel to RSV’s Advisory Board. The deep expertise of our Advisory Board serves as an incredible asset to our work. Additional members of our Advisory Board include Dr. Sandeep Kulkarni, Dr. Andrew Lo, Dr. Randy Mills, and John Stanford.
Becoming an active voice in thought leadership through writing “Corporate America’s philanthropy model doesn’t work. It’s time for a better one,” published by Fortune, and “Why the lack of diversity in drug industry leadership is hurting women and people of color,” published in the LA Times. In 2022 Additional articles on RSV’s work were published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fierce Biotech, Health Affairs, and Nature.
Advancing our mission through speaking engagements at BIO, SOCAP Global, the Licensing Executive Society for the USA and Canada, the Center for Technology Licensing at Weill Cornell Medicine, and more. Topics included “Disruptive Philanthropy Fueling Equal Opportunity and Entrepreneurship," “Working with Funders and International Organizations to Access Non-Traditional Global Markets" for medical access, “Corporate Purpose through Venture Charity,” “Sustainably Addressing Health Disparities,” and beyond.
Growing RSV's global audience through appearances on TEDx, Making Medicine, the Impact Podcast with John Shegerian, the Climb Podcast, and Caring Cross' ongoing web series.
Our goal for 2023 and beyond is to scale, scale, scale!
To truly move the needle on improving diversity in biopharma and developing new treatments for underserved patient populations, we need to launch more educational programs and advance more therapies through clinical trials. We can only do this with your financial support, and we appreciate your generous consideration of RSV in 2023!
Wishing you all the best!
Lindsay Androski
Roivant Social Ventures Founder, President & CEO