BIA MAC Leadership Programme (LeaP)

In this guest blog, Dan Stanton, Trade Media Expert at Sartorius Bioprocess Solutions, discusses how tight funding, manual tech transfer and product specific analytics are keeping cell and gene therapies (CGTs) from realising their potential.

This blog explores the transformative BIA MAC Leadership Programme (LeaP) — a unique initiative empowering emerging bioprocessing professionals to accelerate their careers and strengthen leadership across the UK life sciences sector. With 76% of participants reporting career progression, LeaP is shaping the next generation of biotech leaders.

Over the past nine years, Dr Tony Bradshaw, Managing Director of Biosocius, has collected data from three distinct projects within the biotechnology sector. This effort has yielded unique and valuable insights that can help professionals thrive and build sustainable, fulfilling careers. By analysing behavioural profiles and consulting with industry experts, we can better understand the evolving demands of leadership in bioscience.

The BIA's Manufacturing Advisory Committee (MAC) Leadership Programme (LeaP) reaches a major milestone, with over 100 participants graduating from the programme since its inception in 2018.

Will Milligan recently founded Extracellular, the first dedicated manufacturing partner to support cellular agriculture. Will shares how the BIA has supported his professional development and Extracellular’s start-up journey.

I’m Louise Taylor, a Downstream Scientist at CPI based at our Biologics Business Unit in Darlington. This blog documents our journey as cohort 3b on the BIA MAC LeaP program and will cover the visit I hosted at CPI’s Biologics Business Unit in September 2019.

Following the success of the BIA MAC Leadership Programme (LeaP), last week saw the kick-off of the LeaP Alumni Association.

My name is Ricky Casey and I am an Investigator within Biopharm Process Research at GSK in Stevenage. Following on from Roger McGilvray’s blog in June which detailed the overall aims of the BIA MAC LeaP program, I wanted to provide some insight into the follow-on instalment of our cohort’s two year journey together as it was my turn to host the group in July.

My name is Roger McGilvray and I am a Principal Scientist in the Process Development division at Adaptimmune. I am one of the people selected to be part of the most recent BIA MAC Leadership Programme (LeaP) cohort. The programme runs over two years with a group of 11 early to mid-career leaders who are committed to continuous improvement. The group meets once every two months and each person in the group hosts the group at their home site. The group gets to select their own project to progress over the course of the programme and we chose to look into what we can learn from other manufacturing sectors. This was my turn to host the group for our second meeting.