Bolstering the Workforce Pipeline: Early Career Awareness in the Life Sciences

Mar 26
2 min read

As the U.S. life sciences industry accelerates into a new era of growth—driven by domestic biomanufacturing investment, reshoring, and expanding R&D—one challenge is becoming increasingly clear: the workforce pipeline must be built from the ground up.

Most U.S. students have little to no exposure to biotechnology until college, if at all. Meanwhile, community college programs—essential for training the in-demand technicians that power labs, manufacturing floors, and research facilities—face persistent enrollment challenges rooted in limited upstream awareness and too few high school pathways into the field.

To help address this challenge, Life Sciences Workforce Collaborative (LSWC) is hosting its second Best Workforce Strategies Roundtable, Bolstering the Workforce Pipeline: Early Career Awareness in the Life Sciences, on April 24, 2026.

From the Classroom to the Career: What’s Working

The second roundtable will spotlight innovative programs reaching students, teachers, and communities before they ever set foot on a college campus.

Ying-Tsu Loh, Executive Director of the Bay Area Bioscience Education Community (BABEC), will discuss how BABEC provides high school teachers with open-source curriculum, lab kits, and professional development to bring biotechnology into biology classrooms—and how industry partnerships ensure those resources reflect real-world biotech concepts and skills.

Angie McMurry, Director of Industry Engagement and Workforce Development at Ohio Life Sciences, will present BioPathways, a comprehensive K–12 education initiative that brings industry and academia together to inspire students toward rewarding careers in life sciences.

Shelly Ridder, Community Engagement and Workforce Development Manager at Oregon Life Sciences, will highlight co-branded career guides from START Engineering, Radlabs, and InnovATEBIO’s Biotech-Careers.org as tools being used to expose students to life sciences career pathways.

Ann Vogel, Senior Vice Presiden at the iBIO Institute, will present STEMgirls Camp, a 5-day STEM summer camp for 3rd–8th grade girls featuring hands-on activities, sessions with STEM professionals, and a field trip designed to inspire exploration of STEM fields and careers.

Why Early Career Awareness Matters

Global competitors are already cultivating bioscience talent early. For the U.S. to maintain its competitive edge in biotechnology and biomanufacturing, the workforce conversation must start well before a student’s first semester of college. Scalable, high-quality early career awareness programs are not just nice to have—they are foundational - and require engagement from industry, education and training providers. Life science industry associations are well-positioned to bring diverse stakeholders together to build innovative partnerships and pathways into rewarding careers. Innovative non-profit organizations like BABEC provide the concrete tools to build these pathways.

LSWC’s Best Workforce Strategies Roundtables are designed to bridge this gap: connecting industry, association, and education leaders around practical, proven, and scalable solutions that strengthen the entire talent pipeline—from the classroom to the career.

Join the Conversation

This roundtable is the second in a quarterly series, and we hope you will continue to join us as we explore best practices and emerging strategies across the life sciences workforce ecosystem.