LSWC Best Workforce Strategies Roundtable Kickoff: Building the Life Sciences Workforce of the Future

Martin Tran
1 day ago
2 min read

Updated: 9 hours ago

Featured speakers for LSWC’s Best Workforce Strategies Roundtable, highlighting national leaders advancing collaborative, industry-aligned biomanufacturing workforce solutions.

Building the Life Sciences Workforce of the Future

As the nation’s life sciences industry navigates a new era in workforce dynamics, one challenge continues to surface across industry, education, and policy conversations: workforce readiness.

While overall employment growth has slowed, new opportunities are emerging in key areas of the industry. From skilled technicians to advanced manufacturing specialists, the growing shift toward upskilling and technology-integrated roles is placing new demands on the systems that support the life sciences workforce—both now and in the years ahead.

To help address this challenge, the Life Sciences Workforce Collaborative (LSWC) launched its inaugural Best Workforce Strategies Roundtable, aligning workforce experts and key stakeholders around practical workforce solutions.

From National Policy to Workforce Action

The first roundtable, Building the Life Sciences Workforce of the Future, took place on January 30 and brought together national policy leaders and workforce experts to explore how biomanufacturing policy translates into practice at the state, regional, and industry levels.

The session featured Caitlin Frazer, Executive Director of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), who provided an overview of the Commission’s workforce recommendations, legislative developments and insights from NSCEB’s national roadshows, as well as what’s next for the Commission.

Roundtable panelists from NSCEB, NIIMBL, BioMADE, InnovATEBIO and LSWC discuss workforce policies and real-world implementation strategies during LSWC’s Best Workforce Strategies Roundtable.

Workforce Leaders on What Works

John Balchunas, Workforce Director at the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), Hunter Brown, Associate Program Manager at BioMADE and Linnea Fletcher, Executive Director at InnovATEBIO shared best-in-class approaches shaping the future biomanufacturing workforce, highlighting how workforce systems can move from concept to implementation and ensure that talent pipelines align with real industry needs.

Why This Conversation Matters

While national policies and investments are setting the direction for the future of biomanufacturing, implementation ultimately happens at the local and regional levels.

States, industry associations, educators, and training providers are tasked with translating high-level recommendations into programs that work on the ground. LSWC’s Best Workforce Strategies Roundtable is designed to bridge this gap by offering a space for shared learning, coordination, and alignment across the workforce ecosystem.

By connecting national priorities with proven workforce practices, the Roundtable aims to support more resilient, responsive, and future-ready talent pipelines.

Join the Conversation

This roundtable marks the beginning of a new 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.