Nowadays, we are increasingly witnessing women exerting their influence by dedicating themselves to STEMM, contributing significantly to advancements and progress in these fields. As International Women’s Day (IWD) approaches, we stand in solidarity with the IWD 2024 initiative "Inspire Inclusion" by celebrating women's achievements.

Leading a diverse team of 10 amazing individuals, Nicole Neubauer breaks barriers and inspires

us all with her journey as a female leader in the world of biotech. In this exclusive interview, Nicole shared her invaluable experiences, shedding light on the challenges she faced and the successes she celebrated. Her journey in the biotech industry is a testament to the power of

determination, resilience, and passion.

Q: Would you please introduce yourself and your work at MGI?

A: I am leading the marketing team for Europe and Africa at MGI. What we do on a day to day basis is working very closely with all departments to find the best way how to position and promote our product portfolio, how best to reach our customers and what messaging we need to put out there for customers to easily understand our offering. It's a broad variety of different task.

Q: You have been working in biotech for almost 20 years, what motivates you to pursue a career in this field?

A: I was always very interested in biology and chemistry from an early age on. I majored in biology and chemistry and did my PhD in health sciences and in diabetes research. Throughout the years, I found that I'm more interested in the technologies that I used in the lab rather than the scientific context. After my PostDoc I decided to pursue a career outside of the academic field. I moved into the industry and worked as an application scientist and sales representative first. Then I moved into marketing and I think this is a really interesting intersection between the company  and the customer. I really enjoy this role where I'm still connect to research, and I'm trying to translate this into very easily digestible stories.

Q: How many staffs are there in your team, and how is the male and female radio?

A: We are 10 individuals in the team and currently more women than men. We cover nationalities from Chinese to British, from South African to Latvian, and from Russian to French, we have different nationalities, different languages, different cultural backgrounds and different experiences in my team.

Q: How do you manage the different cultures in your team?

A: I think it is most important to be aware that we come from different cultural backgrounds. We need to be open, tolerant and view it as a benefit. And we need to be aware that when people react unexpectedly it might be based on some cultural differences. Cross cultural differences are a challenge but it is also an extremely enriching experience to work in such a diverse team, and it's

broadening everybody's horizons.

Q: How do you foster a women-friendly work environment for your team?

A: I don’t foster a women-friendly work environment, I foster a human friendly work environment. I think every individual has a different personal situation. That means that they have different demands towards the workspace and flexibility in times of work hours, and they need individual support or flexibility at work. I have women in my team who have children, and women who don't have children. They deserve exactly the same attention and flexibility no matter if they have children or not. Every individual has different interests and different needs. Some need more flexibility in terms of work hours because they do a majority of child care in their family, but others have different interests and demands towards their employer. In the team the most important

thing is to make sure that everybody has an equal voice, no matter if they have children or not, if they are shy or not, if they speak English fluently or not, we need to ensure that we listen to each single voice. When we do that, we will be a much more successful team.

Q: As a women leader, what’s the biggest challenge do you think for women to step into leadership? How do you overcome it?

A: Everybody in the organization faces challenges, and it depends on how you approach these challenges. I do enjoy the challenges they put on my shoulders. I consider myself as a servant leader and my management style is more visionary and coaching. I'll try to nurture the talents in my team. For me, it's not about authority, it's about making sure that my team is informed about the developments within and outside of our company to ensure all are clear on what is expected of us and how we can deliver on those topics.

My team will find the best suitable way on how to achieve our goals. I don't have to tell them what to do. I need to tell them what the goals are. I need to facilitate that we can achieve our goals. The team will source and use the best tools to facilitate success. The team members are very talented and driven.

Q: Women continue to be underrepresented in certain fields, including science and technology. How do you believe we can encourage and support more women to pursue careers in biotech?

A: First of all, I have to say we are not underrepresented in the science field. When you look at the statistics, there are more female  than males finishing their PhDs at universities these days. However, there are less women who climb successfully on the career ladder.

As an employer we need to make sure that, we offer employees flexibility. If they have children, we make sure they have some flexible time to take care of this. My experience is that even though women take most of the care work at home and might need to take sick leave to take care of the children, they are just as effective in their work as anybody else.

As a society, we need to make sure that the housework and the care work are equally distributed between dads and moms.

Q: What did you do in your spare time?

A：I'm very lucky and that I can combine one of my main interests which is travel and work. I also like cooking and gardening.

Q: Can you share the coolest thing you ever did in your daily life?

A：I moved across the Atlantic several times just with two suitcases. First I moved from Copenhagen, Denmark to work in San Francisco, USA then moved back to Copenhagen. The next time I moved from Copenhagen Denmark to Boston, USA to do my PostDoc. I moved from Boston,

USA to London, UK and lived in Europe since then.