As I came down from the podium at BioPharm America in Boston, after handing out this year's Fierce 15 awards, a woman in the audience chided me for the lack of women in the winners' circle. Actually, two of this year's Fierce 15 companies are helmed by women--Andrea Pfeifer at AC Immune and Krisztina Zsebo at Celladon--and they both have done great work and enjoy excellent prospects. They just couldn't make it to the show.
Regardless, it's not the first time I've been reminded that women play an important role in biopharma and don't always get the recognition they deserve. That's why we started the "Top Women in Biotech" special report two years ago. Here's our 2011 report; here's the 2010 list. We'll be coming back in a few weeks with our next annual report, and we'd like to give readers an opportunity to nominate outstanding women who play leading roles in the industry. We're also expanding from the strict confines of biotech to include leading women in pharma.
So if you know someone who's a great business leader and an important role model, I'd encourage you to click on the survey and nominate them right now. I promise you we'll consider every name on the list. -- John Carroll, Editor-in-Chief. Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.