BeiGene has revealed what it expects of its recently hired diversity and health equity chief Julius Pryor III. In its new diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEI&B) strategy, the biotech commits to goals such as reaching global gender parity at the vice president level and above by 2030.
Pryor is a veteran of the DEI space with stints at Genentech and Johnson & Johnson on his résumé. In March, BeiGene, a biotech that has grown quickly over the past decade to employ 9,000 people, named Pryor as the man to lead a DEI program that it kicked off in 2020 in response to “heightened attention on incidents of racial injustice and inequity” in the U.S.
Now, with the publication of its 2022 environmental, social and governance report, BeiGene has set out the concrete goals of the initiative. The report (PDF) lists three objectives that the biotech wants to hit by the end of the decade.
By 2030, BeiGene aims to: reach global gender parity at the VP level and above; achieve a 50% improvement in workforce diversity companywide at management levels in the U.S.; and continue to address the composition of the board of directors for gender and U.S. underrepresented groups. The push to improve workforce diversity in the U.S. is focused on underrepresented groups.
BeiGene drafted the targets in collaboration with the Global IDEA Council, a body it set up in the U.S. in 2020 and then brought to other international markets. The biotech has already made progress toward the goals, boosting the proportion of VP and above posts occupied by women from 24% in 2021 to 33% at the last count. More than half, 52%, of U.S. staff identify as members of underrepresented groups.
The strategy for 2023 includes DEI&B training and the creation of several employee resource groups (ERGs). Initially, BeiGene will create ERGs for female, LGBTQIA, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx and neurodiverse colleagues, but plans to expand beyond that list in the future based on staff interest.