BeiGene has hired a former employee of Genentech and Johnson & Johnson to head up its diversity and health equity unit. Julius Pryor III is joining the biotech as it embarks on a three-year global strategy to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across the company.
Pryor is a veteran of the DEI space. Starting in 1988, Pryor worked at TAP Pharmaceuticals, a now defunct joint venture between Abbott and Takeda, and developed the inaugural DEI strategy during his 12 years at the company.
Pryor subsequently held roles related to diversity and inclusion at biopharma companies such as Genentech and J&J while also spending time outside of the industry at firms including Coca-Cola.
Now, seven years after leaving Genentech, Pryor has returned to biopharma to take up a position at BeiGene. The cancer biotech has hired Pryor as global head of diversity and health equity, giving him a leading role in the delivery of its emerging DEI strategy.
At BeiGene, a 13-year-old biotech founded in Beijing that now employs 9,000 people, DEI is a relatively recent area of focus. The company set up (PDF) an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Awareness (IDEA) Council in the U.S. in 2020 in light of “heightened attention on incidents of racial injustice and inequity” in the country. BeiGene subsequently expanded the IDEA Council beyond the U.S.
Seeing a need for a global strategy, BeiGene hired a vice president of DEI in 2021 and spent last year developing a three-year plan. Later this month, the biotech is scheduled to publish an annual environmental, social and governance report that will discuss the progress it made on the three-year strategy and other DEI activities last year.
BeiGene disclosed one change in the statement to reveal its appointment of Pryor, stating that it has formed an internal Diversity & Health Equity Council to expand its initiatives, make its clinical trials more diverse and support the affordability and accessibility of its medicines. For now, BeiGene is yet to share targets and commitments related to DEI. That could change when the report is released later in April.
The details will determine the impact of the strategy. DEI initiatives are the norm at Big Pharma firms, and biotechs have recognized they need to act, too, both for the good of society and because it makes business sense to run more diverse clinical trials and hire from a larger pool of talent.