Unit 11 Carnforth Business Park,
- 2San highlights the importance of women helping women in the industry
- Dr Cosima Gretton, a rising female star in digital health and diagnostics shares her learnings for the future female generation this International Women’s Day
2San, a leading global supplier of trusted, high-quality innovative healthcare products and solutions is determined to support and enable female colleagues globally within the healthcare and diagnostics industry.
For International Women’s Day, 2San would like to recognise highly successful women within the industry. Dr Cosima Gretton, is the UK and Europe’s Scientific Advisor for 2San, and a consultant in digital health and diagnostics. She is a force within the industry and hopes to inspire the next generation of females within this field.
With a background in experimental psychology and clinical medicine, it was while working as a junior doctor that Cosima became interested in innovation and how healthcare was delivered, funded and how health technologies were developed.
Cosima moved across the pond to the US, to work as a clinical product manager at a diagnostics start up called Karius, working on infectious diseases. She then joined a mental health start-up and led the healthcare strategy, launching a new virtual therapy service for people with serious mental illness. Within three years the company served patients across 50 states with major American insurance companies as customers.
When the pandemic hit, Cosima joined NHS Test & Trace, deploying novel low cost COVID-19 technologies. She led three programs; deploying testing capacity for staff at NHS hospitals, creating mobile laboratories to support outbreak response, and building a novel highly automated robotic laboratory, working with engineers from F1 McLaren.
Tips for Women Entering Healthcare & Life Sciences:
Women in the workplace still face a range of challenges. Although there are many women working on the frontline in healthcare, there are still few women in senior management across the industry. Cosima is passionate about supporting other women in health and life sciences and has compiled some thoughts based on things she has learned and is trying to practice herself:
- Speak up for others: When you witness a female colleague spoken over, ignored or interrupted in a meeting, take a moment at the end of the meeting or in a natural break to say “hold on a minute, Jane was about to say something back then – I’d love to hear her thoughts.”
- Lean in: Drawing on Sheryl Sandberg’s advice, try to step forward, volunteer for new projects and take on new challenges even when you worry it’s going to be too much. You’ll figure it out.
- Find a mentor and support others: It’s important to have trusted female leaders you look up to, and can bounce ideas off, particularly as life gets more complicated with children in the mix. Build a support network simply through finding other women you like and respect and meet up with them to talk about your career goals and theirs – it doesn’t have to be formal.
- Invest in your strengths: Some of the best leaders (male and female) I have known have led with decidedly female leadership styles: participatory, democratic, supportive, and more likely to elevate others. Double down on these qualities, don’t try to emulate male leadership styles.
