Biotech Leader Gujrathi Holds Up a Mirror for Other Women

In almost every room she’s been in throughout her career, Sheila Gujrathi was the only one. The only woman. The only person of color. Now, having risen through biopharma, including a trip through medical school, a stint as a CEO and now a seat on the board, Gujrathi is determined to hold a mirror up so other women behind her can see themselves reflected back.

That’s the focus of her new book, The Mirror Effect, which comes out next month. Gujrathi told BioSpace that she hopes it will provide the type of leadership manual she never had coming up in biotech to the next generation of women in biopharma.

Gujrathi’s path to the biotech C-suite began well before she was even born. Both her parents worked in medicine, which helped their family climb out of poverty in India in the 1960s. It allowed them to immigrate to the U.S. to help address a physician shortage in that time. Her mother in particular “saved her whole family,” she remembers.

Courtesy Sheila Gujrathi

“Very explicitly I was told that I was going to be a physician,” Gujrathi says with a laugh in a recent interview with BioSpace. “I kind of grew up with this heavy burden and, just kind of understanding how much my mother shouldered as a matriarch of her family.”

Gujrathi did as her parents told her, studying medicine at Northwestern University followed by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and then on to Harvard Medical School for her residency. She did a fellowship in allergy immunology at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University. It was in California where she discovered a passion for translational immunology research, particularly on atopic diseases.

But after all that education, she realized that perhaps the day-to-day practice of medicine and research wasn’t for her. “I kind of recognized, in myself, that I don’t like doing the same thing every day. I really like variety, and I was just finding myself not as excited about going into work,” she said.

She networked and kicked around the idea of business school for a masters in public health. But she also heard about management consulting, a place where like-minded colleagues with similar frustrations about medicine had found a home. She also had met many people in California who were in the biotech world. She began to see a new path.

“I was terrified to make that move, and my family was very unhappy, and my attendings were very unhappy with me. They were telling me that I was kind of ruining my life,” Gujrathi said.

Nevertheless, she joined McKinsey, where she worked with large pharmas on the East Coast based from the firm’s New Jersey office. She never got that business degree, but the three years she spent at McKinsey were “like an MBA on steroids,” Gujrathi said.

The experience also helped her zero in on drug development as a career path, and she found her way to Genentech—the very first biotech.

“It was an amazing experience, because I got to wear so many different hats,” Gujrathi said. She became a “physician executive” within a lean organization that was rapidly growing. She left Genentech around the time it got bought by Roche in 2009 and accepted a position at Bristol Myers Squibb.

All told, Gujrathi spent about a decade in large biopharma companies. At one point she was pursued to be head of R&D at a top 10 pharma company, she recalled, but she ultimately declined as she wanted to be available for her children, who were in high school. It was time to go small. Gujrathi moved back to California in 2011 and pursued opportunities in biotech.

In 2016, Gujrathi co-founded Gossamer Bio, serving as the CEO for four years. She found the company’s lead asset, seralutinib, which is now in Phase III testing for pulmonary arterial hypertension and about to enter late-stage trials for pulmonary hypertension associated with interstitial lung disease.

Her time as chief executive at Gossamer was short, but Gujrathi said it provided a lot of fodder for her future leadership book.

“Changes happen in leadership at times. Companies go in different directions. You just have to understand what you’re getting involved with and also how the culture is evolving,” Gujrathi said.

Now, Gujrathi is a serial board member, with seats at Janux Therapeutics, Lila Biologics and Ventyx Biosciences. This has allowed her to expand beyond her immunology training to do work in rare diseases, neurological diseases, oncology and more. She’s also the co-founder of the influential Biotech Sisterhood, which has built a massive network of biotech C-suite leaders.

Looking back on her career, Gujrathi remembers few mentors along the way and no one who looked like her. Particularly when she was CEO at Gossamer.

“I kind of approached things like I had to fight and struggle and prove myself,” she remembers. “I felt kind of very alone as I was going through these ranks.”

So Gujrathi sought her own network, reaching out to fellow women at the top of companies. With a network of accomplished women behind her, Gujrathi finally felt like she didn’t have to walk into a room and prove herself. This informal group of women eventually became the Biotech Sisterhood, and helped inform a TED Talk she delivered last fall.

“We tapped into that unmet need that we saw,” Gujrathi said. The Biotech Sisterhood has been a runaway success, expanding beyond what they ever intended. Now there are sister groups popping up for a whole host of C-suite roles in biotech.

In The Mirror Effect, Gujrathi takes her experience climbing the biotech ladder and expands it into a leadership lesson for anyone.

“This is for anyone who doesn’t feel like they belong. Beyond women, it’s just for anyone,” Gujrathi said. Anyone with an “inner glass ceiling,” she adds.

With her leadership principles written down, Gujrathi’s next steps are already in motion. Besides a book tour to support The Mirror Effect, she’s back in the CEO chair, running a biotech in stealth and she recently dropped her first kid off at college.

“I always say biotech is not for the faint of heart. What we do is incredibly difficult. I’m always amazed when the drug gets approved,” Gujrathi said. “That’s why we even have to be stronger and support each other more, because we’re all in it together, and we’re all trying to do something for the greater good.”

She continued: “We can help each other more with compassion and support, so that we can continue to show up as our best selves and do what’s right for patients and their families.”