Audrey’s
Network includes Bay Area bioscience professionals from all sectors who are
working in broad array of functions in the industry. The group originated,
first, with members sourced from Audrey’s UC Extension intensive courses in
Bioscience Business and Marketing (now numbering over former 1,000 students),
the Syntex Syva Alumni Association, the Bio2Device Group (now has about 1,000
members) and other industry professional groups and individuals with whom
Audrey has worked. She began communicating with large numbers of individuals
regularly via email—sending her comments on events, notices about jobs in
business and marketing, advising about resources, market research and reports
available on the Internet and providing information on industry meetings.
Eventually, others began to refer to being in Audrey’s network and that stuck.
Values
Over
the past five years, the values of the network evolved from Audrey’s
interactions with the members in and outside the classroom. They include:
“What goes
around comes around”—each member needs to contribute to the community of
members to build a vibrant network for themselves and others
Treat others
as you would have them treat you
Always show
respect in your actions and communications
Take
responsibility for your own career
Learn from
your mistakes and try again—evaluate each completed project and ask “what
can I do to improve on this in the future?”
Develop trust through
your honesty and ethics
The
life sciences industry is a small industry where one’s reputation is critical
to success.One needs to
deliver the promised goods or demonstrate the sincere, ‘best” effort in trying
to deliver the products even if they fail at achieving the business objective.
It’s a very high risk proposition but offers great rewards beyond the monetary.
It is truly like no other industry. One becomes excited and passionate about
improving health care and its delivery for patients.
Mission
The
mission is to assist industry professionals continue to keep up-to-date in
their fields through “sharpening the saw” regularly and building and
maintaining a vibrant network. Audrey recognized in her career experience and,
especially, after being laid off from Syntex in 1993 after 20 years that the
work place and the old paradigm of finding and keeping employment had
drastically changed. One needs to be prepared to move on to the next position
at any time and stay current, learn new as well as renew skills and knowledge
to fill the needs of this dynamic marketplace. The employee has to be proactive
in investing in continuing learning and nurturing a network of meaningful
industry contacts. The usage of Linked In to identify contacts via Internet is
not enough and in this age of “social
media,” one must never forget importance of whom you know in person as well as
what you know.
