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Four female industry leaders were honored at last night’s award party hosted by the non-profit networking organization Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology (WEST). The event, held at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center in Cambridge, attracted a crowd of women and men in a diverse mix of industries.
For the third annual event, WEST honored four female entrepreneurs who have either started their own companies or contributed to a larger company’s success. The four recipients were Mara Aspinall, president and CEO of Waltham-based On-Q-ity Inc.; Katrine Bosley, CEO of Avila Therapeutics; Nancy Briefs, president of Elemé Medical Inc.; and Sue Welch, TradeStone Software’s founder and CEO.
In receiving her award, Aspinall told the audience about how a science teacher discouraged her childhood dream of becoming a doctor by telling her it wasn’t possible. Yet, she would later become the president of Genzyme Genetics, a pharmacology and oncology testing company, and CEO of On-Q-ity, a cancer diagnostics firm. After encouraging the audience to ignore naysayers and take risks, she told them, “Remember, there are patients waiting for us.”
Bosley shared that her successful career path was often dotted with moments where the next step wasn’t clear. “There was definitely no plan,” she said. Unlike Aspinall, she said, “I don’t think I had anybody tell me that I couldn’t do anything, and if they did, I didn’t listen.” She expressed excitement at being part of something that has a positive effect on people’s lives. Her company, Avila Therapeutics, develops protein-focused drug therapies.
For Nancy Briefs, the journey to success has been defined by three key elements: vision, passion and courage. She spoke of her experience at three medical device companies where she and her team succeeded because of their willingness to break from conventional thinking, flexibility in completely changing their product’s design and courage to work with half as many resources to accomplish a goal by deadline. Briefs noted, “This isn’t something we do alone. We do it as a team.”
TradeStone Software’s Welch had just spent two years developing global sourcing software when she learned it couldn’t be done. Attending a trade show, she heard Arthur Andersen declare that global trading could not be automated. Up to this point, she said, “The reason I did it is because I didn’t know we couldn’t do it.” Yet, she’s built her career on doing the impossible, founding three successful companies on the retail sourcing technology. To the people who call her business an overnight success, she insists it is the result of years of work, saying, “There are no overnight successes.”
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