Caroline Shleifer, CEO & Founder, RegASK

Caroline Shleifer is an accomplished innovation leader with a broad scientific knowledge base and the ability to identify high potential scientific solutions to meet consumer and commercial requirements. Before coming to RegASK, Caroline was the Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs APAC for RegASK’s parent company, SPRIM. Caroline worked on a wide range of scientific and regulatory projects in the U.S., China and APAC regions. She is fluent in French, Spanish and English. Caroline Shleifer holds a PharmD-PhD on Medical Physics from the University of Paris V, France

 

What advice can you give to colleagues on overcoming hurdles when working on challenging projects?

Always stay pragmatic and optimistic, take it step-by-step while keeping the objective in mind. It helps to know who you can go to for guidance, always think outside the box, remain innovative, never panic, and work hard.

How can future generations of women be increasingly engaged in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine)?

Women remain underrepresented overall in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Although we’ve seen continuous growth of women deeply and successfully engaged in science, if we consider the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to women since 1901, we can see there is still a long way to go.

Women have won only 12 Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine, five in chemistry, and three in physics. Altogether, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 866 men compared to 53 women recipients; women have jointly received 20 Nobel Science Prizes while men have been awarded 587. Women have a lot to contribute, from different ideas to an alternative point-of-view; the more diverse any collective is, the more fruitful their discussions will be.

It is greatly important to empower more young women to discover and embrace STEM education and careers. At SPRIM, on our modest level, we’re creating an action plan for progress. We realize the importance of quality education and view it as the key to address gender equality and support learning opportunities within our organization.

We regularly engage the young generation, inviting them to our open houses to learn more about what we do and to share our love for biology and its fantastic application for health. Each year we invite high-school students for job-shadowing and we’re working to expand these activities. Finally, our annual 6-month internship program gives two students with a background in life sciences the opportunity to learn more about our industry.

We aim to support quality education and the discovery of life science careers to a young audience.