Jodie Gillon
President and CEO, BioCT
Age: 48
Industry experience: 30 years
Jodie Gillon is focused on taking Connecticut’s recent biotech industry resurgence to the next level and forging new connections to complementary industries. In her role since May as the new president and CEO of New Haven-based trade organization BioCT, Gillon has recruited 50 new members and added the state’s most prominent life science developer, Carter Winstanley, to the group’s board of directors. The organization is raising its own real estate profile in Connecticut’s biotech hub, preparing to open its first brick-and-mortar office in February at Winstanley’s 101 College St. life science development in New Haven.
Q: What was your introduction to Connecticut’s life science industry?
A: I worked at Achillion Pharmaceuticals [in New Haven] from 2016 to 2018, where I met one of our current board members, David Scheer, who recruited me into my current position. But I also fell in love with New Haven and Connecticut and made it my permanent home.
Q: How is the industry partnering with schools and colleges to develop a pipeline of workers?
A: There’s many programs across Connecticut. BioPath [a partnership between Southern Connecticut State University and the city of New Haven] takes high school students and trains them specifically for skill-based roles and match them directly into a career. And they are trained for specific roles for specific companies, which is what makes that program unique. Of course we need a whole host of programs. We have programs around internships and we get involved from the middle school level up to training the C-level talent, partnering with the different chambers of commerce. We have a lot of startups in Connecticut, as opposed to states that have more of the bigger companies. When I meet with my counterparts at MassBio, what’s made MassBio and Boston so successful, is it was really about mentorship and training. All of the [public] policies and incentives came later.
Q: Where are the life science companies in Connecticut finding the biggest skill gaps?
A: If you look at Jackson Labs, they are going to hire 150 machine learning scientists. I have a [member] company where it took them a year to find lab technicians. If they are scarce around the United States, they are even more scarce in Connecticut. There’s a misconception that we’re trying to overcome that if you relocate your family here for a startup and it goes belly up, there’s nothing else here. But perception becomes reality, so we have our work cut out for us as far as branding. If somebody is relocating to Boston for a biotech job that goes belly up, then they just go next-door. There actually is a next-door in New Haven. People just don’t know about it. I’ve probably met with a few hundred people, and it doesn’t seem to be a salary issue. We have competitive salaries. Of course housing is challenging once in a while. Connecticut is not acknowledged as the thriving biotech hub that it is.
Q: What are BioCT’s top organizational priorities?
A: Policy, people and promotion. On policy, our state isn’t favorable to the life science industry. We just got buy-in from the [General Assembly’s] Bioscience Caucus to participate in a January policy event. Around people: anything and everything. It’s mentoring, programs putting underprivileged students into STEM careers. New Haven is bustling, but I’m planning an event in Farmington between Jackson Labs and UConn Health. There is a startup ecosystem that needs support and that needs promotion.
Q: What incentives can the state legislature offer to benefit the industry?
A: The R&D tax credit, there’s a lot more we can add there. We were aiming for 100 percent and we landed on 60 percent, so how do we get closer to that 100 percent we see in other states? That mainly affects the startups, but the bigger companies are getting crushed on consultant taxes.
Q: Are developers building enough space to accommodate startups and incubators?
A: There’s ample space in New Haven at places like 101 College, Elm City Bioscience Center and Science Park. The appeal is that it’s so much cheaper than Boston, and you have Yale right there. The challenge is outside New Haven. We have 15 companies graduating out of an incubator in Farmington that don’t want to come to New Haven. It would be a heck of a commute, so where do they go? And the bigger companies are kind of out on their own: [Pfizer] in Groton, [Boehringer Ingelheim] in Ridgefield.
Q: What’s BioCT’s current membership and recent growth?
A: When I started, we had 200 members, and I think we’re almost up to 250. It’s been a really nice trajectory. I’ve been pounding the pavement. I’m adding hospital systems, machine learning companies, digital: anyone who touches life science whatsoever and connecting all the players.
Editor’s note: This report has been updated to correct the number of machine learning scientists Jackson Laboratory is hiring. That figure is 150.
Gillon’s Five Favorite Cities
- Tel Aviv
- Barcelona
- Taormina
- Antalya
- Siem Riep
