Tine Carmeliet 

Rebekah Bikker

What is your current position and at which organization?
I am Strategy and Communication Manager and Deputy Director at BioPartner Leiden.  

Who is your role model?
I am lucky to have many people in my life with qualities I admire. I especially appreciate people who are strong and passionate, but also empathetic and open to other people’s opinions.    

Why did you join TOPX Network?
My colleague Barbara Brunnhuber joined before me and was so enthusiastic that I joined too.  

What do you expect to gain from TOPX Network?
What I enjoy most is the mix of information that is shared during the TOPX events, with observations, scientific background, opinions, and open discussions based on personal experiences.

Do you have a book tip you would like to share?
I enjoyed  the Ted Talk The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown. For me it helped redefine what strength is.

Azra Mujic-Delic

What is your current position and at which organization?
I am a Principal Scientist at Genmab. My role is mainly developing/validating functional assays for release of clinical batches for our late stage projects, as well as characterizing the structure-function relationship of clinical materials.  

Who is your role model?
As a kid I looked up to famous people (singers or actresses) and at a certain point I realized that I didn’t want to become them, but rather a scientist. At that point I realized that girls/women in science are not that visible, which was reflected in the classroom during my studies, majority of students were male and only 1 female professor. During my internships, PhD and further on I encountered many strong, smart women with a clear purpose which gave me the confidence to pursue my own ambitions.  

Why did you join TOPX Network?
I wanted to get in touch with other women working in the Life Science sector and get inspired by their stories. Also I find it important to have the opportunity to join workshops on diverse topics, thereby learning and enabling growth.  

What do you expect to gain from TOPX Network?
I expect to get inspired, motivated and learn. In addition I hope to be able to support other women at the start of their career in any way I can.   

Do you have a book tip you would like to share?
I must say I mostly turn to TED talks for personal development purposes. I found the talk of  Brittany Packnett called “How to build your confidence- and spark it in others” very inspiring. Personally I have struggled with confidence when I was younger, coming from a culture where girls are taught not to ask too many questions and follow their superiors, which brings me to another great TED talk by Reshma Saujani called “Teach girls bravery, not perfection”. 

Anne Vogel

What is your current position and at which organization?
I work as Molecular Biologist at Eurofins Clinical Diagnostics. My job includes the development of Next Generation Sequencing facilities, besides quality assurance and process management for the high volume COVID19 tests we are doing.  

Who is your role model?
I work as Molecular Biologist at Eurofins Clinical Diagnostics. My job includes the development of Next Generation Sequencing facilities, besides quality assurance and process management for the high volume COVID19 tests we are doing.

Why did you join TOPX Network?
TopX focusses on two things that are close to my heart, biotechnology and female leadership. What I like about it, is that TopX connects women with different ideas and motivations, while still sharing the same passion. This combination makes for lively discussions and this is why I decided to join after visiting the first TopX summit.  

What do you expect to gain from TOPX Network?
Knowledge, inspiration, connections and -hopefully- some golfing skills  

Do you have a book tip you would like to share?
I just finished “De levens van Jan Six “ (by Geert Mak), a book about the history of the family Six in the Netherlands. Geert Mak combines the small history of this family with larger historical movements in the Netherlands and Europe. He captures the ideals of people of different time periods very well. I live in the same area as Jan Six II once did, and I like to take bike trips to discover traces he left all around the village.

Patricia Ringeling

Stella Pielage 

Sibylle Herzer

Who is your role model?
So many different people come to mind, I cannot just pick one.  On the  professional level, I admire/admired different leaders for different things and tried to adopt the qualities that I thought were the most beneficial to me personally because I knew I could adopt them authentically. Definitely Cheryl Watson and Meg Leahey, two former managers who had a big impact on my career and my development, I worked for them for about two and a half years each and I learned more from both of them in that time than I had from previous managers in five or ten years. For sure my current manager as well, Mehrshid Alai-Safar. She is probably one of the kindest, most unassuming leaders I’ve ever met at her level. On a personal level, Sally Miller, a yoga teacher I trained with. Being with her was like sitting in the shade of a beautiful tree, there was something so present, grounding and kind about her.  I need more of all of that, so I was very attracted to her quiet, reflective, considerate and caring way of teaching and being with others.

Why did you join TOPX Network?
Well, I was nominated, which I was very grateful for, and of course, I was happy to join. While  I’ve missed the events so far,  I love that I can  share this opportunity with  my  colleagues. My HR colleagues were teasing me about having even gone a bit overboard in my excitement, having asked too many colleagues to join in.  Though  I really think it’s the right thing to do. The best way to create more opportunities for women in industry is by lifting each other as much as we can and that’s by sharing opportunities to grow, learn, and network.

What do you expect to gain from TOPX Network?
More opportunities to network, get to know more life science colleagues in the Netherlands. I’ve lived in the US for almost 25 years and moved here just before the pandemic. My network is still very small and I’d love to change that… though time is an issue.

Do you have a book tip you would like to share?
One of my favorite books to read and re-read is Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Art of Communicating”. In an increasingly polarized, overstimulated, and distracted world, how we talk and listen to one another is now more important than ever. And I think especially if you’re managing people, it’s essential to master the “when”, “how” and “why” of communication and to be a great active listener.

Marleen Gaillard

What is your current position and at which organization?
I am the founder/owner of MG Life Science. As independent coach and trainer I help Life Science Professionals to become the best version of themselves and to build highly motivated and effective teams that deliver above expectations and make a difference to patients.   

Who is your role model?
I have many role models, female and male, depending on what I want to focus on or which ambitious goals I would like to achieve. This is a mix of leaders in Life Science organizations, young ambitious professionals that are the start of their careers, world leaders, scientists, athletes, coaches, family members or friends.

 Why did you join TOPX Network?
To be around other ambitious women in Life Science. I strongly believe that women (and men) with a growth mindset are more successful in their careers and at home. Too often, we just work, work and work and hardly slow down to invest in our personal development and network.  I want to make coaching available to all (wo)men in Life Sciences, independent of the phase in their career or level in the company. Together we make a bigger difference to patients!  

What do you expect to gain from TOPX Network?
A great network of women (and men) that want to learn from each other, support each other and help each other to reach our ambitious goals.  

Do you have a book tip you would like to share?
My favorite book is “The Culture Map” written by Erin Meijer who is an American author and a professor of Cross-Cultural Management at INSEAD in Paris. In her book, she introduces an “eight-scale model” which helps managers and leaders of culturally diverse teams to improve their effectiveness by analysing the position of one culture relative to another on eight dimensions, which gives meaningful insights in why people behave like they do. The eight dimensions are:  Communication (high versus low context language), Evaluation (direct vs indirect negative feedback), Leading (egalitarian versus hierarchical), Deciding (consensus versus top-down), Trusting (task-based versus relationship-based), Disagreeing (confrontational versus avoiding), Scheduling (linear versus flexible time) and Persuading (principles versus applications first). An absolute must read for anyone who works in cultural diverse teams (who isn’t nowadays…)!