Sue Windham-Bannister, Change Agent in a Pinstripe Suit
Kudos to BioscienceLA Board Chair Sue Windham-Bannister! We at BioscienceLA are extremely fortunate to have you at the helm.
If you’re in the entrepreneurial world, you're constantly rubbing up against some crucial element of the innovation ecosystem around you. Whether you’re a corporate innovator whose cutting-edge moves tug against your corporate stakeholder’s goals and expectations, or whether you’re an independent scientist trying to carry your discoveries forward to impact, you’re surrounded by and shaped by the people, processes, and interwoven systems around you. And if you're an African-American woman, you are forging a path that sometimes has especially challenging hurdles.
Sue Windham-Bannister has understood this in her bones for decades as a policy researcher, a business strategy consultant, and a maker of ecosystems. Today she’s created herself into a sharp scalpel for strategic business insight in the life sciences.
Origin Story
A self-described activist of the 60s, Sue Windham-Bannister started her adult life at Wellesley College where she developed the intention for an impactful career in policy. Although she entered Wellesley intending to become a journalist, an anthropology course in her Sophomore year solidified her interest in groups (markets) and how groups (markets) behave. Journalism went by the wayside, although her love of writing has come in handy throughout her career.
Following graduation from college, Sue worked at a community-based health center for several years, and then entered a doctoral program at the Florence Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. As part of her study at Heller she was able to take classes and gain experiences from all around the Boston/Cambridge area. So, in addition to her Heller classes on policy analysis, regulatory science, statistics and econometrics, Sue studied health economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, and community planning and business development at MIT.
Armed with the technical skills to make sense of how policy ultimately affects market behavior, Sue was hired by the global policy think tank Abt Associates Inc. as a health care researcher and policy analyst evaluating the impact of several new federal programs within DHEW (now DHHS). This work strengthened her skills in market research, analysis and strategy, and working with big data sets. She also developed some new muscles in group facilitation. Her work at Abt made it clear that the formulation and ultimate impact of policy takes a long time and can be sidetracked by a wide variety of interests and obstacles. Sue realized that she wanted to be closer to the forces that ultimately determine impact, and this meant working with the world of business.
Here’s why: In Sue’s view, business is a key arbiter of what products and services are developed for, and ultimately reach, the market, and ultimately, people. And perhaps nowhere is this more important than in healthcare and life sciences, where lack of access and lack of the “right” products and services directly impacts quality of life. To test her belief, Sue hung out a shingle as a business strategy consultant, using her understanding of markets to help companies figure out what products and services are needed by different segments of the market, and her training in policy and regulatory science to help companies navigate a pathway to the market in the highly regulated life sciences industry.
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