Who’s Leading Life Science in Baltimore?
By Sam Hopkins | October 18, 2023
| BioBuzz has been connecting the life science workforce since 2009. We’ve built an expansive community in the Mid-Atlantic with a national readership that spans from Massachusettes to Florida, and New York to California. For our next chapter, we’re building a proprietary talent logistics model to help employers source and hire life science talent. Learn more. |
Success is defined by the ability to zoom in and zoom out at the right time. We know this so well that we prefer satellite data over street signs to locate ourselves in relation to where we want to go. So, having spent the past several years within life science research institutions and early-stage companies in Baltimore, I wanted to take a look from above at who is doing what to coordinate activity in Charm City.
More than anything–and this is the billion-ish dollar question–can anyone draw a direct line from initiative A or B to some bundle of outcomes? Or is it annual panel platitudes and thought leadership photo ops without action in between? To stay motivated, we need to be able to see what we are building in real-time, from the foundation to full operations–that goes for both physical construction and community connections.
Baltimore Together is an initiative of the Baltimore Development Corporation that focuses on Baltimore City and kicked off with a launch event that moved the project from research-driven report and plan to activity, with a special effort to incorporate BIPOC businesses that historically have received less investment than counterparts of a similar technology readiness level.
The platform includes multiple pillars that take the life science industry into a broader picture of what life is like and can be in Baltimore, for entrepreneurs and their companies, their families, and their communities. The built environment is a major component because Baltimore does not have enough wet lab space to house the number of companies that could emerge from local institutions.
BDC’s advisory board of life science professionals and its community of leaders from the public, private, and social sectors are advancing and integrating actionable plans for the construction of facilities to make commercialization possible. On October 30 of this year, Baltimore Together will convene again to kick off its second series of events, with those continuing November 1-3.
On November 2 at City Garage, BioBuzz will host a panel titled Serving the Needs of an Untapped Workforce. Panelists will talk about creating opportunities through real-world training, mentorship, and tools to navigate careers. BioBuzz will also challenge panelists to point to specific progress and ideas for how the audience can create new realities and even jobs.
BMoreBio is a two-year initiative to host more than 100 events, panels, and summits as well as build a community portal to boost information access. Through BMoreBio, media coverage is increased, and democratized access to information is the goal. BmoreBio hits on a simple but elusive challenge: “Baltimore just needs the right plan.” BioBuzz is heavily involved with this initiative, as well.
A 38-member consortium led by the Greater Baltimore Committee is pushing to be recognized as one of twenty tech hubs nationally. It’s an impressive group, with a constellation of stakeholders who truly have the power to change how the area looks, enhance its reputation, and clarify what opportunity feels like. Baltimore’s Tech Hub bid was announced at Morgan State University in the city’s northeast, which brings me to an important point–we need to be able to see progress.
Baltimoreans often talk about not being “too D.C.” Much respect to our friends down 295, and I’m a former Congressional intern myself, but people in Charm City proudly describe hour-long conversations with strangers where no one asked anyone else where they work. Maybe we should, though, and put the puzzle pieces together a little less randomly.
Perhaps being more intentional about connecting the strands of our intertwining academic and professional career paths–and the causes we care about–is the only way to weave a steady fabric that goes beyond cocktail hours.
Morgan State University has, for years now, been a place to gawk at construction cranes–drive up Hillen Road and you just know this is a place literally on the rise. What is the human equivalent of that sort of visible construction? Who are we building with, and what are we building? Who are we psyched to see at the next Upsurge Equitech Tuesday? Who can we offer to buy a coffee so we can talk excitedly and write down notes as they verbally spam us with names of friends and colleagues who would love to hear our thoughts? How do we see that fabric growing?
BioBuzz is working to formalize that activity without killing the vibe, in the shape of a talent marketplace that matches qualitative data about who we are as individuals so that companies know we exist. That mutual knowledge can help keep us all around, closing information gaps that many of us are still struggling to stitch up after COVID kept us inside for so long.
Onstage or online, building Baltimore’s future as a life science hub depends on continued energy and a flow of crazy ideas that can become thought-through plans over time. I recently read an expert grant writer in the non-profit space talking about empathy being the key to achieving funding, and I have to think the same is true for progress in life science enterprise development, too. We’re all in this because we care, because we are pretty smart, and because we want to build something that helps the world.
If you have ideas for how to keep momentum going between the big events and major proposal cycles, let us know. Say “Hi!,” join our Board of Buzz, Ambassadors of Buzz, or Industry Advisory Board. These are majorly motivated people who take BioBuzz frameworks and connections and run with their own ideas based on the needs they know well. Better yet, join us at our upcoming BMoreBio Happy Hour on Thursday, November 2–right after the Baltimore Together Summit Breakout Session!
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Sam Hopkins has spent the past decade in the Baltimore area life-science and healthcare ecosystem, including roles at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, the U.S. Army, and early-stage companies. He spent the previous decade as a journalist, which saw him cover everything from clean energy conferences in Morocco, to Soviet-era Estonian rock’n’roll, to trailblazing CEOs in Timonium. Sam is an avid athlete and coach, and he lives with his wife and two sons in Baltimore’s Oakenshawe neighborhood. You can often find him around town spinning records as DJ Balagan, or performing in musical groups Sink and South of Boundary.
