Though there have been tiny hints of progress in recent years, women still constitute only 28% of the science and engineering workforce in the United States. That number shrinks to 5% when it comes to women of color employed in STEM.
Maya Martinez-Davis is trying to change that. As President of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in the US, she oversees the company’s complex portfolio of therapeutics, including some of GSK’s COVID treatments. Her career has spanned a wide variety of industries, roles, and locations, but the one constant has been her commitment to creating diverse, collaborative, and welcoming work environments.
Martinez-Davis is all about setting goals and working towards them, a far cry from the optics-over-action executive. In fact, under her leadership, GSK has committed to a 10-year, $10 million investment to increase the number of Black, Latinx and female students in Philadelphia who enter STEM professions.
Her leadership team also set ambitious and specific goals around diverse representation, aiming to increase the number of women and minorities in senior roles in the UK and US to 30% by the end of 2025.
I spoke to Martinez-Davis about her career path, some of the setbacks she’s overcome, what she’s most excited about and how she’s trying to make an impact in the historically white male-dominated field of pharma.
Maya Martinez-Davis.
Amy Shoenthal: Tell me about your career path and how you achieved this top ranking position at a major pharmaceutical company.
Maya Martinez-Davis: I'm originally from Spain. My grandmother was convinced I should go to college in the US so I did. When I finished, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So I did a little bit of everything from translating in court to working in a consulate. I took a job in retail, I even worked in television. Kodak was my first job in sales, which gave me exposure to working at a large organization. I think it's important to point to the roles that start shaping what you do next.
I started working at my first pharmaceutical company in the oncology sales group. I joined because they were willing to pay for my MBA, but doing something where I could feel the impact I was having really led me to my purpose.
I made a lot of lateral moves, which was great because even though I wasn’t on the traditional escalation to the top, I was always learning. In every job, I learned something different. This is a path that enables you to really build your capabilities. I worked all over the world too, in the US, back in Spain as a country manager, and then in Latin America. I also worked on different types of products, from treatment to prevention to vaccines.
All these different experiences led me to the role I have now at GSK. It was hard at the beginning, leading a large number of people across a lot of different therapeutic areas. Eventually I hit my stride and now we're really changing the culture, advancing the company and doing amazing work.
Shoenthal: You talk about making an impact and how the work you did at that first company helped you find your purpose. What's the biggest impact you think you've had at GSK?
Martinez-Davis: When I think of oncology specifically and the treatment of cancer, I consider where we were when I started. We were seeing survival rates of one to two years in areas like breast cancer, and now, 25 years later, I’ve seen how we have extended those survival rates and improved the quality of the life of those patients.
Maybe I'm not the scientist who is developing the drugs, but I feel that what I do certainly impacts that evolution. Consider the solutions we offered for COVID-19 with monoclonal antibodies. There's no better feeling than helping with disease treatment and prevention, not only in pandemics, but every day.
Shoenthal: Did you encounter any obstacles or setbacks on your journey?
Martinez-Davis: A lot of my roles have been very difficult, especially when you’re put in the position of making decisions about how to reduce our footprint or when we’ve had to stop the development of products. Sometimes you plan for a product to come to the market and you'll have six negative trials, one after the other, and it's just heartbreaking. So I definitely don't want to tell you it's all been rosy, but even from those difficult moments, you learn. You learn a lot from the good ones and even more from the bad ones.
Shoenthal: You're so passionate about driving diversity forward. I'm curious to know if you can talk about any of the efforts that GSK is making under your leadership.
Martinez-Davis: The thing I enjoy most about my job is being a people leader. If you can get engagement to the point where every single person, regardless of what role they have in the organization, feels like that what they're doing is contributing to the overall goal, then that's the magic, right? The results will come, but the biggest driver for everything is having people that are engaged. Tied to that is believing in the value of diversity.
I have always firmly believed that if you have diversity of gender, of experiences, of religion, everything, you will have better conversations with your teams and be able to make better decisions.
I think gender diversity is an area where we are extremely advanced. I'm a good example of that. Our CEO is a woman. We have a lot of women in leadership positions which is great, but let’s be clear: it's taken a lot of time and intent to achieve that balance.
One of the things we're working on now is increasing ethnically diverse representation among leadership. We externally committed to some targets around that. Some people believe in targets, some don’t. I like tracking towards a goal. It’s not necessarily about the exact number, it's about the willingness to try to improve.
Shoenthal: Those goals were to increase gender and ethnically diverse representation in senior roles in the UK and US by the end of 2025. Have you made any progress so far?
Martinez-Davis: The goal we've committed to is 30% by 2025. By the end of 2021, 27% of senior leaders in the US were diverse. And that was up from 23%. To get there, you're going to have to do a lot of different things and enlist the right partners. We're doing a lot of work with historically Black colleges and universities in specific areas like legal, business, and regulatory. There are so many different jobs you can do in a company like ours, and that’s why we need to attract talent early on.
It's not about forcing diversity. I still remember the days where I was the only Spanish speaking person in a room. We have a long way to go but I like to think about the progress we’ve made.
Shoenthal: Tell me about some of the work you’re doing to increase the number of Black, Latinx, and female students to work in STEM, specifically around the investment GSK made in Philadelphia in 2020. Have you seen those efforts start to pay off, and what is the future of that program?
Martinez-Davis: What we did in Philadelphia was a long-term commitment because these are not areas that can change overnight. That’s why we did a $10 million donation grant over 10 years. Some of these programs are centered around education funding. We launched the Philadelphia Stem Equity Collective whose goal is to increase the number of Black or Latinx women in STEM careers.
We've been doing one program for the last 36 years called “Science in the Summer.” It’s like a camp for children from second to sixth grade. We teach science based curriculums and partner with local community organizations. We’ve worked with 40 organizations across 27 states in the US and so far we’ve hosted over 30,000 children in this program. That’s how you really get them early.
Shoenthal: If this has been going on for 36 years, have you seen children who have attended the camp join the company?
Martinez-Davis: We haven't tracked closely enough to see what careers they end up in, but we are doing a lot to attract early interest in STEM. That’s another reason why we're working with universities. We have internships, partnerships, and a program that serves as a rotation of people throughout the organization when they start their career. They spend six months in each part of the organization so they can see different areas of the business and help them choose what to do next. We’re making sure that’s a diverse group as well.
Shoenthal: What are you most excited about right now?
Martinez-Davis: We spend so many years developing treatments and until they get there, it always seems very far away. Next year, we're possibly bringing three new innovative therapies into the market that will solve unmet medical needs, and it's going to help millions of people. You can feel that excitement and energy in the organization right now.
One of them is an RSV vaccine for adults. The other one is in the area of myelofibrosis, a type of cancer with no treatment for second line patients, and the third is for patients with chronic kidney disease that have anemia. A lot of drugs we tested in these areas haven't made it, and so far these programs are advancing. There are people waiting for these solutions. So it’s exciting.
Shoenthal: Has there been more scrutiny in your field because the pandemic has shed such a light on the process of drug development, therapy development, and vaccine development? Now that everyone thinks they're an epidemiologist, what is it like to work in this field at this moment?
Martinez-Davis: There are so many learnings from Covid. How we work with customers, how we work with health care professionals, and how our internal teams interact with customers. I think the interactions with the FDA have been extremely collaborative. We are all working towards the same goal and I'm hoping the collaboration that was really strengthened through this will continue.
This has also raised awareness around adult vaccinations. There’s solid data that shows the benefits around the people that have received their vaccines. I'm hoping that that will help because there was a lot of pushback from some groups on vaccination even before the pandemic. So I'm trying to focus on the positives that came from that.
Shoenthal: You sound awfully hopeful for someone who has worked in this industry for so long and experienced a lot of disappointment over seeing so many treatments in development never make it to the market. Where do you think optimism comes from?
Martinez-Davis: I am definitely a glass half full person. I am optimistic. I also see the impact that we’re having. I'm extremely fortunate to do something I like every day. Not everybody can say that. I try to bring that energy to my organization.
