WIB-Seattle Leadership Spotlight: Jane Gross

Jane Gross
WIB-Seattle Executive Women In Bio (EWIB) Chair

Jane Gross currently serves on the Boards of Directors for two publicly traded companies, aTyr Pharma and BriaCell Therapeutics, and previously was the Chief Scientific Officer at Aptevo Therapeutics and the Vice President of Research and Development at Emergent BioSolutions. In the past few years, she has also been on the board of the Lupus Foundation of America and Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association (now Life Science Washington). Jane is currently WIB-Seattle’s Executive Women In Bio (EWIB) Chair. 

Jane’s lifelong love of science took off when she was in high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she frequently came into contact with teachers who were connected to the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her bachelor’s in physiology from the University of California, Davis, and then worked in biotech back in the Bay Area, where she found her passion for immunology. “I just happened into a research group at Becton Dickinson that made monoclonal antibodies and met Lewis Lanier, who was an immunologist,” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow, I love this, but if I want to do this, I want to do it well.’ So I got my PhD. My thesis advisor was James Allison, who developed immunotherapy for cancer and later went on to win a Nobel Prize.” From there, Jane continued with postdoctoral work at the University of Washington with Roger Perlmutter before starting her career in Seattle’s biotech scene at ZymoGenetics.

“I didn’t want to be an academic scientist who was writing grants,” Jane said. “I stumbled into ZymoGenetics, and that was it. It was a great place to work. People always ask me if I have regrets, and I never regretted immunology. I love it. I feel so incredibly lucky.” Jane worked at ZymoGenetics for 15 years before continuing her career at a variety of companies, where her research ranged from autoimmune diseases, like Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, to developing biospecifics and proteins that redirect patients’ immune systems to fight cancer. She worked her way up to Chief Scientific Officer at Aptevo Therapeutics before retiring in 2021.

Throughout her career, Jane has seen how difficult it is for women to come back to their careers if they take a few years off for young children. “It is shocking today that there is still such a pay inequality. I read recently that women who have kids and take five to seven years off, then come back to work—their payscale is much lower than if a man had taken the same time off,” she said. “Women and the development of women have been big motivations for joining WIB. Organizations like WIB really empower women and develop their voice to empower themselves.”

As Jane started winding down her research career but ramping up her involvement in boards and professional organizations, she completed WIB’s Boardroom Ready program. “The Boardroom Ready program is a huge asset and really important. It has had a huge impact on placing women on boards. It’s gotten very selective,” she said. Jane’s time with the Boardroom Ready program not only prepared her to hold a seat on a board of directors but also gave her a fresh perspective on how to affect change. “Men are important in your career, but you need everybody as your advocate. One of the things that became apparent in the Boardroom Ready program is that women don’t take risks on other women, but men do,” she said. “Women have to train themselves to be self-promoting and advocate for others. It’s a cultural issue. I think women need to be part of the solution. It’s important to take risks on women, and women need to advocate for themselves. That’s something that we need to culturally change now.”

After completing the Boardroom Ready program, Jane took her outlook on cultural change and started WIB-Seattle’s Executive Women In Bio (EWIB) program, serving as Co-Chair alongside Cindy Jacobs. “One of the reasons that I wanted to join the WIB-Seattle board was for professional reasons, because you find people similar to you in your career. WIB-Seattle has done an amazing job of growing and is one of the fastest-growing chapters,” she said. “I think WIB does a really good job in developing and providing a space for a specific set of careers, but their initial focus was on women earlier in their careers. Clearly, things are changing. I’ve seen the biggest shift in the last two years. National has taken on a great goal of putting EWIB programs into each chapter and now developing content/programming.”

Jane’s work as the EWIB Chair has helped to develop invaluable networking opportunities for women who are in VP and C-suite roles in the Seattle life sciences community. Even though there are challenges that come with developing programming and content for women across the spectrum of career stages, with experience comes wisdom. Jane shared her advice for women who are in the earlier stages of their careers: “You may not know what you want to do in your career, but that’s not a problem. It’s about being open to what interests you,” she said. “Take a job somewhere, and even if it’s not exactly what you want to do, be open to what you can do. Try new things and take more risks.”

We have been so fortunate to have had Jane as our steadfast, fearless leader of EWIB for the last few years! Her work with executive women has expanded WIB-Seattle’s reach in the life sciences community and connected women not only with valuable resources but also with each other. Thank you, Jane, for everything you do for WIB-Seattle!

Submitted by Mariana Huben