WIB-Seattle Leadership Spotlight: Alexis Coffer

Alexis Coffer
Project Manager at RareCyte
WIB-Seattle eMAPS Chair

Alexis has had an interest in all things related to biology since a young age. “My mom is a nurse, so I always liked the idea of working in healthcare. I shadowed my mom at work, but I saw that nursing was not for me,” she said. “Once I started studying biology in high school, I realized that I really liked learning about DNA, genetics, and genomics, and that’s why I landed in molecular and cellular biology.” However, Alexis’s path wasn’t as straightforward as earning a 4-year degree and then working in biotech. She experienced a few stops and starts in her academic and early career due to a major illness in her early 20s. “I moved out to Seattle after I visited a friend and realized it was a science hub,” she said. “I found a job and then went back to school at the University of Washington. I was working in specimen management at a lab and then finished my degree.”

Alexis has realized that her nontraditional path is what ultimately led her to her current career in project management. “It took someone’s leap of faith in me to move forward. Someone recognized that I have a lot of skills that align well with project management. Without that, I would have stayed more traditionally with the science/bio background in the lab. I never would have thought of project management when I was earlier in my career,” she said. “Right now, at RareCyte, we’re working on a discovery-based in-utero program that is focused on reducing stillbirths by 50% in 5 years. It’s very exciting. We’re finding rare cells and sequencing them. It’s all super exploratory, and any off-the-wall idea can be part of it.”

For Alexis, being a woman is intrinsic to her career. “In biotech, most of it is heavy in the clinical trial space, and women's health is historically underfunded. Relatedly, there are a lot of issues with not taking women's voices seriously,” she said. “One of the biggest challenges I’ve experienced in my own trajectory is trying to advocate for myself and learn more by saying, ‘I don’t understand this,’ and then people brushing me off. I was lucky to find a mentor who encouraged me. But there are still times where I’ve been completely dismissed when it comes to process improvements, and been straight-up told no. Women in STEM need to be heard.”

Part of how Alexis advocates not only for her own voice to be heard but also to uplift other women’s voices is through her work with WIB-Seattle. “Meeting new people, especially local people in Seattle biotech, has been amazing. I’ve met so many more people in the last few months by going to events and joining the [steering committee],” she said. “WIB-Seattle is more in line with my age bracket and more focused on women in science than some other organizations in the area. I wanted to be in an organization that was especially focused on women local to Seattle, as seen in WIB-Seattle’s events with speaker panels.” When Alexis learned that a few positions were open on the WIB-Seattle [steering committee], she found herself most drawn to the Executive Mentoring (eMAPS) Chair position. “eMAPS seemed the most interesting and challenging, but I knew I could leverage my project management skills. Being eMAPS Chair was more in line with what I could and couldn’t do as a volunteer,” she said.

Part of what Alexis enjoys the most about volunteering is getting to know other women in bio in a smaller-scale setting. “My friend, Katie, was always talking about the WIB [steering committee] members. It’s a small group of people, so it’s a cool, manageable way to network. And it’s nice to see that it’s a very diverse group of people, especially in terms of how everyone got to where they are today,” she said. “I would tell new members to not be afraid to approach any stranger at our networking events. Everyone is so friendly and awesome. It can be scary, but all WIB members are so open and great to meet.”

We are so grateful that Alexis has joined us and will apply her wonderful project management skills to our eMAPS Committee! We are excited to have her and can’t wait to see what she brings to the team.

Submitted by Mariana Huben