On August 6, 2002, Women in Biotechnology held its inaugural meeting at the Museum of Science in Boston, simultaneous with the 2002 Drug Discovery Technology conference. The event theme, "Taking Leading-Edge Products to Market," featured a panel of speakers including Mary Ann Liebert, president of Mary Ann Liebert Inc. Publishers, who gave concrete examples on how to get media attention; Lauren M. Linton, Ph.D., vice president of applications, marketing and research & development, Applied Biosystems, who addressed academic collaboration from science to industry; and Donna-Marie Seyfried, vice president of business development for Digene Corporation, who spoke on how to build awareness of and customer acceptance for novel molecular markers.

Women in Biotechnology is a global coalition of women looking for an informal setting to exchange ideas. The group was established to provide educational content, social interaction and a networking forum for women working in and with biotechnology firms. The second meeting was held on Wednesday, October 16, 2002 at the Hyatt Regency, Baltimore, MD, to coincide with the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, and featured bioethicist Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., who spoke about the ethical implications of mass genetic testing.

"The topics covered in our first meeting represent some of the real world issues that we are trying to address", said Kathleen Bernstein, co-founder of Seidler Bernstein Inc. (Cambridge, MA); who along with Lena Chow, president and founder of Lena Chow Euro RSCG (Palo Alto, CA); and Kathleen F. Dunn, principal, KF Dunn & Associates, Inc. (New Castle, DE) founded Women in Biotechnology.

"We were delighted with the turn-out at our first meeting. We were expecting 20-25 people and 67 people attended. This confirmed for us that we were responding to a need," said Dunn. "It's information like the type we'll be discussing in this interview that we would like to pass on to women in the industry through our programs while also providing a mentoring opportunity whereby people in the industry who have had more experience are able to share their knowledge with others."