A day in the life: Erin Chia

This International Women’s Day, we bring you a series of interviews that provide a glimpse into the working lives of women working in the biotechnology industry. Here, we speak to Erin Chia (left), Senior Director of business development at Bio-Rad (CA, USA). With a background in biomedical engineering and immunotherapy, Chia initially joined a digital PCR start up, QuantaLife. Working through the ranks after its acquisition by Bio-Rad, Erin lead an R&D group, before making the leap to the business side of the company.

Read on to find out more about Chia’s career, the unexpected talents that she has discovered and the key advice that has helped guide her decision making along the way.

What does a typical working day look like for you?

Because my role is to drive growth and value for Bio-Rad via inorganic opportunities, I spend a lot of time building relationships with other companies, academics, and investors. These conversations are the genesis of business cases and deal structures that I build in partnership with colleagues across Bio-Rad to meet their strategic needs. Examples include making investments in early-stage companies, licensing key intellectual property to extend Bio-Rad’s product lines, and bringing new entities under Bio-Rad’s umbrella through acquisition.

Though I’m no longer working at the lab bench, my PhD and scientific training are used daily in conversations with entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers. On the business side, I spend time negotiating deal terms, building financial models, and presenting to executives. The open-ended nature of my role is challenging but ultimately what motivates me to come to work each day. I love the breadth of science and business topics that come across my desk.

Who is your biggest role model and why do they inspire you?

While I’ve been fortunate to work with many inspiring people, Annette Tumolo made an immediate impact on me when the QuantaLife team was welcomed into Bio-Rad. As the first general manager of the Digital Biology Group and through her tenure as President of the larger Life Science Group at Bio-Rad, her leadership always centered around people. She has an amazing ability to connect with coworkers, whether 1:1 or speaking to a large group. While leading Bio-Rad’s life science business through substantial growth in new and established markets, she never took her focus off of employees, championing initiatives for cultural change, parental leave, and diversity and inclusion.

Annette brings her whole self to her leadership style and applied her experience in community organizing to improve the lives of so many Bio-Rad employees. Annette taught me the importance of strong relationships between employees and management and the tremendous results that an organization can achieve when employees feel valued and challenged.

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What is the best part about your job?

One of my favorite things about my role in business development is interacting with such a large swath of the Bio-Rad team. I work with colleagues in marketing, R&D, finance, legal, supply chain, our sales team, and many other functions. I enjoy building cross-functional deal teams and forging long-lasting relationships across Bio-Rad. Understanding the perspectives of my coworkers who hail from different parts of the organization gives me a more comprehensive view of Bio-Rad’s needs as well as its strengths.

I also manage my own team and find it rewarding to recruit and develop talented new employees. Seeing their growth and impact on the organization as well as the diverse and creative perspectives they bring to deals is another great part of my job.

What is the strangest thing that has happened to you while working?

When you are part of a startup team, you wear so many hats. I loved being able to work on many aspects of our QuantaLife platform, from emulsion chemistry to fluidics to hardware testing. One of my more unconventional roles was the unofficial QuantaLife hand model. Apparently out of a company of engineers and scientists, my nails were deemed the most camera ready and as a result, were featured on many of our product brochures for the original QuantaLife digital PCR system.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

A piece of advice that I find particularly useful is, “Never be so sure of what you want, that you wouldn’t take something better.”  This mantra has served me well in many negotiations, and I think it applies equally to navigating a career path.  It’s easy to be very focused on your current plan and forget that sometimes the best opportunities are unexpected.

My younger scientist self did not imagine present-day Erin in a business development role leading deals. When I reflect on the key points of transition in my career thus far, many were opportunities I almost overlooked at the time. I mentor local high school students, and I often advise them to focus on the best next step rather than trying to plan out their entire careers. Those unexpected career pivots are often the most exciting and rewarding parts of professional life.