Building an equitable and wholly-inclusive innovation ecosystem

By BioSTL for the St. Louis American | August 2021

For more than a decade, BioSTL has been working to address the inequities in bioscience and innovation in the St. Louis region, and the work has only progressed as the racial uprising across the country in 2019 demanded a renewed effort to address systems of inequities.

BioSTL began building a holistic ecosystem approach starting in 2008, bringing together 81 leaders and practitioners from organizations throughout the community with a goal to increase diversity in the biosciences. Over the years, the non-profit dedicated to building St. Louis’ innovation economy, has continued to learn, build partnerships, and further build on its mission of economic growth in a way that increases equity and reduces economic disparities with new trainings and supports. 

For the entire ecosystem to thrive, there must be a systems approach supporting youth and families, as today’s youth will be tomorrow’s innovators. And, for the entire bioscience and innovation ecosystem to be wholly-inclusive and provide an opportunity for all to succeed, BioSTL continues to provide new support through its ecosystem initiatives:

• BioSTL Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy works to empower underrepresented talent throughout the entrepreneur lifecycle. A key pillar of support is training, providing business concepts, skills development and personalized advising to entrepreneurs to further develop and scale their business. As a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Heartland Challenge grantee, BioSTL has funding to launch a new training program to help address the systemic challenges entrepreneurs face. The new training program will focus on providing mentorship, training, and access to capital for Black, Latinx, women, and foreign-born small business owners and entrepreneurs with early-stage businesses focused on health and wellness, plant and ag science, or food and nutrition. BioSTL will welcome a local minority serial entrepreneur, who will develop and launch this new training program.

“BioSTL has successfully supported bioscience founders for decades, but there is a glaring gap in the amount of minority founders supported,” said BioSTL Program Manager Lindsey Harrison. “I am excited to launch a new program that will specifically support underrepresented entrepreneurs in STEM. We will also help meet one of the largest challenges facing minority-led startups and provide access to capital to support their business development.”

• STEMSTL is a collaborative consortium committed to equitable access to high-quality STEM learning and employment opportunities for all learners in the St. Louis Metro region. To help reach its mission to collectively develop and deploy quality systems-level changes that will advance STEM learning and career opportunities, in July 2021, STEMSTL launched Blueprint4STEM. It is a free, easy-to-use search tool that connects St. Louis area families to out-of-school-time STEM learning opportunities for St. Louis PreK-12 students. With this valuable tool, navigating the world of extracurricular STEM learning just got easier for families to locate specific STEM programs that are the perfect fit for their kids. The portal is available at blueprint4.com/stem.

“By aggregating the STEM programs in one database, we identify STEM gaps that exist throughout the region,” said Kate Polokonis, Interim Executive Director, STEMSTL. “Armed with this information, STEMSTL, as the ecosystem backbone, is positioned to help drive funding and partnerships that will eliminate gaps in informal STEM learning, in an effort to build a system in which all students, regardless of race, geography, or socio-economic status have access to high-quality extracurricular STEM programs.”

• BioSTL’s Workforce Strategy is launching the Bioscience Workforce Collaborative to transform St. Louis’ talent into a strength of the region for the bioscience ecosystem. The Workforce Collaborative will focus on four initiatives:
  • Bioscience Skills Match Framework Investment
  • Career Fund
  • Skills-based Hiring Framework
  • Workforce Policy Advocacy Network

“Understanding that diverse and inclusive teams are critical to the future of the bioscience sector, BioSTL is building a bioscience workforce collaborative to foster equitable talent development and deployment efforts through partnerships between academic and training institutions, community organizations, and industry employers,” said Justin Raymundo, Manager of Regional Workforce Strategy, BioSTL. “Through these multi-stakeholder partnerships, community leaders will help build critical infrastructure for an industry-responsive and industry-accountable workforce development platform.”

• St. Louis Equity in Entrepreneurship Collective is a cross-sector regional collaborative supporting advocacy, equitable capacity building, and access to resources to improve the journey of entrepreneurship for women and Black and Brown entrepreneurs. The Collective has conducted community engagement of focus groups and 1:1 conversations to guide the development of a new initiative that will focus on removal of structural barriers, increased access, and creating new pathways through practices and policies designed to remove systemic factors causing inequities in the number of new businesses starts, business ownership, and economic outcomes in St. Louis.

BioSTL continues to lead this work knowing that there is no real systems change without engaged community partners and continued learning and development. We all must be open and willing to move past what was and what is and embrace change – creating an ecosystem where all have the opportunity to learn, innovate, and succeed.