Six questions for Russ Read

BT Catalyst, July-August, 2005

R.H. (Russ) Read is executive director of the National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce, a partnership of five U.S. community colleges working to develop curriculum and training models for biotechnology workers nationwide. Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem is the lead institution for the national workforce center and will also focus on Southeast biotechnology research and development. Read also has served as president and CEO of Kucera Pharmaceutical Co. in Durham and founder of Hope Pharma Consulting. In this interview, Read discusses his duties with the national work force center and his commitment to developing biotechnology in North Carolina.

Why did you move from an entrepreneurial role of developing a private company (Kucera) to a policy position with a broader mission--national workforce training?

In a nut shell, training and the work force have been a large part of my career. On the academic side, two of my graduate degrees are in the educational area. I really wanted to stay in the Piedmont Triad area; we had worked hard during the Kucera years here to help with the community revitalization through the building of biotechnology. I have the corporate and small research and development company perspective. Most companies in biotechnology in university research parks are local spin-offs, and they need exactly the type of trained workforce that our colleges within this program are training. It's really a business model although we are in an academic setting.

What are the work force center's early accomplishments?

The National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce is open for business. We have a strategic plan and meet frequently with our participating colleges, which we call the Centers of Excellence and Expertise. They are busily carrying out their respective mandates, while the Center becomes more of a catalyst to ensure all the necessary tools are in place to help get "product" to our "customers," who are any community college or academic partner or agency that needs the models, curriculum or standards for biotechnology training implementation. We are also developing ties with existing groups such as Bio-Link who have been doing this kind of work for many years. We are a cooperative and co-mingling group with one desire: to build a strong U.S. biotechnology work force.

Each of the five partner community colleges focuses on a specific area of biotechnology training. What will Forsyth Tech be responsible for?

Forsyth Tech will emphasize training of students to be prepared for research and development positions. In the Triad, we have great universities including Wake Forest, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina A&T State University and Salem College. All these are purveyors of four-year biology or life science degrees, but very specialized hands-on technicians are what Forsyth Tech trains. Our feedback has been that when our students are placed they generally excel because they can do those lab procedures for the research and development scientists.

How do you balance working with the other member colleges in achieving national employment goals while maintaining North Carolina's competitiveness with the likes of California and Washington state?

We want to maintain the U.S. competitive edge in biotechnology overall. California and Washington have nothing to fear from North Carolina and vice versa, because we are geographically a long ways away. Our work force tends to want to get jobs where home is so the customer is someone who calls North Carolina or California or Washington home and needs to be trained or retrained. It's in our best interest to share and learn from each other when it comes to what we do.

How do the Biotechnology Center's BioWork program, the Community College System's BioNetwork initiative and the national work force center fit together, and is there room for overlap?

I work closely with Susan Seymour and her group at the community colleges. I have only recently had an opportunity to discover what a gifted and dynamic person she is, as I saw her in action at a recent symposium in Philadelphia where our team co-presented. I also work with the Biotechnology Center's Kathleen Kennedy. Kathleen (vice president of the Education and Training Program) and her team are really diligent. I am now becoming familiar with some of her products like work force criteria and job descriptions for biotechnology workers. These are excellent initiatives. Our group is cooperative. We learn from each other. We have a national perspective but we all have regional differences, and we celebrate these by exchanging ideas. But competitiveness is important at the state level because it strengthens what we do. I am a North Carolinian, but I am also empowered to be an executive director with a national mandate. I balance my perspective and approach, hopefully to the betterment of all parties.

What will define the national work force center as a success for you?

I would define success in the short term as getting our objectives met within the time period that our federal grant runs (two years). That would mean our Web site would be a great tool for placing our product, and various "customers" previously described would be able to access our experiences and tools. Our short-term success will be back-end loaded; as the work comes in from the regional centers it will be posted and disseminated. But at the regional sites this is already well under way. The sites do hands-on training in their specialties. Success over the long term would be harnessing the synergies (best practices) that we have learned through this model of regional cooperation. A further and desired success would be becoming a permanent structure in one shape or another and being really excellent at the niche we will in terms of biotechnology work force needs for the many groups across the nation who would really benefit from this type of structure.