The pursuing is an extended mentation of the nonfiction that appears successful our February 2023 Sourcebook issue.
Ongoing efforts to marque metro Richmond a locus for the manufacturing of indispensable medicines got a $111 cardinal boost successful precocious 2022, acknowledgment to the Alliance for Building Better Medicine. The funding, a operation of national grants, authorities wealth and section donations, volition payment manufacturing plants successful Petersburg and laboratories successful Chesterfield County and Richmond and volition heighten employment opportunities.
About three-quarters of drugs utilized successful the United States are made overseas, mostly successful China and India. The enactment successful metro Richmond is portion of a nationalist effort to boost home pharmaceutical production.
An array of interests has aligned successful the effort to bring cause manufacturing and probe to the area, organized nether the banner of the Alliance for Building Better Medicine. In November, the confederation named its archetypal imperishable CEO, Joy Marie Polefrone.
She is moving with confederation affiliates that see Richmond-based Phlow Corp., which focuses connected indispensable pharmaceuticals; the nonprofit Civica Inc., which volition manufacture generic drugs successful Petersburg; and AMPAC Fine Chemicals, which produces ingredients for pharmaceuticals astatine its works successful Petersburg. Other participants see the Medicines for All Institute astatine the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Engineering, the cities of Petersburg and Richmond, Walmart, United States Pharmacopeia, Greater Richmond Partnership, Activation Capital, The Community College Workforce Alliance, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Virginia’s Gateway Region, and the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing.
The task besides entails caller laboratories successful Chesterfield County and Richmond. Training for the jobs needed to execute the enactment volition beryllium provided done schools including Virginia State University and Virginia Commonwealth University.
The confederation has its origins successful an effort to signifier a determination strategy that utilized existing assets to make precocious pharmaceutical manufacturing. It received $52.9 cardinal successful national wealth done a Build Back Better Regional Challenge successful September 2022, 1 of 21 coalitions crossed the federation to person wealth done the challenge. The task besides earned $13.6 cardinal from section organizations and $44.6 cardinal from the commonwealth.
Polefrone succeeded the interim enforcement director, Jeff Gallagher. She is a Virginia Beach autochthonal and earned a bachelor’s grade successful chemistry astatine James Madison University and a doctorate successful chemistry from the University of Virginia. She served arsenic a manager of wellness innovations for the Da Vinci Center astatine VCU and worked successful entrepreneurship and wellness innovations for VCU Health and VCU. She besides served arsenic manager for the Focused Ultrasound Foundation successful Charlottesville and is simply a yoga enthusiast and certified yoga teacher.
We caught up with Polefrone for a treatment of her nonrecreational travel successful chemistry, the intersection of enactment and yoga, and the challenges and expectations for the confederation and its work.
Richmond magazine: You assumed duties successful mid-November 2022. How are you familiarizing yourself with the confederation and its stakeholders?
Joy Polefrone: I’m precise caller to the role, but I’ve been pursuing the enactment of the confederation for the amended portion of a year, conscionable truly learning what it is. I’m trying to recognize the industry, due to the fact that it’s not my superior background; I’m a chemist by training, but I was a bioanalytical chemist. Relevant, but a antithetic field. So, I’m funny successful what happens successful the assemblage and however medicines link to that, certainly. When I came connected committee there, the enactment was astatine a captious time, and we had conscionable won the backing to beryllium capable to commencement to bash the enactment to physique up the organization, and to found what an confederation looks similar and what a conjugation successful an manufacture abstraction similar precocious pharmaceutical manufacturing needs to be.
RM: What drew you to chemistry? Was it a applicable reason, oregon more of a passion?
Polefrone: I was truly funny successful subject from a young age, but I deliberation it was much that I liked solving problems. … I was pre-med erstwhile I went to college, I started retired arsenic a biology major; I’d ever wanted to beryllium a pediatrician. And past when I was successful my biology classes freshman year, I truly didn’t bask them. It was a batch of memorization; it conscionable didn’t resonate with me. And my chemistry classes were truly hard, but I liked them. And I recovered myself moving hard to recognize chemistry, and to bash good successful it, and past being precise palmy and doing well. Then erstwhile I got into the laboratory setting, it was fun. I liked moving with my hands, it was precise methodical, and analytical chemistry successful peculiar made truthful overmuch consciousness to me; it was precise structured.
RM: What benignant of improvement is planned for the laboratory spaces successful Richmond and Chesterfield?
Polefrone: One is an innovation structure, and that’s successful Richmond successful VA Bio+Tech Park, to make space, the availability for probe and innovation to beryllium done. Ideally, startups moving successful those spaces are connected to Medicines for All. After aboriginal innovations and ideas travel to beryllium [in the Richmond facility], they person to standard up to beryllium capable to beryllium manufactured astatine larger volumes oregon larger amounts, and the standard of improvement halfway is successful Chesterfield County.
RM: This task requires a well-trained workforce. How are workers being prepared?
Polefrone: There’s rather a spot of enactment successful the workforce space. And that is truly a collaboration betwixt Virginia State University and VCU, arsenic good arsenic Brightpoint and Reynolds assemblage colleges, successful bid to bring unneurotic the capableness sets needed to make the workforce. There’s besides an inaugural with agrarian assemblage colleges and section colleges that are successful much agrarian areas to effort to make a pipeline of susceptible and well-trained individuals who are funny successful moving successful this manufacture to person an accidental to physique the vocation stages that they mightiness request to beryllium a technician and successful precocious pharmaceutical manufacturing, which is simply a caller certificate program.
RM: What other is successful the works for the alliance?
Polefrone: We’re besides moving connected processing a proviso chain, imagining what the proviso concatenation needs to look similar for this manufacture to beryllium palmy successful this region. And that’s a task that’s precise overmuch quadrate successful the enactment of my team.
RM: What’s the enactment of your team?
Polefrone: At this point, I’m the full-time employee, but past I person an idiosyncratic who’s moving connected grants administration, and I’m successful the process of looking for resources successful the abstraction of task and programme management. So, erstwhile I deliberation astir wherever my absorption is successful the adjacent year, it’s centered connected operational execution. I emotion the aboriginal signifier of a startup, and that’s truly what we are. We’re establishing what our processes are going to beryllium for however we’re going to physique collaboration among each the antithetic conjugation members, what are the antithetic ways we’re going to travel unneurotic connected a quarterly oregon biannual oregon yearly ground successful bid to guarantee that we’re fostering that constituent of collaboration and connectivity that we were created from.
RM: You’re a yoga instructor. Where's the intersection for you of yoga successful your idiosyncratic and nonrecreational lives? What interaction does that person connected however you unrecorded your life?
Polefrone: It’s astatine the halfway of my life. I deliberation it benignant of starts being raised successful a Catholic family. And truthful religion was a precise important portion of my upbringing. But arsenic I navigated my tweens and my teens, and my parents divorced during that play of time, I didn’t find thing that felt similar it connected to maine astatine that energetic and spiritual level until I started practicing yoga. And erstwhile I started practicing it, it was like, "Oh, this feels similar magic, and this feels similar the mode it felt to sing successful a religion afloat of radical erstwhile I was a kid successful Catholic school."
Yoga is not a religion, it’s precise overmuch a philosophy. What it teaches is to beryllium benignant and to beryllium open. And those are astatine the halfway of being a bully collaborator and a large leader. Certainly, if we were to work a publication connected servant leadership, it would astir apt reflector a batch of the principles that are inherent successful the doctrine of yoga and teaching that, for maine is truly important.
When I’ve done enactment improvement with people, and been a manager of others, what I’ve noticed is that self-awareness and affectional quality are immoderate of the astir important characteristics to being oregon becoming a large person of different people. And truthful I’ve not recovered a amended instrumentality than self-reflection oregon yoga oregon being successful the woods, immoderate of these things that are successful the doctrine of yoga, for enactment development. My anticipation is that by relation modeling immoderate of these things that I learned, I mightiness assistance america physique an adjacent greater conjugation of leaders to lick this innovation ecosystem.
RM: How did you extremity up successful Richmond?
Polefrone: I chose Richmond because of its proximity to family, and the information that I was acceptable to put down roots, but I wasn’t definite what that would look like. And it seems similar a bully operation of each of the antithetic cities I’ve lived in; the h2o moving done the mediate of the city, entree to trails, adjacent to the water and adjacent to the mountains. And erstwhile I came to larn astir the Da Vinci Center for Innovation, I was truly excited. It was that intersection of, the concern and the merchandise absorption broadside of things, the subject and the engineering, and the arts. And erstwhile I deliberation astir the champion teams that I was on, they had that benignant of operation of capableness sets.
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