This week’s blog is a guest blog from Lauren Laidlaw, our VP of Sales and Marketing.
Built on Community
When I was lucky enough to be chosen to join Safety Partners six years ago, I joined a company that had been in business for almost 25 years and was very well-established in the life science community. At least half of the time, when I would meet someone new and tell them I was part of the Safety Partners’ team, the person would smile and say, “Oh, Denise Aronson’s company. I know her, great person.”
Of course, just about everyone knows Denise, our founder, and CEO, for those first 25 years in the business she was a one-man business development tornado: tirelessly shook every hand, attended every networking event and trade show, and spent hours each day on LinkedIn. In time, our President and COO, Jennifer Reilly, and I got to join in and now we all share the fun/work of networking, business development, and nurturing those important relationships. Safety Partners was built one handshake at a time and one great employee at a time – there’s a very solid foundation there.
This Last Year
This last year has been so different. The shift from in-person events to online events and networking took some time to get used to. Some of it has been terrific, some of it hasn’t. Meeting new people via your laptop isn’t easy and I applaud all of you who were willing to spend time with me while I found my footing (and ring light) in this medium. As someone who needs a handshake to really feel ready to start a new conversation, the online way of doing things had me feeling clumsy and awkward.
I am so thankful for the great relationships I have with people all over the life science ecosystem and for being able to keep our connection going throughout the long stretch of isolation. It meant a lot to be able to have meaningful conversations with people across my network who know me well and video wasn’t a hindrance.
For some, friendships were well-established before the pandemic began. For others, some great friendships have been built as we helped each other figure out how to be our best redirecting all the energy we usually spent at networking events. Some of us were used to being out at least three nights per week for events.
Gratitude
Now that we are starting to get back out in the world, I need to take pause and be thankful for the groups we work with day in and day out that somehow kept things going, groups like our monthly networking groups, WEST, NSTC, I2SL, MassBio, BisNow, BioXchange, HubCures/MALSI, and many others.
Safety Partners continues to embrace the philosophy of continuing to build our company one handshake at a time and one great employee at a time, and we are so thankful that we had our wonderful community to lean on this past year.