Event Recap: Lost at Scale Investor Roundtable
22 April 2026 | Co-hosted with Covington | Efficiency Club
From data to action in Zürich
On 22 April, Invest in Equity convened a group of life science investors at the Efficiency Club in Zürich for our first Swiss investor breakfast, hosted in partnership with Covington. The morning centred on a question that sits at the heart of what we do: why does the gender gap in biotech widen as companies scale, and what role do investors play in shaping that outcome?
Following a data-led scene-setting session facilitated by Winsome Cheung of Covington, the group worked through a set of discussion questions together, allowing for a depth and candour of conversation that larger, more structured events rarely produce. At the close of the morning, every person in the room was asked to name one thing they would do differently as a result of the discussion.
As with all our investor roundtables, the conversation was held under Chatham House Rule. What follows is a summary of the key themes and takeaways that emerged.
Core themes and insights
1. Sponsorship is the most powerful lever within reach
Sponsorship emerged as the central thread of the morning, and the one that generated the most concrete commitment to action. The room drew a consistent distinction between mentorship and sponsorship: mentors offer guidance, but sponsors open doors. They are the people who speak for you in rooms you are not in, and who put their own reputations behind your progression.
What surfaced most strongly was the importance of intentionality. Sponsorship does not happen by accident, and it does not stop being necessary once someone reaches a senior level. A common assumption challenged in the discussion was that senior women no longer need sponsorship. In practice, ongoing sponsorship remains essential for continued progression at every stage of a career.
The actions that emerged were direct: identify the individuals, both inside and outside your organisation, who can sponsor you at different points in your career. Do not wait for sponsorship to come to you. And actively sponsor other women within your network. The obligation runs in both directions. As one participant put it, your network is your net worth.
2. Visibility builds pipelines
A related theme was the importance of celebrating success, not as self-promotion, but as a deliberate act of ecosystem-building. Recognising and amplifying achievements, your own, your colleagues’, your reports’, creates the visible proof points that make it easier for others to imagine and pursue similar paths. Momentum matters. The absence of visible role models is itself a retention barrier, and addressing it is partly within each person’s individual control.
3. Board composition is the upstream lever
One of the sharpest structural insights from the morning was the direct link between board composition and CEO diversity. Diverse boards produce more diverse CEO searches. Tracking board diversity alongside CEO diversity at the fund level creates a form of upstream accountability that current practice largely lacks.
The implication is significant: investors who want to see more women in CEO roles at later stages need to be asking different questions at pre-seed and Series A, when board seats are being filled and the governance architecture of a company is being set. The decisions being made now are determining who will be in a position to lead these companies at Series B and beyond.
4. Process design determines outcomes
The discussion focused on the mechanics of candidate pool design, and the evidence here is unambiguous. When only one minority candidate appears in a final pool of four, their statistical likelihood of being hired is effectively zero. The process creates the appearance of inclusion without changing the outcome.
Including at least two diverse candidates in the finalist pool meaningfully shifts the dynamic. When there are two, interviewers stop treating one person as the diversity candidate and begin evaluating on qualifications. This is not a radical intervention. It is a process change that is entirely within investors’ and boards’ control, and it works.
Alongside this, the group challenged the narrowness of the leadership brief used in most CEO searches at later stages. Requiring a prior CEO title systematically excludes women who have built the skills to lead a scaled company through other routes. Explicitly requiring search firms to surface operator-to-CEO profiles, those who have led clinical development, commercial operations, or manufacturing at scale, broadens the pool in a way that changes who gets considered, not just who gets hired.
5. Mixed groups are needed for durable change
One of the most direct observations from the morning was that rooms comprised entirely of women can only go so far. Changing the structural conditions that produce the gender gap requires the people who hold the majority of decision-making power to be part of the conversation. We will be bringing men into the room for our next Swiss event.
Looking ahead
This was the first of three investor roundtables that Invest in Equity will be hosting in Switzerland this year, in partnership with Covington. We are grateful to Winsome Cheung for her generosity in making this series possible, and to all those who joined us and contributed so openly to the discussion.
The quality of the conversation on the morning was a strong foundation. As the series grows, we look forward to bringing more of the Swiss life science investment community into a discussion that the data makes increasingly hard to avoid.
We are looking for a Switzerland-based champion as we grow our Swiss network. If that is you, or if you know someone it should be, we would love to hear from you at info@investinequity.vc.
Dates for the June and October events to follow.