2020-04-06
6 April 2020Influential Women in IPLaura Schoppe

Career series: Laura Schoppe, Fuentek

How did you become president of Fuentek?

I started my career in the defence industry, focusing on advanced submarine and surface ship combat systems. While I was at GE Aerospace, an opportunity arose for GE Medical to leverage our knowhow and technologies.

At the time I was working on image processing, and we found we could apply our algorithms to X-rays. But when we started talking with the GE Medical folks, it became apparent that we were flying at 10,000 feet and they were at 30,000 feet.

We told them we needed several months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to adapt our code to medical applications, but they scoffed at us and said that they expected weeks, and tens of thousands of dollars. Even though we were all in the same corporation, they walked away. Ironically, my first exposure to tech transfer was a failure.

When I moved to North Carolina, I had the opportunity to start working in tech transfer and, frankly, to do something more positive than developing new combat systems. Because I had the researcher’s perspective, I wanted to help bridge the gap and connect the dots to make tech transfer happen.

“It’s important to me to be a thought leader and contribute to the advancement of the tech transfer industry.”

I started Fuentek after I had been working in tech transfer for a few years. One of the things I didn’t like about the projects I was managing was that I had a fixed stable of staff. If a pharmaceutical technology job came in but the mechanical engineer didn’t have any projects, I had to use her.

I was miserable because I couldn’t give the client the best product and the engineers were miserable because they knew they weren’t doing the best they could.

This is the problem with a traditional bricks-and-mortar operation, where staff need to be paid whether they’re working or not. I didn’t want to keep doing it that way, so I started Fuentek and set it up as a virtual organisation with a variety of independent consultants.

With this structure, I could put the right person on a project without the pressure of making sure the stable was fed.

Outline a typical day in your role.

I spend a good bit of my day talking to clients to understand their project needs and identifying the right solutions for them and the right staffing to provide it. I also work on individual projects, performing valuation analysis and other activities where my skillset is a match.

For example, I’ll be a technical advisor for projects involving aerospace technologies for our NASA client.

It’s important to me to be a thought leader and contribute to the advancement of the tech transfer industry. So most days I spend some time giving presentations or writing blog posts and white papers to share best practices.

What’s the best part about your job?

Working with really high-quality people who enjoy what they’re doing. Being able to give them the work they like doing and that they excel at, is truly satisfying.

What’s the most difficult part?

Because I always want to do what’s best for the client, I have to be sure that Fuentek is the right resource to do what the client is asking for. That means I sometimes turn down work.

I don’t like doing that, but I have to do it in cases where Fuentek is not the best match for a particular project.

Have you faced any barriers or challenges in your career?

Yes, although not recently. Back in the day, women in technical areas were extremely rare. At GE Aerospace in the early 1990s, I was one of a handful of female managers in an organisation of 4,000 people. Once I was going to give a briefing to a Navy admiral. He walked in the room, saw I was the only woman there, and said: “Hon, can you get me a cup of coffee?”

I got the coffee and as I gave it to him, I said: “Sir, are you ready to start the briefing? Because I am.” And I started giving the presentation. He immediately realised that I—the sole woman—was the technical expert. He gave me his attention and by the end of the briefing, my gender was irrelevant.

I’d say I’ve overcome the barriers of a sexist work environment by not getting angry and instead proving my worth. It also helped to have a sense of humour when I encountered people like that admiral.

What’s your biggest achievement?

Fuentek—I’m very proud of the team I’ve assembled and the reputation we’ve built.

What advice would you give to those looking to focus on technology transfer consulting services?

Integrity is the most important asset you have. Tech transfer is about IP, which is the researcher’s crown jewels. You have to treat that with respect. If you don’t, you’re kissing your reputation goodbye.

Sure, you can make a quick buck, but that’s all it’s going to be, and you won’t survive for the long haul. You have to prioritise what’s best for the client, because ultimately that’s what is in your best interests too.

Who or what inspires you?

The students who participate in the FIRST robotics competitions, an international high school robotics competition. In early March, I was a judge at a competition and it was amazing. When I see what the young people are capable of and how committed they are, it re-energises me.

What was your most unusual job before becoming president of Fuentek?

One summer, I worked in the kitchen of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conference centre in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Every week, there were high-end, amazingly smart scientists and engineers having intense meetings.

There were about ten of us college students working in the kitchen and as security guards. We served breakfast and lunch and had clam bakes. Basically, I was serving clam chowder to geniuses.

Women in technology transfer

What are the major issues facing women in technology transfer?

There are plenty of women working in tech transfer, so there’s not the kind of sexism that I experienced in the defence industry. The biggest issue for women—and minorities, for that matter—in innovation generally is unconscious bias.

We need to watch for it in ourselves, and we have to help our colleagues, innovators, and research managers get past their own unconscious bias. As women, we need to be role models to and champions for under-represented groups among innovators.

Is the tech transfer profession doing enough to improve gender diversity?

The tech transfer profession has good gender diversity, but that’s not the case among the innovation groups we serve. We need to be more proactive about encouraging women to participate in research and development and advocating for them within the organisation.

“We need to be more proactive about encouraging women to participate in research and development and advocating for them within the organisation.”

Some of it is beyond our control. If women aren’t hired as researchers, then they’re not there for us to encourage, so we have to help convince the rest of the organisation’s administration about the value of having diversity among researchers.

We have to be an additional voice pushing for that, reiterating that unconscious bias is real. We have to be vigilant about being conscious of it and stopping it.

How are you involved in promoting diversity?

I am the chair of the AUTM Foundation—AUTM is the trade organisation for university technology managers—and among our initiatives is one focused on diversity and inclusion. For that, I set up a steering committee to think about what would be needed to improve the situation at universities. We looked across the country and identified successful programmes aimed at increasing diversity and inclusion.

We used that information to develop a structure for programmes that could be offered to institutions to help them improve. This initiative has been formally adopted by the AUTM as one of its important programmes, which is great news.

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