Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Falling Walls Circle Plenary Table

Promoting Gender Equality for Innovation

Monika Lessl, Simone Menne, Londa Schiebinger , Kumsal Bayazit, Tatjana König, Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöring

Science & Innovation Management

Promotion of gender equality drives innovation both in science and in industrial organisations. However, we often fail to put scientific knowledge into practice. This Falling Walls Circle Plenary Table explores the following questions: How to implement gender equality to increase the quality of innovation? And who needs to change: decision and policy makers shaping gender equality or those who are disadvantaged?

For Kumsal Bayazit, change towards gender equality has to happen on all levels: “We have to factor sex and gender into the research, work on gender representation, and support early researchers with the right culture and safety so that everybody feels safe in contributing their ideas”, she says. Monika Lessl agrees with this notion, but also reminds the panel that bringing in more women alone does not necessarily lead to change. For her, it is equally important to accordingly change the power structure, leadership as well as financial education.

More women, different research

Indeed, female founders – and VC funders – are still a minority. “We need to look more for female and diverse founders”, Simone Menne says, “because diversity leads to innovation.” Ultimately, gender equality and diversity has the potential to tackle major challenges in regards to sustainability and climate change.

For Londa Schiebinger, it is also important to “fix the knowledge”, as she calls it. By integrating sex, gender and intersectional analysis into traditionally male-driven fields such as computer science, AI and robotics, the research and its applications will change accordingly. After all, a lot of progress has already been made in the past 20 years in regards to gender equality, but science and society as a whole still have a long way to go. Or as Tatjana König puts it: “True innovation can only happen if we involve as many types of people as possible.”

Monika Lessl

Bayer Foundation

Monika Lessl is the Executive Director of the Bayer Foundation and Senior VP at Bayer AG, responsible for Corporate R&D and Social Innovation, as well as global societal engagement. She has been an initiator of Bayer`s Bioethics council and her passion is to drive innovation and societal transformation for a sustainable future. She is a Non-Executive Board member of Marienhaus GmbH and Futurium, and is engaged with several boards such as the Board of Trustees of the GIZ and the VCI. Monika holds a PhD in Biochemistry and a Diploma in General Management from Ashridge Business School, London. She has been ranked as “Top100 women in Innovation” by Handelsblatt in 2021.

Simone Menne

American Chamber of Commerce Germany

Simone Menne started her career for ITT, later joining Deutsche Lufthansa. In 2012, Ms. Menne was appointed CFO and stayed in this position till 2015. She worked as CFO at Boehringer Ingelheim from 2016 to 2017. In both companies she was responsible for the foundation of the digital lab. Ms. Menne serves as non-executive board member for Henkel, Deutsche Post DHL, JCI and Russell Reynolds. She also owns an art gallery in Kiel, Germany and is the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany e.V.

Londa Schiebinger

Stanford University

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University, and Founding Director of Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. Gendered Innovations harnesses the creative power of sex, gender, and intersectional analysis to enhance excellence and reproducibility in science. She is a leading international expert on gender in science and technology and has addressed the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Korean National Assembly, and numerous funding agencies on that topic. Schiebinger received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship.

From 2018-2020, she directed a European Commission expert group to produce: Gendered Innovations 2: How Inclusive Analysis Contributes to Research and Innovation. Recent publications include: AI can be Sexist and Racist—It’s Time to Make it Fair Nature (2018); Sex and Gender Analysis Improves Science and Engineering Nature (2019); Analysing How Sex and Gender Interact The Lancet (2020); Ensuring that Biomedical AI Benefits Diverse Populations eBioMedicine (2021).

Kumsal Bayazit

Elsevier

Kumsal Bayazit was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Elsevier in February 2019. She has held multiple positions with RELX Group since 2004, most recently as Regional President Europe, Middle East and Africa at Reed Exhibitions. Before joining Reed Exhibitions in 2016, Kumsal was RELX Group’s Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for driving strategic initiatives, technology strategy and portfolio management. Prior to that she served in several operational and strategic roles with LexisNexis. Kumsal also chairs the Technology Forum at RELX Group and is a non-executive director at LSL Property Services plc. Prior to joining RELX Group in 2004, Kumsal spent several years at Bain & Company in their New York, Los Angeles, Johannesburg and Sydney offices. Kumsal earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley where she received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with honors.

Tatjana König

Körber Foundation

Tatjana König is member of the Executive Board of the Körber Foundation in Hamburg. She studied law at Freie Universität Berlin and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, specializing in international and European law. She holds a postgraduate degree in mediation. Having worked in politics and for the public relations agency Scholz & Friends, she also founded her own communications company. In 2013 she took over the management of the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin for several years.

© HTW Berlin Nina Zimmermann

Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöring

Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin

Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöring is Vice President for Research and Transfer and Professor of Business Communication at HTW Berlin, the largest university of applied sciences in Berlin. Her focus in teaching and research is on communication management, science communication and socio-political communication. After her PhD on the connection between corporate communication and culture she worked as a consultant in different communication agencies.

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