AI · Life Sciences · Healthcare · BIPOC women-first

AI
CATALYST

A women-first podcast for the BIPOC operators, clinicians, and leaders putting AI to work across biopharma and healthcare. Season 01 drops Q3 2026 — join the waitlist for the cold open, the founding-listener perks, and the first three episodes a week before anyone else.

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  Season 01 · In production
Premieres Q3 2026
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AI Catalyst podcast cover art
S01 premieres
Q3 2026
Now boarding
Clinicians    Operators    Regulators    Founders    Data scientists    Pharma    Biotech    Digital health     Clinicians    Operators    Regulators    Founders    Data scientists    Pharma    Biotech    Digital health    
The reality today

AI ambition outpaces deployment.

Investment and adoption are accelerating across the life sciences value chain. But translating AI ambition into safe, scalable, real-world deployment is a different problem — and the people closest to that work rarely get a microphone.

01 / Deployment

Ambition is loud. Deployment is harder than it looks.

Organizations are investing heavily but struggling to translate the AI mandate into safe, scalable, real-world execution inside regulated environments.

02 / Literacy

The literacy gap is wider than the headlines admit.

Clinicians, operators, and leaders sit at very different levels of AI fluency — and role-aware learning pathways across that spectrum are scarce.

03 / Discourse

Industry talk is stuck at the extremes.

It's either high-altitude vision or deep technical specifics. Almost nothing translates AI concepts into practical guidance for actual organizational maturity levels.

04 / Representation

Women are missing from applied AI leadership.

Particularly at the intersection of clinical, regulatory, and operational decision-making — the exact intersection where the most consequential AI calls are being made today.

The numbers tell a story

An optimism gap is already forming — and it tracks who gets encouraged to use AI.

Lean In and McKinsey's Women in the Workplace research finds entry-level women receive markedly less manager encouragement to use AI than men at the same level. There's a strong link between using AI and feeling optimistic about it — which means today's encouragement gap is tomorrow's leadership gap.

Encouragement · Entry-level women
21%
of entry-level women are encouraged by their manager to use AI.
vs. men →
Encouragement · Entry-level men
33%
of entry-level men receive the same encouragement — a 12-point gap at the very moment AI fluency compounds fastest.
Optimism · Entry-level women
37%
believe AI will improve their career prospects.
vs. overall →
Optimism · All employees
60%
of employees overall believe AI will improve theirs — a 23-point optimism gap that mirrors the access gap above.
Less exposure, less encouragement, less optimism. Compounded over a career, that's a leadership pipeline. This podcast exists to disrupt that math.
What makes us different

A trusted, dedicated resource — not another AI hype channel.

Operators and cross-functional leaders lack a place to get accessible, actionable, cross-functional AI insight. We're building that place. Here's the lens we bring to every conversation.

Pillar 01 · Women-first leadership

The only global platform spotlighting female leaders shaping applied AI decisions in biopharma and life sciences.

Particularly at the intersection of clinical, regulatory, and operational leadership — the exact rooms where representation is thinnest and the stakes are highest.

Pillar 02 · 360° perspective

Cross-level, cross-functional conversations.

Learners, clinicians, operators, founders, and AI experts — featured across roles, functions, and maturity levels from first experiments to enterprise-scale impact.

Pillar 03 · Operational proof

Real cases, real trade-offs, real artifacts.

Beyond the hype: actual decision logs, deployment artifacts, and execution stories from regulated environments where AI has to work the day after the launch.

Pillar 04 · Action beyond audio

Playbooks, mini-sessions, infographics.

Each episode extends into curated tools that translate insight into decision support — usable by a director, an operator, or a first-year analyst.

Pillar 05 · Cross-level accessibility

Executives and early-career operators in the same conversation.

Meeting stakeholders at different levels of AI literacy without diluting rigor or relevance — the rare resource that's useful to a CMO and a clinical analyst in the same week.

Pillar 06 · Built by practitioners

From inside the work, not above it.

Hosted by a physician and a pharmacist with combined experience across clinical care, biotech, pharma, digital health, and AI implementation. Not a media studio — a working group with a microphone.

Season 01 · In the studio

What we're recording right now.

A peek at the conversations queued for the launch slate. Final lineup, guests, and run dates are reserved for the waitlist — sign up to get the cold open and the first three episodes a week before public release.

01

From clinical hunch to clinical workflow.

A two-year journey from a model that "worked on the slide" to one that worked on the floor — governance fights, missed failure modes, and the nurse manager who rewrote the rollout plan.

02

Your AI governance committee is reviewing the wrong things.

What regulatory leaders inside top-15 pharma actually look at when an AI artifact crosses their desk — and the questions they wish operators would ask first.

03

The clinical-ops playbook for evaluating an AI vendor.

A VP of clinical operations on the scorecard her team uses to separate AI vendors with a deployment story from AI vendors with a demo.

04

"I was the only woman in the model review."

Building applied AI teams in life sciences that don't replicate the access gap — hiring, sponsorship, and the projects that actually compound for early-career women.

05

From entry-level to AI-fluent.

A learning & development lead at a global CRO on the upskilling path that closes the 21%-vs-33% encouragement gap — and the manager behaviors that move the needle.

+

And the ones we can't talk about yet.

Guests under embargo, a regulator we're still convincing, and one founder whose deployment story is going to surprise you. Waitlist subscribers hear first.

About the founders

A physician and a pharmacist with a microphone.

Two clinical operators bridging the clinical, operational, and scientific worlds — and personally committed to elevating women in data, AI, and science leadership. Combined experience across clinical care, biotech, pharma, digital health, and AI implementation.

June Lau, MD, MGM
Co-host · Physician
June Lau, MD, MGM

Clinician-operator working at the intersection of care delivery, digital health, and applied AI. Brings the clinical fluency that makes operator and regulator conversations land for a bedside audience.

Leanna Baker, PharmD
Co-host · Pharmacist
Leanna Baker, PharmD

Pharmacist with deep tenure across biotech and pharma operations, translating AI ambition into the actual artifacts — protocols, decision logs, governance — that make deployment work in regulated environments.

"Bridging the gap between AI vision and operational reality — one conversation at a time."

Personally committed to elevating women in data, AI, and science leadership. We bring the perspectives that get spoken about in the abstract — and rarely handed a microphone in the actual rooms where these decisions get made.

Founding listeners

Be on the list before Season 01 drops.

Get the cold open the day we cut it, the first three episodes a week before public release, and the field-notes companion email — frameworks, artifacts, and the one thing the guest wouldn't say on the record.

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Pitch a guest

Know someone doing amazing work in AI?

We'd love to have them on. If there's an operator, clinician, researcher, or founder putting AI to work in life sciences or healthcare in a way that deserves a wider audience — tell us about them. We read every pitch and follow up on the ones that fit.

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