British Expats in Life Sciences (BELS) is engaging with British-trained health and life science leaders around the globe With major changes afoot impacting our laws, regulations, trade and talent, discussions at the Summit will centre on the UK in a post-Brexit world and the significant work underway to position our sector as a centre of scientific […]

In competing for our attention, newspaper headlines and television sound bites assault our senses, beckoning us with sensational breaking stories. At times, the news can emanate from someone’s posturing (defined as ‘behaving in a way that is intended to impress or mislead’).  An extreme case in point is the interminable cycle of this US presidential

When we survey our lives retrospectively, we find instances of specific collisions with people that helped to shape us over time.  Marriages, friendships and business opportunities are born, kindled and flow from such fortuitous interactions.  These collisions hold the potential to “spark” great things. Years ago a friend encouraged me to read The Tipping Point

I vividly remember waking up June 24th to the astounding news that the Leave vote had prevailed on the EU Referendum.  There followed some wailing and gnashing (in the interests of disclosure I had voted Remain) before my customary shrug of the shoulders as I soon came to terms with a changed reality.  To quote

Volatility in global markets continues with selloffs, recoveries, gains, losses, sterling is weak… Successful investors see opportunities in the face of market volatility. Meanwhile, most of us in the health and life science sector around the world are focused on the work underpinning the fundamentals that build value. Brexit will be sorted eventually. Some things

In the relative blink of an eye, certain events in the past few days have highlighted two clear home truths: the disaffection of the voting UK majority with their political leaders and the uncertainty of where our toils in the life sciences will lead us as we move through the lengthy drug approval process. First,

As we enter the summer (at least in the Northern Hemisphere!) after the annual BIO meeting in San Francisco and ahead of the impending Brexit vote, we wanted to send out greetings to the BELS community.  We are now actively commencing the BELS membership drive so please do visit our membership pages and join this formidable

We have recently devoted significant time to completely updating The BELS List, comprised of some 2800 UK expats and overseas alumni of UK universities who are life science leaders working outside the UK. As we launch the BELS membership drive, we certainly welcome your suggestions of individuals to add to the mix. The chart above represents

While we started the online presence of British Expats in Life Sciences as BELSgroup.com, it has become increasingly clear that forging stronger connectivity is core to what BELS is all about. We have therefore made a decision to reflect this in our communications, including: BELSconnector.org, our new URL which incorporates connector and .org to better reflect

It’s been a welcome reassurance for this inveterate UK cheerleader that we continue to navigate assorted speed bumps and are productively staying the course with our life science strategy.  In 2015, this UK sector continued its renaissance with £1.26 billion being raised on the UK stock market, the highest figure in more than a decade

About this time last year, I penned a blog entitled “Great Expectations for UK Health and Life Sciences”, which was a bit of a retrospective of 2014 and a call to dare to live up to our ‘Great’ image.  Well 2015 did nothing to diminish the continuing progress of the UK health and life science

This year’s Nobel Prize announcements catalysed a knee jerk reaction from commentators, a lament that Brits were enjoying their success from other international venues rather than in the UK – yet another example of the classic “brain drain”. We would counter that such news should be viewed much more positively. In a Daily Telegraph article

When we last wrote in July, we were heading to the Alumni Summit in Oxford, our first event in the UK and a major milestone for British Expats in Life Sciences (BELS). An impressive array of overseas alumni, most of them UK expats, gathered in glorious summer conditions at the Saïd Business School at the

This week sees a major milestone for BELS with the Alumni Summit in Oxford at the Saïd Business School.  Part of our vision is that our talented life science expats and overseas alumni of UK institutions feel connected to the UK health and life sciences and want to stay engaged throughout their careers.  There are