The following excerpts are from a story in The Boston Globe on June 5, 2023.
Mayor Michelle Wu unveiled a plan Monday to plug more Boston workers into the growing biotech industry, launching a workforce initiative aimed at getting 1,000 city residents trained and hired at drug research and production labs and other life sciences operations by the end of 2025.
The city government will initially commit $4 million to the program, funded through grants from the city’s Neighborhood Jobs Trust and the federal American Rescue Plan, but the investment is expected to grow.
Wu made the announcement, surrounded by industry and workforce training leaders, at the BIO 2023 convention, which convened Monday morning at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. She welcomed more than 18,000 biotech executives and investors from around the world to Boston.
“We have a shared objective,” said Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, chief executive of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, who is playing host at the BIO convention, “making sure that every resident in every neighborhood of Boston and the Commonwealth can see themselves working in a career in the life sciences and creating the pathways to getting these folks there.”