Tracing the Spark: Women in Leadership

In this roundtable discussion focused on the experiences, challenges, and contributions of women in leadership, LCGC International spoke to Susanne Boye, Daniela Held, and Claudia Zielke. This dialogue explores what inspired our panelists to pursue careers in chromatography, the strategies that helped them advance in STEM, and the practical skills essential for leadership. We also discuss how mentorship, inclusive lab cultures, and emerging technologies are shaping the future for women in analytical chemistry.

Susanne Boye graduated with a degree in biochemical engineering from the University of Applied Sciences Dresden in 2006. She completed her doctoral thesis on “Modern fractionation techniques for branched polymers” at the Technical University of Dresden and the IPF. Since then, she has been a member of the Polymer Separation Group and established the AF4 technique at the IPF, where she now leads the FFF labs and serves as deputy head of the Department of Advanced Macromolecular Structure Analysis.

Daniela Held is a seasoned leader with over two decades of experience in the analytical industries. She earned her PhD in chemistry from the University of Mainz in 2000 for her work on the synthesis and characterization of star-branched polyelectrolytes. She launched her career the same year in the software department at PSS Polymer Standards Service, where she served as a GPC/SEC Product Manager. In 2020, she was promoted to Managing Director. After Agilent Technologies acquired PSS in 2023, Daniela remained in Mainz as an R&D Director, where she was key to integrating the legacy company's products, services, and commercial functions.

Claudia Zielke is an analytical chemist with expertise in separation sciences and light scattering techniques. In 2017, she received her PhD from the Department of Food Technology, Engineering and Nutrition from Lunds University in Sweden, for her work on investigating the connection between the cereal dietary fiber β-glucan and human health using asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation with multi-detection. After her appointment as Inclusive Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow at Santa Clara University in California, Claudi joined the Barron Lab for Innate Immune Optimization at the School of Medicine, Bioengineering at Stanford University. Currently, Claudi is a research scientist at Vaxcyte, a biopharmaceutical company in San Carlos, California, developing novel conjugate and protein vaccines.

Part I of this conversation focuses on their routes into chromatography.