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December 9, 2021

‘One of the Best Decisions I’ve Made in Graduate School’ - Fellows Reflect on the Impact of Enventure on Their Career Journeys

We’ve made an impact on healthcare innovation by opening up pathways for student talent to enter the industry while being supported by Enventure’s community. This is how we’ve fostered a dependable support network for students, young professionals, and life science startups.

Enventure came to life in 2012 as a collaborative effort between a group of advanced degree students, all of whom had goals of changing the future of healthcare through life science innovation. 

As a group of students with diverse backgrounds, ideas, and areas of expertise, we were all in search of points of entry, or ways that we could get our feet in the door of the life science innovation industry through work experience, networking, and career development opportunities. We discovered that these entry points were difficult to access, resulting in a disconnect between Houston’s growing life science innovation sector and the large student talent pool seeking to enter the field. To address this disconnect, we created Enventure, a hub of information and connectivity in Houston’s life science ecosystem that helps advanced degree students and young professionals gain access to the networks, training, and experience they need to enter the life science innovation industry. 

In the nearly ten years since our founding, we’ve grown into a thriving nonprofit offering a wide range of career development services to advanced degree students as well as professional services such as consulting and diligence assessments to life science companies. 


We are proud of the strategic connections our programs facilitate throughout Houston’s life science innovation ecosystem, the impact we are able to have on the future of healthcare by opening up pathways for student talent to enter the industry, and the sense of community we foster by providing a dependable support network for students and young professionals by helping them see that life science innovation is an approachable, learnable skill.

Enventure is an absolutely unique experience that has prepared me for a successful career in pharmaceutical and biotechnology unlike anything else I’ve experienced during my time as a graduate student. Their programming helped me improve my professional and consulting skills while surrounded by peers who have the same career interests and are also growing and learning. I was also able to gain experience investigating products/devices that are currently or en route to being approved, which is a rare opportunity in graduate school. The real-world experience and networking opportunities provided by Enventure are consistent reassurance that I’ve made the right decision with my career.
-Kenya Nicole Moore, Ph.D. candidate in the Pharmacology & Toxicology

One of our longest-running programs at Enventure is ENRICH, a semester-long fellowship that orients advanced degree students to the fundamentals of consulting in the biotech industry and pairs them with companies in need of consultancy projects. ENRICH is a popular program among Ph.D. students seeking to enter consulting because it provides the opportunity to gain work experience with companies that already have products on the market or will be entering the market soon. 

Enventure is a diverse community of innovators with different backgrounds and areas of expertise but similar visions for the future of biotech innovation. The networking opportunities and work experience I gained as an ENRICH fellow helped me learn so much about life science innovation outside of my specific research focus. For example, when I was working on a market analysis project for cardiac monitoring devices, my supervisor suggested that providing a company's current revenue is necessarily a useful performance metric. However, if you can show the revenue trajectory for several years, that will tell your reader a better story about the company's performance. As someone with a limited business background, I realized that this advice could make my work so much more insightful for the client company. Getting feedback from experienced Enventure supervisors helped me learn a lot about the business side of the life science industry.
-Henry Huo, Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology

For students who may not be ready to jump directly into a fellowship, Enventure has several educational programs, workshops, and lecture series that provide a foundational understanding of the industry side of life science innovation as well as knowledge about the current state of the field. These programs include Inspire and Community, and they are open to anyone interested in getting their feet wet in life science innovation and learning about the wide variety of career pathways within the field. 

Choosing to get involved with Enventure means instantly becoming part of a welcoming and diverse group of innovators with different interests but a shared vision for trust in growth within the life science community. As soon as I joined Enventure, I found that everyone was ready to support my professional growth with creative feedback in an exceptionally collaborative environment. No matter how you are involved, being a part of this community will teach you how to manage and motivate your priorities while introducing you to every aspect of this fast-moving field.
-Ozlem Sert, Ph.D. Candidate in Neuroscience

Our goal at Enventure is to fuel innovation in life science by providing advanced degree students and young professionals with the experience, networks, and information they need to gain access to the wide variety of career paths available to them. We aim to break down the barriers to access by creating entry points in the form of programs and community groups that help students see that life science innovation isn’t as intimidating as it may appear. It’s a learnable skill, and it’s depending on your talents and expertise to create progress.

The backbone of Enventure is the amazing community. The work is incredibly interesting and relevant, but the community aspect is what makes Enventure truly unique. You gain access to this fantastic, driven group of people who are also trying to advance their careers through this fellowship, and networking no longer feels like a chore because you are simply engaging with the other Enventure members in a way that’s easy and enjoyable. With Enventure, there is so much room for professional growth. You get out what you put in. You can learn and achieve so much, all while being surrounded by peers who are helping to push the project forward. 
-Samantha Debes, Ph.D. in Neuroscience

Enventure’s programs run in staggered cycles, so if you’re ready to get involved, there’s always something for you to jump right into. Check out our programs page to learn more about what we offer.