Honoring Excellence, Innovation & Creativity

FROM THE PRESIDENT – Richard Sampson

It’s truly our honor to honor you, and the incredible work of this past year.

I’m here to officially welcome you to this special annual issue of LTEN Focus on Training magazine – it’s my favorite, the one devoted to celebrating our most innovative and creative members – but I have to make a confession. This year’s LTEN Excellence Awards ceremony has me torn between the past, present and future … in a good way.

Were you able to attend the June 9 virtual awards ceremony? If not, you can watch it at www.L-TEN.org/awards, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

This is our 50th anniversary year, marking half a century of learning and growing together, both as an industry and a professional network. So of course, there was of focus on where we started.

And of course, awards programs make us think about where we are now: what we’ve completed, what we’re delivering. It’s a natural time for reflection and taking stock. Which inevitably leads to the future: Where do we go from here? What’s next?

This year’s awards program brought all that together. It’s truly our honor to honor you, and the incredible work of this past year. We faced unique challenges, and life  sciences professionals emerged as the heroes I always knew we were.

We’ve proven as an industry how creative, innovative, dedicated and determined our people are. LTEN members build, inspire, lead and make a difference. And as you’ll discover as you flip these digital pages and meet this year’s winners and finalists, LTEN members impress.

All those years ago, our network founders saw the need to support and assist life sciences professionals. To that, over the years, we’ve added recognize and honor as core missions. It’s all designed to help you excel professionally.

In the pages ahead, you’re going to meet teams that came together to keep company missions alive in the midst of crisis. You’ll meet individuals who lead and inspire excellence. You’ll meet partners who bring the tools and solutions we need to succeed. And I sincerely hope you’ll find inspiration in their incredible work.

Before you dive into this pool of knowledge, please let me begin with congratulations to everyone involved with this year’s awards program. This year’s judging was truly a tough task, and our volunteer judges gave extra effort and attention to detail.

I’ll also thank two committees that helped bring the evening to light: The Awards Committee helps guide our program and selflessly donates their time to recognize the work of others. The same can be said for the members of our Field Training Committee, who created and manage the LTEN field training scholarship program to reward some impressive field trainers.

And I certainly want to thank the sponsors of our awards program, the June 9 virtual awards ceremony and of LTEN in general. They faced their own business challenges and hurdles this year, but that didn’t stop our supplier community from supporting LTEN and its members. We’ll be honoring some supplier winners here in this issue, but I’d like us all to take a moment to thank every sponsor organization that allows LTEN to serve you.

Finally, a personal message from me to all the nominees this year. We had a record-breaking number of entries and they were all truly worthy. Whether or not you received a trophy this year, every one of you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished in the past year. What each and every one of us has endured is what legacies are made of.

That’s it. Thanks for being part of LTEN and thanks for being here to learn from and support our winners and finalists. Nominations for 2022 awards will open later this year … I hope to see your name in the magazine next year.

An Invitation: Join Us!

Circumstances kept us from getting together in person last year, but the 50th LTEN Annual Conference will be taking place this year, as a hybrid event both live and virtual. We plan to involve many of the amazing finalists and winners you’re about to read about.

Also, this year we’re holding the Member of the Year awards and the annual LTEN Hall of Fame inductions for that November conference. So, please do plan to join us so we can celebrate our top honors together.

Whether you can join us in the Denver area or whether you’ll log in to join us  virtually, please save the dates Nov. 8-11. We want to see you there!

Richard Sampson is president of the LTEN Board of Directors and head of global
training for Cepheid. Email Richard at richard.sampson@cepheid.com.