For years, the pharmaceutical industry has talked about the importance of diverse talent. The harder question is whether we've made it easy for that talent to find us. Our honest answer at CNX, when we reflected on it, was no. That's why we partnered with the Social Mobility Foundation in 2024 - and why a few years on, we're still learning and adapting.

The reality is simple: routes into the pharmaceutical sector still tend to favour people who already have a foot in the door. Research from the Sutton Trust shows just one in ten internships are found through open advertisement. The rest depend on who you know. That's the problem we set out to address, at least in our corner of the industry.

The honest questions we started with

Those statistics forced us to look at our own processes. Instead of filtering out things that immediately disadvantage anyone who hasn't been given access to the industry before, we focused entirely on potential, curiosity and drive. Were we advertising openly? Were our application processes accessible to someone with no industry contacts, no insider knowledge, no family member who'd navigated this world before? Mostly, the answer was no. So we rebuilt around what we actually wanted to find: people who could thrive given the chance.

Nikolina is the clearest example of what that looks like in practice. She joined as an intern in early 2025 in our quality team. She had no prior industry connections - just the drive to learn. She is now a fully-fledged, full-time Quality Assurance Assistant. That outcome didn't happen by accident. It happened because we helped to create the conditions for it.

Throughout 2025, our colleagues also committed over 70 hours to mentoring students through the SMF's Aspiring Professionals Programme, with every participant leaving feeling more confident about navigating their next steps.

What year one taught us

If I'm being honest, year one taught us as much as it taught our interns. The moments that actually mattered weren't about duration - they were about depth. Fresh eyes see things that more experienced ones might not. But you don't need twelve months for that - you need the right environment: one that encourages curiosity and makes the time to support and develop those around you.

In 2026, we're creating more of that environment. This week, we're welcoming six students for the first of two structured one-week placements (the second follows in July 2026). It's the evolution of our partnership with the SMF - shorter, more focused, supported by dedicated mentoring throughout. This format allows us to reach more students and give each of them a more intentional experience

Gemma Antenbring, Partnerships Manager at the Social Mobility Foundation, said: "We're proud to partner with employers like CNX who understand that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Breaking down barriers isn't a tick-box exercise. That's why we're building pathways that create genuine career development for young people whose socioeconomic background limits their access to such opportunities."

Pharma's blind spot

Work placements in pharma are rare for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Rare to find, rare to access, rare to sustain without proper support. Every company in our sector has a role to play in changing that.

This work doesn't sit in isolation. Inflexion, which has backed CNX since 2021, runs the Inflexion Foundation, supporting disadvantaged young people. In 2025, Inflexion colleagues contributed around 900 hours to pro bono and charitable work, supporting organisations including Impetus, which transforms education and employment outcomes for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. That alignment matters - when your investors are working on the same problems you are, social responsibility stops being a company initiative and starts being a shared set of values that runs through how the business operates.

We're not claiming to have solved anything - we're one company, learning as we go. But if there's one thing we'd say to others in the industry it's this: the barriers aren't invisible, and they aren't immovable - they just require someone to decide they're worth addressing. We think they are. We hope you do too.

Jessica Dall, Sustainability Manager, CNX Therapeutics