Paul Bass Photo
OrLando Yarborough and Erik Clemons at WNHH FM.
Once upon a time, New Haveners without college degrees could pursue well-paying careers making rifles at the old Winchester factory.
Today they’ll be able to pursue careers working in labs helping test drugs to cure diseases like cancer, thanks to a new pipeline created to help New Haveners find their way to some of the jobs of the future pouring into the city.
The pipeline is called BioLaunch. It’s a training program run by Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology, aka ConnCAT.
Funded by $2.5 million in state money, it will train two cohorts a year of 15 people from the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods aged 18 – 26 with GEDs to work as lab techs in biotechnology and life sciences laboratories. The participants will get paid during the program, including at internships with local biopharma companies.
The first cohort launches March 6. The program will eventually move into the 101 College St. biosciences tower soon to open downtown.
The program grew out of conversations over the years between ConnCAT founder and CEO Erik Clemons and Yale bio professor Craig Crews, who founded one of the city’s hottest new biotech companies, Arvinas, which develops cancer-fighting drugs. They sought a way to connect people from disadvantaged neighborhoods to employment opportunities opening up in town during a biosciences boom.
To run the program, they found a former student of Crews named OrLando Yarborough. Yarborough studied with Crews back while earning his PhD in genetics. Now he has taken the helm of BioLaunch as its program director.
Yarborough described the program as a win-win for New Haveners needing solid work, growing companies needing reliable trained workers, and a biopharma industry that will benefit from a diversified workforce.
“This is about providing an avenue and a platform for New Haven residents to do well, in biotech companies,” Yarborough said.
He said biotech companies “don’t have a good system of finding New Haven residents that are highly qualified to work. Now we’re creating a system … and a pipeline to make it happen.”
Yarborough said that during a conversation on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program, which also included ConnCAT’s Clemons. Click on the above video to watch the full discussion, which included how BioLaunch fits into ConnCAT’s broader goals of creating opportunity in historically Black neighborhoods.
Click here to learn more about BioLaunch.