Charlotte Baidoo

Affiliation: Senior Director, US Head, Biostatistics & Statistical Programming, GSK Vaccines
Educational Background: MMath, Biostatistics, University of Waterloo; BSc, Statistics, University of Regina

Charlotte Baidoo was born in Ghana and moved to Canada at the age of four. As a child of Ghanaian immigrants, the importance of education and a strong work ethic were instilled in Baidoo from a young age, which she believes contributed to her achievement of full academic scholarships for both her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

First introduced to statistics by her high-school computer science teacher, Baidoo loved how statistics could tell a story from data. During her undergraduate studies, she had a professor who inspired her to pursue a career in biostatistics—an opportunity to combine her love of applied math with helping others by developing medicines to transform the lives of patients.

The University of Waterloo offered a co-op master’s degree program that enabled Baidoo to gain practical work experience as part of her education. In this program, she found an internship, thus beginning her career with SmithKline Beecham (a legacy company of GSK). Now with 20 years of experience, Baidoo has worked across all phases of drug development. In her current role, she leads the US clinical and epidemiology statistics group at GSK Vaccines.

Baidoo, passionate about inclusion and diversity, has been a co-leader of EMBRACE, GSK’s first multiethnicity-focused employee resource group. “I feel a sense of responsibility to help pave the way for those coming behind me … to contribute to and support efforts to increase representation of ethnic minorities in senior leadership roles and to inspire young people of color to careers in STEM,” Baidoo wrote.

On a personal note, Baidoo is married, with a daughter whom she considers her greatest achievement. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, cooking, and personal styling.