Principal
Speculo Coaching LLC
With over 30 years of experience, Donna Matthews Jarrell has led biomedical research support organizations in government, the biotech/pharmaceutical industry and academia. Donna joined Mass General Hospital (MGH) in 2002 and was the Director, Center for Comparative Medicine (CCM) and the Attending Veterinarian for MGH from 2012 to 2023. As the Director, she led a department of ~130 staff spread across three campuses, and she was fiscally responsible for ~$19M operating budget that had grown continuously during her tenure.
Her leadership style is based on several theories including continuous improvement or agile leadership, servant leadership, Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity and Belonging (DEIB) and employee empowerment. As a result, CCM continues to be known regionally, nationally, and internationally for being agile and inclusive where all voices are heard, and all employees are supported by leadership to be successful. CCM’s Be Better Program started in 2020 and continuing through today is one of the first animal care programs to document qualitative and quantitative analysis results related to DEIB and to share their findings with the larger biomedical research community. Her DEI&B approach has always been to acknowledge the actual state of any situation, preferably with objective data and with comprehensive stakeholder representation. She acknowledges and navigates groups around racial inequities and injustices, which can be quite sensitive, by following an evidence problem-solving approach which can then correct misconceptions and assumptions about any organization’s current state specifically in this area.
Donna is board certified with the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (ACLAM) which has over 1100 members and served as the organization’s 61st national President in 2020-2021 during the COVID pandemic. Today she leads their DEI&B Equity and Inclusion Task Force responsible for one of the organization’s strategic initiatives to be a leader in equity and inclusivity in veterinary medicine.
Other DEI&B consultation and educational experiences included serving on the faculty of Interagency Collaborative Animal Research Education (ICARE) project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the US Dept of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Veterans Administration as well as the BOD and Diversity Committee of the Vivarium Operations Excellence Network (VOEN). She continues to serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the North Carolina State University, College of Veterinary Medicine, and the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (Grafton, MA) and as a health professional mentor for the Harvard Medical School Biomedical Students Careers Program (BSCP). Donna has made numerous presentations at the institutional level including a TEDxMGH podcast as well as regional, national, and international levels on the topics of minorities in biomedical careers, TPS/Lean Management in the research & development arena as well as application of active learning for effective regulatory education and compliance all leading to agile and inclusive organizations to navigate the days ahead.