How the Lehigh Valley Is Building Lilly's Workforce

As Eli Lilly moves forward with its $3.5 billion injectable medicines facility in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania, Karianne Gelinas, vice president of talent strategies at the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC), outlines the region's approach to building a pipeline of skilled pharmaceutical manufacturing talent.

A central piece of LVEDC's strategy was demonstrating to Lilly, during the request for proposal process, that the region could supply the technical talent its operations would require. Gelinas emphasizes the importance of understanding commuter radius data, noting that qualified workers can be drawn from a broad geographic catchment. "We're an hour from Philadelphia, two hours from New York City," she says. "We're between Boston and DC with that biopharma, biotech belt."

To address the volume, LVEDC is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy that includes community branding, K–12 STEM pipeline development, pre-apprenticeship programs, and engagement with regional higher education institutions, including Lehigh University, Lafayette College, and Philadelphia-area engineering schools such as Drexel, Temple, and Penn.

On the question of artificial intelligence's (AI) potential impact on these roles, Gelinas notes that the region is actively consulting with AI advisors, local industry chief information officers, and educational institutions to stay responsive. Conversations with Lilly about their specific AI-related workforce needs, she noted, are anticipated as the project progresses.