Values are the core behaviors that define our culture.
A bold ambition to industrialize drug discovery requires a strong culture, one intentionally designed to inspire its people to work together to achieve industry-leading outcomes. Our values are incredibly important to us because they are the simplest definition of how we will achieve our mission.
We care
We care about our drug candidates, our Recursionauts, their families, each other, our communities, the patients we aim to serve and their loved ones. We also care about our work. We are willing to do and say the hard things to make each other and the company better - because we care.
Manny Cardenas
IT Specialist
Manny officially joined Recursion in July 2020 as an IT Specialist, after serving as an intern on the same team. He has a special role, as he interacts with every new Recursionaut when they join the team.
Manny greets everyone with care and empathy, from executives to data scientists to chemists. He quickly found that these distinct disciplines have distinct needs on their first day. To make everyone’s life easier, Manny wrote up three unique welcome letters, tailored to each group.
But Manny’s impact reaches beyond day one. He remains a friendly face when our team encounters technological difficulties, which are obstacles in their pursuit of our mission. The role calls for patience, but Manny believes that there is no question too small, too big, too simple or too complex. He knows that every individual contributes to our culture, which ultimately fuels our ability to progress toward our mission. Our value “We Care” guides us to care for patients, their loved ones, our work, our mission, our communities - but it starts with caring for each other.
We learn
Learning from the diverse perspectives of our fellow Recursionauts, and from failure, is an essential part of how we make progress. We seek to create cross-functional teams so that we can teach and learn about the myriad ways to approach the problems we tackle. We have never been static, nor should we be.
Katherine Matsumoto
Senior Director of Internal Communications
Katherine admits that when she first started at Recursion in 2016, she felt intimidated by how much there was to learn about drug discovery. Biology is complex, and her role as Senior Director of Internal Communications requires a deep understanding of both department-specific and company goals. Katherine finds herself constantly learning in order to translate strategy into specific capabilities and timelines. To keep up with the demands of her job, Katherine assigned herself an additional, fake job title: "Chief Understander."
Over time, she realized that her initial feelings were not uncommon. Recognizing an opportunity to develop resources for her teammates, Katherine pioneered work on a key-word glossary, interdisciplinary teams playbook, bi-weekly office hours and hosting onboarding sessions. By making what we’re doing more accessible and cross-functional, we open the door to more ideas and faster innovation.
Katherine sees a fine line between learning and teaching, as articulated by our “We Learn” value, and is committed to creating a safe space where others feel empowered to ask questions and propose unexpected solutions.
We deliver
We are unapologetic that our expectations for delivery are extraordinarily high. We have the potential to radically improve the lives of millions of people, and we do not want any of them to wait a day longer than is necessary. There is urgency to our existence. The deep caring for our people is an enabler for them to rise to these expectations.
Lawrie Allred
Operational Intelligence Engineer
Lawrie joined Recursion in February of 2017 as our 56th employee. They serve as Operations Intelligence Engineer on the Technology Development Team, collaborating with the High Throughput Screening’s (HTS) team to improve throughput and quality in the lab.
Lawrie initially worked on the HTS team, which they refer to as the “lab workhorse” responsible for everything that runs on Recursion’s platform. At that time, we were at the cutting edge of lab science by running one hundred 384-plates per week (~38,400 experiments). Over the last four years, Lawrie’s in-depth knowledge of Recursion’s automation platform has earned them the reputation of being able to translate a request or suggestion into a working tool at “wizard-like” speed.
Today, we’re doing 40x the number of weekly experiments as we surpass one thousand 1536-well plates per week (~1,536,000 experiments). Lawrie attributes the team’s success to a collective sense of urgency. The team’s key behaviors and mindsets related to speed, goal-orientation and tenacity reflect our “We Deliver” value.
Our expectations for delivery are extraordinarily high because we have the potential to radically improve the lives of millions of people. We do not want any of them to wait a day longer than is necessary, and the HTS Lab and Tech Development teams are essential in fueling our progress.
We act boldly with integrity
No company changes the world or reinvents an industry without being bold. Part of being bold is creating a culture where failure is embraced if it leads to learning and growth. Boldness, however, must be balanced; not by timidity, but by doing the right thing even when no one is looking. We lead with data, optimize relationships for the long-term, and aim for the highest levels of integrity in everything we do.
Jacob Cooper
Data Scientist
When Jacob joined Recursion as a Scientist on the Biology team in the summer of 2019, we were just learning how to build high-dimensional disease models using CRISPR. His team pitched developing new CRISPR methods that would enable our platform to screen the entire human genome for new disease models, which would allow a massive jump forward in our mapping efforts.
They didn’t know exactly how they were going to accomplish their ambition, but part of being bold is creating a culture where failure is embraced if it leads to learning and growth. There was limited, but convincing, data to support the creation of the map, and the committee trusted their rationale.
The team was given the go-ahead to run experiments and discover if their bold idea could change the Recursion platform in big or small ways, or maybe not at all. In every way, this was Jacob and his team living up to our “We Act Boldly with Integrity” value, which guides us to take big bets in pursuit of our mission.
The experiments worked and massively accelerated Recursion’s efforts to map human biology.
We are One Recursion
We operate with a ‘company first, functions second’ mentality. Our success comes from working as one interdisciplinary team.
Evelyn Jaime
Research Associate Manager
Evelyn joined Recursion’s Vivarium (RV) Team based in Milpitas, California as a research associate in 2019. The team’s primary focus is to balance animal care and science, while holding everything they do to the highest standards of quality. They also carry out in vitro experiments, providing concrete data that guides the creation of the map.
Since joining Recursion just over two years ago, Evelyn has rapidly been promoted to manage and train the other research associates in the Vivarium. Leading by example, Evelyn maintains a positive attitude and growth mindset as she balances the needs of the in vivo staff, scientists, project leads, and department as a whole.
Evelyn and the Vivarium team serve as prime examples of our “One Recursion” value. Regardless of if a team member is based in the RV, HQ in SLC or working from home, we’re all united by our shared mission: decode biology to radically transform the lives of patients.
We derive our philosophy of corporate social responsibility from our mission: “Decoding biology to radically improve lives.” In considering how to “radically improve lives,” our scope includes the lives of patients and those who love them (impacted by our innovations), the lives of our employees and their families (impacted by our generous benefits, inclusive culture, opportunities to learn and grow and fair compensation), and the lives of those in communities where we work.
We focus on areas of impact that are aligned with our values and our strengths, and this guides our philosophy for corporate social responsibility. Given that, we are active in the following areas:
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in technology and biopharma - e.g., we put immense focus on DEI internally to build our company with intention and act as role models for others.
The growth and sustainability of our local life science and technology ecosystems - e.g., we were a founding sponsor and member of BioHive, helping to build and highlight the life science industry in Utah, and we re-purposed our prior headquarters to launch Altitude Lab
The promotion of sustainable environmental practices - e.g., we chose our current headquarters to maximize public transit utilization and received an award for being one of the most ‘bike-friendly’ startups in the country from Bike League.
