A Farewell to Stan Gloss: Leading with Generosity and Other Words of Wisdom
By Bio-IT World Staff
June 10, 2025 | BioTeam co-founder and host of Trends from the Trenches Stan Gloss is passing the torch to BioTeam CEO Ari Berman. Gloss founded BioTeam with William van Etten, Chris Dagdigian, and Michael Athanas 22 years ago and built an organization that focuses on helping scientists find solutions, manage data, and accelerate scientific innovation. In his last episode of Trends from the Trenches, Gloss is interviewed by Berman to discuss the founding of BioTeam and words of wisdom for those who are starting their own company.
Leading with Generosity
As one of the co-founders, Gloss led the company with the intention of helping others. To start a successful company, there needs to be a solid foundation built on a common goal that everyone shares. For BioTeam, the goal was to do good science and help good science, according to Gloss. Their mission was—and still is—to support scientists in overcoming challenges and developing solutions.
“One of the lessons that I've taught everybody in the company is to lead with generosity,” he elaborated. “Be generous with your time [and] with your thoughts—help be there. If you can help somebody and it doesn't turn into a piece of business, so be it. You've helped somebody, and that's part of the core DNA that I hope to have left the company with.”
Forge and Maintain Strong Relationships
Team members look to each other for collaboration and guidance while clients seek out experts for knowledge and advice. As such, it is important for an individual to realize the role that he or she plays as part of the team and to learn from one another in order to keep improving. But this can only be achieved through maintaining good relationships. Trust is needed to solve the problem, whether it’s with a coworker or a client.
“Everything boils down to a relationship, and relationships are delicate,” Gloss explained. “It’s not the money, it’s not the project, it’s not anything else. It’s always about the relationships and how I can deliver value.” By keeping solid, trusting relationships, one can provide value and contribute to making a difference.
Embrace the Unconventional
Gloss also discussed how living with dyslexia has greatly benefited him in ways that most people might not consider. Dyslexia is generally viewed as a learning disability that affects a person’s reading comprehension and skills. Because of the difficulties it can cause, many people with dyslexia find creative workarounds to reading, such as filling in words and predicting the meaning of the sentence through context.
“It turns out that those skills in creative problem solving and looking at incomplete data and trying to derive meaning from incomplete data turn out to be valuable skills for an entrepreneur,” Gloss noted.
Gloss found dyslexia to be an opportunity to approach problems in an unconventional way. And by embracing unconventional methods, companies can find themselves discovering innovative ideas that could be the next solution. “Don’t listen to the naysayers, and don’t let people define what you can and cannot do because you’ve been given a label.”
After 22 years at BioTeam, Gloss is leaving a legacy that will continue to make a difference in an industry of innovators and progress. “I always said that we at BioTeam probably will never win a Nobel Prize, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we help somebody win a Nobel Prize,” he commented. “At the end of the day, it was always about solving somebody’s problem. And if we could solve it, we helped them.”
To learn more about Gloss' doctoral dissertation on dyslexia, BioTeam’s backstory, and other nuggets of knowledge, listen to the newest episode of Trends from the Trenches.