When Kestrel Biologics raised $64 million and promised to nearly double its Bellwater workforce, executives openly worried a persistent skills gap would slow the hiring. Two years later, the company says it hit the target anyway, helped along by a labor market shift nobody at Kestrel had planned for.
The company’s Bellwater headcount now stands at roughly 340 employees, up from about 195 when it closed its $64 million Series C funding round two years ago, according to figures Chief Executive Elena Marchetti shared with the Times. Marchetti said the hiring nearly matches the roughly 150 new positions the company projected at the time of the funding round, a target executives had cautioned might be difficult to hit given the region’s ongoing shortage of trained biotech manufacturing technicians.
Hitting the target, with an assist from a rival’s setback
“Two years ago I told this paper I wasn’t sure we’d get all the way to 150 new hires because of the skills gap,” Marchetti said. “We got there, but I’d be dishonest if I said it was entirely because our own training pipeline caught up in time.” Roughly a quarter of the new hires, by Marchetti’s estimate, came from outside Bellwater’s existing biotech workforce, including a wave of manufacturing technicians who joined Kestrel following layoffs at Ridgeline Therapeutics after a disappointing clinical trial result.
Dr. Samuel Iyer, the Bellwater State University labor economist who has closely tracked the region’s biotech hiring, said Kestrel’s reliance on a competitor’s misfortune complicates the clean success story the company’s hiring numbers might otherwise tell. “It’s genuinely good news that Kestrel hit its target,” Iyer said. “But if you dig into how, a meaningful chunk of that came from one company’s bad quarter rather than the training pipeline actually closing the skills gap the way we’d all like to believe it has.”
It’s genuinely good news that Kestrel hit its target. But a meaningful chunk of that came from one company’s bad quarter, not the training pipeline actually closing the skills gap.
Dr. Samuel Iyer, labor economist, Bellwater State University
A more complicated internal picture
The hiring milestone also arrives as the company navigates an organizing effort among some of its lab technicians over scheduling and safety-staffing concerns, a complication Marchetti acknowledged has tempered what would otherwise be an unambiguous celebration. “I’d love for this to be a simple good-news story about hitting a hiring number,” Marchetti said. “It’s a good-news story with an asterisk, because rapid growth has clearly put some strain on the floor that we’re still working through.”
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said Kestrel’s hiring surge has had visible ripple effects beyond Foundry Row, pointing to the chamber’s own recent holiday retail report showing the strongest downtown shopping season in a decade, a gain she attributed partly to the spending power of newly hired biotech workers. “Whatever complications came with getting there, 145 new paychecks in this city is 145 new paychecks,” Nakamura said. “That money moves through the rest of the local economy whether or not the hiring process was tidy.”
Marchetti said the company does not have specific plans for further large-scale hiring in the immediate future and intends to focus on integrating its recent hires, including training the technicians who joined from Ridgeline on Kestrel’s specific manufacturing protocols. She said the company’s next major milestone, a clinical trial result for its lead gene-therapy candidate, will likely determine whether another hiring wave follows within the next two years.
Council Member Luis Bettencourt, who represents Foundry Row, said he views the hiring figures as a genuine economic win for his district but said he has heard directly from constituents concerned that the same growth has made Foundry Row less affordable. “I can hold two things at once,” Bettencourt said. “I’m glad Kestrel added 145 jobs. I also hear from people in my district every week who can’t afford to live anywhere near where those jobs are.”
- Kestrel Biologics’ Bellwater workforce has grown from roughly 195 to 340
- Roughly a quarter of new hires came from outside the existing local biotech workforce
- Some new hires joined following layoffs at rival Ridgeline Therapeutics
- Company is also navigating an organizing effort among lab technicians
Marchetti said she expects the company’s next public update to focus less on headcount and more on whether the rapid growth of the past two years has been adequately supported with training, scheduling and safety systems. “Hitting a hiring number was always going to be the easier half of this,” she said. “Making sure the company that grew that fast still runs the way it’s supposed to is the part we’re proving out now.”
Bettencourt said he plans to ask the company for a more detailed breakdown of where its new hires are living, given ongoing concerns in his Foundry Row district about whether biotech workers’ wages are outpacing what longtime residents can afford in rent. Marchetti said the company does not currently track employee housing locations but said she would consider gathering that data if the council formally requested it. “I understand why he’s asking,” she said. “I just don’t want to overpromise on data we don’t currently have clean numbers for.”