Illumina Embraces ESG

On October 28, Illumina hosted its second annual virtual Environment, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) Investor Event – a great opportunity to highlight how these concepts have been integrated in our business. ?

I joined Francis deSouza, CEO; Aimee Hoyt, Chief People Officer; Salli Schwartz, VP of Investor Relations, and Sharon Vidal, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility Together, we detailed Illumina’s long-term ESG strategy and reviewed our focus areas.?

Key themes we shared:

·???????We continue to respond to growing stakeholder expectations for ESG leadership with an emphasis on transparency, climate action, and progressive human capital programs.

·???????Our ESG strategy centers on five pillars: Access to Genomics, Empowering our Communities, Integrating Environmental Sustainability, Nurturing our People, and Operating Responsibly.

·???????We are on track to meet our 2030 targets as we embed ESG in our strategic plan and annual corporate goals to create long-term shareholder value.

·???????Our annual CSR reporting is designed to proactively communicate our ESG programs, targets, and progress. We are recognized as an industry leader for our ESG disclosures and program.

·???????We have made great progress since our inaugural ESG investor event last November. We are among the first companies in the world to achieve validated Net Zero emission targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. We also recently launched our most sustainable sequencer yet, the NovaSeq? X.

?At Illumina, our mission is to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome.

Making genomics useful and accessible for all is our purpose and our promise—to our customers who work toward new discoveries every day and to the lives they touch.

?Our mission guides everything we do, from our business decisions to our ESG efforts. We seek to deepen our impact on human health by championing patients, our people, our communities, and the planet.

?Expanding Access to Genomics

?We believe genomics should be available to the many. Not just the rich or lucky.

?We are driving innovation and affordability to democratize genomics and increase the diversity of genomics data.

?We recently introduced NovaSeq X, our most powerful sequencer to date. The new NovaSeq series increases throughput, accuracy, efficiency, sustainability, affordability.?

?We continue to partner to remove barriers of access, educate the healthcare community, seek expanded reimbursement coverage, and invest in genomic startups to broaden the ecosystem.

?Genomic data is the blueprint for everything from identifying new diseases to developing precision drugs and the data sets must be equitable. Currently, 87 percent of individuals included in genomic studies of disease risk are of European ancestry. Only 2% of genomic data is from African?individuals. But, 17% of the world’s population is African. There is much work to do to expand the diversity of the genomics data diversity.

We will continue to develop technology that provides unprecedented access to the genome, with more data processing power, more efficiency, and greater affordability.

?Watch a replay of the broadcast here . Read the full presentation here .