Boston Globe 9/17/25

“Each morning for eight weeks, Douley Olivier dragged himself out of bed at 5 a.m. to drop his girlfriend at work so he could drive her car across Dorchester to train as a lab technician in the biotechnology industry.

Each day for six hours, he took classes and practiced techniques, such as using a micropipette to draw exactly 1 millimeter of blood-red food dye and deposit it into beakers of water. And when he was done, he traded his white lab coat for an apron and worked evening catering jobs.

Olivier knew the odds were stacked against him as he tried to make the transition from chef’s assistant to lab technician during a sharp downturn in the biotech sector. But still, when the alarm went off in the early hours of the morning, he again found his way to the Biotech Career Foundations training program.

For Olivier and his classmates, the prospects of higher pay, regular hours, comprehensive benefits, and the chance to grow at name-brand companies are worth the risk of completing the training without a job. At the worst, they say, they are gaining skills that will position them for new opportunities when biotech rebounds.”

This article was written by Marin Wolf and originally posted on bostonglobe.com