Spotlight on Rising Leaders: Ryan Mazur and Carolina Serrano Martinez, Honored with the 2025 Emerging Leader Member of the Year Award
The 2025 ISPE International Honor Awards were held during the Membership Meeting and Awards Lunch during the 2025 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. The ceremony recognized ISPE members and contributors whose dedication and service exemplify what it means to Shape the Future of Pharma™. The Emerging Leader Member of the Year Award was presented to Ryan Mazur and Carolina Serrano Martinez. Each year, this award honors an ISPE member who is deeply engaged with the Emerging Leader Community of Practice (CoP) and other ISPE programs, showing rising leadership and a strong commitment to advancing the life sciences industries through collaboration.
Congratulations to Ryan Mazur
Ryan Mazur, Process Engineer II at Genesis AEC, used his time and experience to serve as the 2024 International Emerging Leader Hackathon Chair. Through this role, Ryan led a global team in planning the execution of the event, including developing the year’s problem statement, recruiting judges and coaches, and mentoring a wide range of participants. During the event, he sought to connect with the participants, answering questions related to the hackathon, but also broader questions regarding early career pathways and navigating the industry as a young professional.
Ryan also served as the Emerging Leader Chair of the North America-South America Affiliate Council (NASAAC) from 2024 to 2025. Recognizing the value of ISPE Emerging Leaders within the greater ISPE community, Ryan has made it his mission to use his role to assist ISPE Affiliates and Chapters with establishing student chapters at local colleges and universities. Moving ideas into action, he shares best practices and identifies next steps to assist the global group of ISPE leaders.
Since first attending an ISPE conference as an ISPE Foundation grant recipient in 2021, Ryan has served on five ISPE conference program committees, where he was closely involved in the planning of each of these events. At the local level, he served as the Student Affairs Chair on the ISPE Boston Area Chapter from 2022 to 2023 and then the Emerging Leader Chair from 2023 to 2024. From 2024 to present, he has also served on the ISPE Drug Shortages Initiative Team as a Young Professionals Committee (YPC) Regional Leader. In addition to these positions of leadership, Ryan is an active member of 10 different ISPE Communities of Practice and was recently elected the Emerging Leader Ex-Officio on the 2025-2026 ISPE International Board of Directors, remaining a steady presence within the wider ISPE community.
Congratulations to Carolina Serrano Martinez
Carolina Serrano Martinez, Sr. Engineer – API, Lebanon Plant 1 (LP1) at Eli Lilly & Company, became an ISPE Member in 2019. Upon joining, she founded the ISPE Texas A&M Student Chapter and served as the Emerging Leader Chair for the ISPE South Central Chapter from 2019 to 2021. Through these roles, Carolina began to recognize the value of a professional community and mentorship. Utilizing this experience, she partnered with ISPE International to launch Mentor ISPE, a global group mentorship program designed to group students and young professionals with those further along in their career, including executive level professionals. Through the program, more than 800 ISPE members have matched together, giving early career professionals a place to ask questions and senior professionals a chance to gain fresh perspectives.
In 2024, Carolina became the Emerging Leader Chair for NASAAC. While in her role, she led a group of ISPE Emerging Leaders who oversaw various student chapters across North and South America. Leveraging her knowledge of both Spanish and English, she developed resources including webinars to promote Mentor ISPE as a valuable resource to the student chapters. Carolina was also able to promote Mentor ISPE to the ISPE community through a Pharmaceutical Engineering article, “Mentor ISPE Launches for All Genders,” and for the broader life sciences industry via a Life Science Leader Magazine article, “I Could’ve Used a Mentorship Group; So I Created One”.
Carolina has also been invaluable in the planning of the 2023, 2024, and 2025 ISPE Facilities of the Future Conferences, serving on the conference Program Committee. Through her outreach, she secured participation from Eli Lilly & Company’s Synthetic Molecule Design and Development (SMDD) team. She also co-lead the Innovations in Manufacturing track at the 2025 conference, organizing presentations from a variety of industry leaders. Her efforts contributed to the major success of the 2025 ISPE Facilities of the Future Conference, which succeeded in drawing the largest number of attendees in the history of the conference.
Though their time with ISPE is just beginning, the impact of both Ryan and Carolina on the ISPE community has been astounding. Their leadership and mentorship inspire other young professionals within ISPE, their respective workplaces, and beyond. Learn more about Ryan, Carolina, and the other 2025 ISPE International Honor Awards winners.
The 2026 ISPE Honor Awards winners will be recognized at the 2026 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo, taking place 18-21 October 2026 in Washington, DC, United States and virtually. Nominations will open in March.
