Women in pharma

Iona Everson from PMGroup spoke to Ulrike Graefe-Mody, global head of retinal health at Boehringer Ingelheim, about her career path and how female representation in the industry has changed over the past two decades

Iona Everson (IE): You’ve held roles across a range of therapy areas over more than 20 years at Boehringer Ingelheim. Can you tell me more about what led you to your current position?
Ulrike Graefe-Mody (UGM): I think the story of my career path has three main chapters that took me along the value chain of drug development from bench to bedside. I was trained as a clinical scientist in clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and that was also my entry level position in pharma.

I was then fortunate to see two of my assets in a new indication move from early to late clinical stages, through submission and launches, to become blockbusters. That is a rare opportunity for drug developers to actually witness and it was a tremendous learning experience for me. During that period, I moved into this new therapy area as the head of early clinical development and then led the medical leads across several indications. That gave me the opportunity to apply the learnings that I took from those two assets to earlier stages of development. My key task was to set up clinical teams and programmes in areas that were new to Boehringer Ingelheim, and also to me, such as metabolism-associated liver diseases, obesity and eye diseases. I worked closely with my colleagues from marketing and commercial to develop strategies for these new areas and that brought me closer to the value side of the business, which I really started to enjoy.

I then enrolled in an executive MBA at Mannheim Business School in Germany, which was an excellent complement to the work I did in my daily job and allowed me to have a better understanding of what I was planning to do next.

The third chapter was when the eye diseases team developed so successfully that Boehringer Ingelheim decided to separate it into a new therapy area. I had the opportunity to lead this across functions and this has been my role over the past five years.

IE: Can you tell me more about what you’ve learned about growing and leading a team in a pipeline therapy area?
UGM: I would be nothing without my high-performing, cross-functional leadership team. Having the right mix of people is absolutely key to me. If you think of a business unit in the three phases of ‘build, grow and maintain’, we were certainly in the ‘build’ phase over the past few years and are now slowly moving into the ‘grow’ phase.

‘I would be nothing without my high-performing, cross-functional leadership team – having the right mix of people is absolutely key for me’

People also have different work preferences, so I was actively looking for those who enjoy building new organisations and who are used to acting with speed and a high level of accountability. I think, depending on the business you are leading, you might be looking for different types of people who you want to add to your leadership team.

IE: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you have faced as the leader of a global team and how have you navigated those?
UGM: We try to develop solutions for all markets, so it makes sense to have people from different markets come into the global team and bring their perspectives and expertise. That creates a great diversity from an educational, behavioural and cultural standpoint, which fosters the creativity that we want, but can also be challenging from time to time. I think the biggest challenge is communication, both verbal and non verbal.

We communicate in English, but this is not most of the team’s first language. I think we have about two or three people from Germany, a couple from Asia and three to five Americans. The rest are from all over Europe, including Portugal, Italy, France and the Netherlands. I might be forgetting some now, but it’s a wonderful mix.

Having such a diverse team can create additional challenges and complexities, and can also sometimes result in funny situations. Non-verbally, people might interpret situations, reactions or statements differently, depending on their cultural backgrounds. For example, I’m very direct and clear in my own communication style, and some people found that a bit unusual until they realised that this is just my way.

I set a personal challenge to make sure the team is not only balanced in terms of gender, but also background. I did parts of my PhD in the US and absolutely thrived in the international, multicultural setting that I found there. Joining the corporate organisation at Boehringer Ingelheim allowed me to work in a very intercultural community that could be located anywhere in the world and it’s an environment that I take a lot of inspiration from.

I certainly don’t have a perfect blueprint for how to navigate complex, global, diverse teams. What worked for me and my team was to set, and continuously reinforce, a clear interaction framework on what is and is not acceptable as a behaviour, no matter where you come from.

IE: You mentioned gender balance. As a woman, do you feel you have faced any barriers as you’ve advanced to leadership positions?
UGM: That’s an interesting question. I think I was fortunate to have had great male and female supporters for my professional development and I’m not aware of barriers from my organisation related to my gender. If there were any, I might have just ignored them.

Instead, the limitations I faced were consequences of the personal choices I made after starting a family and having two children. My husband and I both pursued our careers and neither of us wanted to excel at the expense of the other. It was quite a struggle with both of us working full time at different places. However, after more than a decade of weekend commutes, we made some conscious choices in favour of reuniting the family. That limited the degree of freedom we had to operate professionally for a certain period of time, but my organisation accepted that and kept supporting me. And as time went on and things changed, there was more flexibility.

IE: What are some of the defining moments of your career?
UGM: I’m very passionate about creating value through innovation and I think a defining moment in my career was when the two drugs that I mentioned earlier, which I worked on for about ten years, were finally put into the hands of people with diabetes. We could see how well they were received, and that was a moment when I really felt that my work made a difference to people. That feeling still inspires me every day because it gives me the reassurance that my work matters.

IE: How has female representation in pharma changed over the past two decades?
UGM: From my perspective, it has changed significantly over the past two decades. I was often the only female in the room for about the first ten years of my professional life, and that was the norm. At the time, I always wanted to have a female role model, but I just couldn’t find any. I was lucky to learn from exceptional male leaders, yet that was something that I was always looking for.

That has changed tremendously. Now there’s a much more balanced mix of genders in our teams and also many female leaders. For me personally, the most impactful sign of change is to see female leaders now on all levels of the organisation, including our Board of Managing Directors.

I think we can still do better at the senior executive level, but I also see a much greater awareness of this topic and a willingness to address it.

‘I was often the only female in the room for about the first ten years of my professional life, and that was the norm’

IE: What is your view of the importance of mentors in the pharmaceutical business?
UGM: I think it’s helpful to have both female and male mentors for different questions and for different periods in your career. When I started my family, I would have loved to have a female mentor who was in a similar situation and maybe had similar struggles. That is why I now spend a significant part of my time trying to offer that to younger professionals, predominantly females. I give them a sounding board, show them that it can be done and that they can still pursue a very fulfilling professional life.

However, I also think that male mentors can be very helpful for women, because sometimes men just tell you to ‘get over [your reluctance] and be clear about what you want’.

I think that can be useful, because sometimes women can be less forthcoming and can find it difficult to be blunt, so if someone invites you to ‘just say what you have to say’, it can be very helpful.

IE: What advice would you give to the next generation of women joining the industry?
UGM: I’m extremely impressed by many of the next gen women when I see how professional, self-confident and bold they are in interviews. I think we’ve already come a long way, so I can also learn a lot from them.

I still see many people struggle when they take pregnancy and maternity leave and this suddenly interrupts their career path. At this point, they have to decide for themselves which priorities they want to set and what kind of compromises they are willing to take.

And that’s something that can apply to women and men equally, for example when men decide to take longer paternity leave or when either parent is working part time. But they still don’t want to affect their career aspirations within the company.

The advice that I would give is to take the time to decide where you want to be. Find out where you stand, what it is that you want, and understand the compromises you’ll need to make. Then go to your organisation and fight for what you want, whether it’s a full-time role or splitting your time between your family and your career for a while. Ultimately, you need to stand up for yourself – don’t wait for others to do it for you.

Iona Everson is Group Managing Editor and Emily Kimber is Deputy Editor, both at PMGroup