AbbVie's general manager and Medicines Australia board member, Kirsten O'Doherty, talks to PharmaDispatch about the importance of diversity, laments the lack of women in senior leadership roles across industry, and says a collaborative approach to government is industry's only real option.
Question: What have been the key factors in the success of your own career?
I have been in the industry in for more than twenty years.
I started in medical, as a CRA, and then as a medical manager. I wanted to move to the commercial side of the business, so started as a sales representative, then product manager and then marketing manager. I had some regional roles based out of Sydney, then sales and marketing director. Most recently, I have been the general manager at Abbott and then at AbbVie for the last five years.
I think the breadth of roles has been enormously helpful. Having medical, sales, marketing, and I have a background in pharmacy and have done the company directors institute course. I have done a lot of continued learning. I think that diversity of skills has been enormously helpful.
I have consistently worked. I am married and have two beautiful girls, but I had very short maternity leaves, was very lucky in the environment I was in. It was very easy to come back. I did not have an actual career break during those maternity leaves and I came straight back into the role I was in.
I have had lots of opportunities for development in the companies I have been in, including project work based out of Australia.
The other factors being a willingness to be flexible, to travel and do the things that needed to be done to get the different experiences I have had.
Question: Why are there so few women in senior leadership roles in the pharmaceutical industry?
I think the reasons we have fewer females in senior, and not just in general manager roles - we have fewer females in senior leadership positions across the industry - is return from maternity leave.
I think what happens to a lot of women when they go on maternity leave is it creates a break in their career. When they come back, they either come back to a lesser role or a part-time role that ends up being a permanent part-time. I think it is important to create a flexible environment for people to return from maternity leave.
At AbbVie, we have 100 per cent return from maternity leave. We have not had anyone not return in recent years. We have also had people promoted whilst being on maternity leave.
A lot of people, when they do come back, it is part time but it is the role or the seniority of the role they left. Then they gradually work back into full time, or four days a week. They get a flexible working arrangement. This enables women to not lose their track in terms of career.
I think that is one key thing.
There is a period of time when kids are young, where career becomes quite challenging to manage, so you need to actively support families through that period.
It is not just about people returning part time but doing far more than that - really actively supporting and encouraging people to perform and continue to perform in a career is incredibly important.
I think the other factor is a lot of assumptions get made about women, their ability to work long hours and travel - to work in a certain style. The assumption can be made that, if you promote a woman into a senior position, she might not want to do weekend wok or long hours, travel. Again, I think those assumptions are unfounded, but people making decisions about promotions and recruitment sometimes have an unconscious bias, which can adversely affect people.
Question: Do companies pay a price for not promoting and ensuring diversity and equity?
Companies pay a large price in not managing work place diversity well. There is so much evidence to show that companies with great leadership diversity perform better. There are endless studies that show that. They are better at engaging their customers, they have higher engagement levels for their employees, they are more innovative, they have greater diversity of thinking.
There are so many positive benefits. It means you need to be active in managing it rather than passive.
At AbbVie, our engagement levels are at around 90 percent. We have been a great place to work for the last three years and we have just discovered we are a great place to work again this year.
Last year, we were ranked tenth amongst all large employers. I am not sure what our ranking is until we find out at the end of August, but we have also been on the list of most innovative companies for the last four years. So, you see those performance benefits when you do have a workforce that is really focused on managing diversity - not just at the workforce level but in senior management.
Question: You’re the only woman on the Board of Medicines Australia.
I think it is sad we have the imbalance. One thing I would do is encourage the female general managers we do have, and there are a number of them, to nominate. It is not as if women are nominating and not being voted on. Women are not nominating, so I would really encourage the other women in industry who are general managers to nominate, number one.
Secondly, I think the better question then becomes why are there fewer female general managers? Given the industry is largely, about 70 percent women, the leadership teams should also be about 70 percent women. Where that is not the case, they should be asking themselves what are we not doing to enable promotion within the companies? What are we not doing to support diversity in leadership?
It is not just women in senior management. It is diversity - the experience, diversity of culture, of backgrounds. You really do want to have an organisation that represents the people you are working with.
Question: Would more women on the Board change Medicines Australia?
I really strong believe having diversity gives you better outcomes. It is obviously one of the questions we have been thinking about in terms of board reform and the composition of the board.
It is also diversity of experience and diversity of knowledge. They are some of the things we are looking to with the board reform, so I think it is a good question and one we should keep asking ourselves.
How do we improve our outcomes and our performance based on diversity of experience? I think gender is one aspect. I think there are many more aspects to think about in terms of diversity, including do we have the best experience?
Question: What are the priorities for AbbVie and the wider industry for the next few years?
For AbbVie, it continues to be a really exciting time for us. Our R&D footprint in Australia is growing. It is growing and growing and it is something we are really excited about and very proud of.
We have got global teams coming out to try and meet some of our partners and continue that investment in Australia. This is something we want to continue to grow and highlight.
We have some new compounds coming to market. Oncology is our new growing area. It is very exciting.
So, from a company point of view, there is a lot happening and Australia is a great place to be.
Our focus will continue to be on our patients and bringing those medicines to our patients, but also on our people and very much being a great place to work, being the most innovative company, and for us remaining committed to our belief that diversity of leadership and in our employment base is really going to drive our performance.
As for industry, we have got to really focus on communicating the value we bring to Australia.
Things like the R&D investment is incredibly important and that is something everybody connects with. Politicians, the Australian public, everybody values the R&D investment - They value the new medicines coming to market that are created from that R&D.
Telling that story well is incredibly important and enables us to have really good conversations with everybody in terms of what are the common goals we all have.
It continues to be a really challenging fiscal environment for government. We need to understand that and how we work well with them in terms of the challenges they have in managing budgets and limited spend and how we can work with them in understanding that, but at the same time how do we continue to bring our innovative new medicines to market. I think working together, collaboratively, understanding the differences is going to be important and is that going to continue to be challenging? Yes. It is globally. It is something I think the better the job we do at making sure people understand, ultimately, what we do, it is easier to have those conversations about what people value and what we bring.
