Teva

General Manager UK & Ireland

What is your role at Teva and what does this involve?
As General Manager for the UK & Ireland, I lead the commercial business – making sure that we continue to do all we can to improve the lives of patients. As one of the largest suppliers of medicines in both the UK and Ireland, Teva plays a really important role in the health ecosystems of both countries. I’m proud to lead a great team that are constantly driving the business forward, innovating, and always putting our patients and customers at the heart of everything that we do.

How does Teva ensure that inclusion and diversity are central to its operations?
Inclusion and diversity are not just nice to have, they’re an absolute must for any organisation and something I’m really passionate about. By making space for everyone – people with different backgrounds, life experiences and outlooks – we enrich our business so much and ultimately will perform better for patients and customers and this is something that Teva really recognises. I’m personally leading a Europe-wide initiative looking at how we can do more around inclusion and diversity, and closer to home our UK & Ireland inclusion and diversity champions’ network is doing great work looking at how we can create a more positively inclusive environment for all our current and future employees.

Has the company seen any direct successes from any equality initiatives?
We’ve definitely seem improvements over the last few years – we’ve recently introduced new initiatives to look at unconscious bias in our recruitment practices and there are some great ideas coming out of our inclusion and diversity group, with a real commitment across the company to take these initiatives forward. The whole organisation is really passionate about delivering on the change we need.

Can Teva’s leadership be considered inclusive?
I think we’re probably one of the more inclusive companies in the pharma industry; I know that I don’t see many other female General Managers around at industry events which is a shame. At Teva we’re definitely on a journey, with a lot of work still to do but it’s something that my leadership team and I are really passionate about.

Are diversity and inclusion high enough on pharma’s agenda?
My short answer is no, not yet. I think pharma talks a lot about inclusion and diversity, but if you look around the industry, its leadership is still pretty ‘pale, male and stale’. And it’s not just about gender, race and ethnicity; as an industry we’ve also got a long way to go to make ourselves more inclusive for people from different socio-economic backgrounds, people with disabilities or people with caring responsibilities for example. But the desire and appetite for change is there. We need to invest time and resources to make sure we get it right, as it’s so much more than just box-ticking. I’m proud that Teva has really taken this issue to heart, and I’m excited about the direction we’re going in.