PFIZER WOMEN ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF SCIENCE TO SOLVE PRESSING GLOBAL HEALTH ISSUES
In recent years, Pfizer has stepped up its efforts to advance and demonstrate the company’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. The pharmaceutical and biotech global giant saw its representation for women at the vice president level and above increase 3.4 percentage points from 2020 to 41.5% in 2021. Pfizer has a 2025 goal of 47% parity globally for women at the vice president level and above.
Pfizer’s corporate culture is based on four fundamental pillars: courage, excellence, joy and equity. Above all, it is equity that drives Pfizer’s commitment to furthering the advancement of women in healthcare, notes Oualae Alami. She points to such companywide initiatives as Women Inspiring Women. The year-long leadership program targets colleagues in senior roles to foster a community of leaders and accelerate their growth with tailored executive coaching, dedicated mentoring, and sponsoring, explains Alami, a benefactor of the program. She is purposeful about paying it forward. “Championing each other as women leaders and increasing men allyship across the organization are critical to change the equation,” she adds.
Alami is currently leading over 200 colleagues in the Hospital Business unit across Western Europe. Her team partners with governments and scientific societies to develop and execute strategies and initiatives that advance the management and treatment of some of today’s pressing global public health issues like COVID-19 and antimicrobial resistance. She is working on Pfizer’s innovative oral COVID-19 treatment, authorized under emergency use in the United States for mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults and some at high-risk pediatric patients (see statement below). “COVID-19 accelerated and transformed how we work in the Hospital group. When you understand that your role can have an impact on patients’ lives, you work at lightspeed to help patients during the pandemic,” she says.
Building Upon A Strong Innovative Core
Pfizer scientist Annaliesa Anderson, Ph.D., led the development of the first authorized oral treatment for COVID-19. She is the new head of the drugmaker’s 1,000-people strong Vaccine Research and Development (R&D) group. Prior, she served as Senior Vice President/Chief Scientific Officer for Bacterial
Vaccines and Hospital within the vaccine R&D organization. Under her leadership, Pfizer advanced into clinical development and licensure of vaccines for the prevention of diseases due to Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis. She notes Pfizer has a reputation for having a strong, innovative core that is built from science to help bring therapies that extend and improve patients’ lives.
Like many other Pfizer executives, Anderson actively mentors and sponsors colleagues, helping to advance other women’s careers. “We have a lot of very accomplished, strong women in leadership positions across the organization,” she says. “I think it always helps when you have that visibility; it gives people perspective that it is normal and that they can get there.”
Embracing A Science Will Win Philosophy
Another Pfizer executive leading by example is Josephine Wang, Global Procure to Pay Process Owner and Global Business Services (GBS) Dalian Site Lead. The Dalian, China site houses over 600 colleagues who work on financial services, human resources operations, sourcing and enterprise solutions, as well as compliance and digital services. Wang leads the Global Procure to Pay Process team that supports all Pfizer business units in purchasing to payment related matters, including the management of global vendors, purchase orders, invoices, as well as payments for goods and services.
Wang fully embraces Pfizer’s “Science Will Win” campaign, highlighting the power of science in innovating and delivering healthcare solutions to patients. “It is not only a slogan,” she says. “It’s also about how we transfer science into production to benefit all people. It’s about how we leverage technology and science to continuously optimize our operations and the way we go to market for the benefit of patients. When I think of this, I’m fully inspired by the things we are doing.”