If you haven’t worked in pharma before, the sector can seem overwhelming. But look a little further and you’ll find a wealth of opportunities, from marketing to drug discovery – and all underpinned with the same ethos: to bring the right treatments to patients sooner. “I have a sense of purpose when I wake up,” says Ouali Omani, head of franchise marketing for neuroscience at Roche UK. “What I do has an impact on people’s lives – and is driven by science.”
At Roche, the mission is simple, says head of talent Andrew Armes: to meet unmet medical needs – now. “There are lots of people suffering from diseases or conditions that either have no treatment, or are receiving inadequate or outdated treatment,” he says. “We focus on providing solutions to people who either have no hope or their current treatment is limited.” Founded 123 years ago, its tenets are still the same today: a part family-owned business, not as answerable to the whims of the market as other biotechs, which believes in doing good for society.
At Roche’s UK pharma headquarters in Welwyn Garden City, around 1,700 employees work in a huge variety of roles. Nelson Kinnersley, director and Welwyn site head for biostatistics, joined Roche in 2000 and has been there ever since. His expertise is in drug development; at the moment, he’s heading up a group of statisticians developing new medicines for leukaemia and lymphoma. It’s their job to help design vital clinical trials, which will evaluate how effective those drugs are in patients. According to independent research cited by Kinnersley, the average new drug takes eight to 10 years to develop and costs between $1.5bn and $2bn, so it’s vital to concentrate on the ones that achieve the best outcomes for patients.
“Doing now what patients need next really resonates with me,” he says. “As someone who is trained in a mathematical discipline, you could go into many sectors – finance, for example. But I find working in new medicine development really inspiring. We are given great autonomy in our roles, and we are actively encouraged to learn and develop.”
Alison Elliott began her career at Roche in 2010 and has seen first-hand how the company has encouraged development. She started in medical sales, meeting clinicians and discussing the clinical benefits of a medicine. “But then I became aware that sometimes they were not permitted to prescribe the products that they wanted to,” she says. “I wanted to understand more about the gatekeepers who were preventing the access to medicine. So I moved into access, which is all about identifying barriers to patients getting treatment and working with the NHS to remove those barriers and help patients get access to treatment faster.” She’s recently been promoted again to access innovation lead at the company.
Every year, she says, she’s enhanced not just her technical skills but also her leadership skills, and has just completed a master’s in strategic marketing leadership at Henley Business School, part of the fourth cohort of Roche employees to do so. “Roche really believes in its people,” she says. “It sees people as an asset. It also understands that to be sustainable long-term as a company, you need to invest in your people.”
Roche employees come from many different disciplines – Omani has a degree from a French business school, Kinnersley has a degree in mathematics, while Elliott’s background is in biology – and the company is encouraging those who don’t already work in pharma to consider the sector. Claire Jarvis, recently promoted to integrated franchise lead, began her career in the NHS as a pharmacist, before deciding to give pharma a try for a year, “to see how I got on” – 10 years later, she’s still at Roche.
“I love bringing new medicines to patients, and while I felt I could do that in the NHS, I wanted to get closer to the science and the newer medicines,” she says. “Joining Roche enabled me to do that. I’ve been in roles including the medical information team, where anyone can call us and ask us about our medicines. I’ve looked after clinical trial programmes and recently I’ve been in more commercial roles, helping get those drugs out there and working with NHS England.”
There are also plenty of opportunities elsewhere in the global company. Omani’s career progression within Roche has taken him to Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Switzerland and now the UK. “It’s really open in terms of opportunities to move around countries and positions,” he says. “I’ve been able to build my own career, my connections, and my networks. The DNA of this company is around not going for short-term benefits, but sustaining it for the next generation.”
At Roche, it’s about working for something bigger than yourself, says Armes. That doesn’t appeal to everyone, of course. Yet, more and more people, he says, are looking for something more than just money in their working lives. “Of course, we have good packages and money is important,” he says. “But that shouldn’t be your prime motivation for joining. Along with our sense of purpose, we also have a great sense of belonging: a familial feeling. We are looking for people who want that, and also feel that they have a lot to offer the world.”
