This Girl KAM with Bharti Rai

Liv: Hi Bharti, welcome to This Girl KAM.

Bharti: Thank you very much for having me.

Liv: Oh, it’s a pleasure. Thank you for making the time to come on.

Okay. To get us going, could you start by sharing a little bit about your journey in the pharma and biotech industry today and maybe what inspired you to begin your career in this world?

Bharti: Yeah, when I was studying in college and my grad school, I wanted to do public sector, and I just had this desire to do something that had a huge public good or public service aspect. And I studied public policy. And when I came to the US, I joined consulting for eight years and did a lot of public sector consulting. There, I worked with every state government agency in the US doing these extensive transformative programs, not just focusing on healthcare. It was broad and wide, which is what I was looking for out of school, just the best learning experience. Consulting is great when you’re coming out of school.  I enjoyed my work with Health and Human Services, Medicaid, and I had a pivotal point with eight years of consulting to see whether I should continue down that track or join the industry. And again, being honest, it was 100% travel for eight years.  That made the decision when we wanted to start a family and have kids. And then I said, all right, if there’s an industry I would join closest to that public service or good, it was healthcare. And I got some opportunities in pharma, starting with the internal consulting group at one of the pharma companies. And that’s how I got into pharma.

Liv: Tell me more about you, Bharti. You mentioned there the importance of family to you. Tell me a little about your family, where you live now, and what you do outside work.

Bharti: Yes. I never imagined that I would be a New Jersey resident for over 20 years. When I was growing up, we travelled every few years. My dad was getting transferred a lot. I changed schools every three years or so. Not just schools but cities. And New Jersey is where I’ve lived the longest. These things happen. You don’t plan it. I ended up staying here after my grad school, met my husband, and had three kids.

Liv: Tell me a bit about your journey with data. You were listed as DataIQ’s top 10 most influential people in data.  Tell me a little about that and your thoughts on data and the impact on patient outcomes.

Bharti: Yeah,  my involvement in data happened by pure accident. And even now, I wouldn’t say I’m a data professional. I would say I’m a business professional who understands the language of data and digital, and   I honestly got involved because we had a ton of data issues. We were trying to implement a change in a little bit of our commercial model and strategy and realised that we don’t have the right customer master data to look at our accounts in a certain way and roll up how our customers do. And I got involved with that team, trying to figure out the issues and took on that MDM job.  Having zero experience in data. This was about nine years ago, maybe. I like to get my hands dirty, and from my consulting days, I learned how to take any problem and structure it, thinking bigger and broader. What are the people process and technology implications of this issue? Then, create a vision, get it done and solve it. Those skills helped me learn about data, working with cross-functional teams, and figuring out the root cause.  That was probably the hardest and most thankless job I would say I had because it was important but underappreciated and under-recognised by the business around us.  If you want to be customer-centric, you’ve got to get your customer data straight. That happened by pure accident. And then that led to a more strategic data officer role, bigger, broader portfolios with commercial operations, and some element of data and analytics. And that’s really how I got involved.

Liv: And then what about getting listed as this amongst the top 10 for data IQ? Was there something in particular that brought that about? 

Bharti: I don’t know! They said they would like to nominate me to do that. Our team collectively did a lot of transformation work in the pharma industry in the last five or six years. Also,  I like to contribute to events and dialogues, particularly in the data area.  At least eight, maybe even less now, six to eight years ago in healthcare is when I think these roles started being seen as more strategic because the initial tendency was, oh, we need a data guru, come and fix all the systems. And yes, you probably started with a more technical person in that role.  And then you spend all this money, you got your data platform, you went to the cloud, you got all the pipes automated, the business rules sorted out. And then the realisation dawned: I’ve spent all this money on fixing data, but where is the ROI, and where’s the business impact?  And I think these roles have started becoming more strategic, business-oriented, and impact-oriented. And it all depends on where your company is and where you’re starting. That right mix of functional and technical is key in these roles.  I have done some work to study how the industry is thinking about the success of these types of roles because you probably know that the tenure for data analytics leaders is very short. And I’ll sum it down to a couple of things: lofty expectations on ROI and impact, the operating model not set up well, cultural change is huge. It doesn’t just require your plumbing to be fixed. Business leaders must embrace it, act like they believe in data-driven decision-making, and model that behaviour.  And it’s a tough change to drive.

Liv: Let’s dig into that bit about the culture change. From your experience, have you seen that done well?

Bharti: Culture change is personal, and it’s in pockets, and a few drops in the end make up the ocean. I don’t know if it’s ever complete. , I have seen top pockets, areas, and time periods where we’re moving in the right direction. Let’s call it that. And then we tend to disrupt a good thing if it’s going right. , we have this tendency in business to drive transformation, and if you’re not keeping up with the times, you have to change.  But change too often, especially when disrupting something on the path, is not good either.  Knowing what needs incremental improvement, radical change and what you need to pivot a little bit is important. I’ve seen examples of where it’s done well in all these periods. And where it’s done well is when you’re making decisions in whatever function it is, finance, marketing, sales. You are using the insight and the analytics output as part of your daily job and business process. And the leaders model it when you’re having meetings, you’re looking at data and reports and KPIs. You’re discussing decisions based on that. And then, slowly, the organisation starts to follow whatever process you set for them. , when it is led from the top, change tends to stick if we are all modelling the behaviour for an extended period of time.

Liv: Yeah, that makes sense. We’re at quite an exciting time in the world of digital technology and AI. What are your thoughts about how the next five years will look? How will the industry start to shape?

Bharti: This is my view on all digital health, data, automation, and AI in healthcare, all these topics. I will say a couple of things. Often, if we are looking for a problem or a solution for the technology, it’s the wrong approach. We sometimes get enamoured with technology solutions and start looking for the problems we can apply to versus backwards. Starting with the problem and what technology can help solve that, or what solution, vendor, product, or software. Two or three thousand plus vendors are in this space, loosely called data, digital and tech.  That’s one insight. Now, what I’ll say is I think the innovation is fantastic. I have the utmost respect for entrepreneurs. It’s not easy. I’ve had one role, being an entrepreneur in a huge company. Not easy outside, not easy inside. To begin a start-up, something from scratch…  the amount of innovation there and people trying to disrupt healthcare is amazing. I do think, though, we have too many solutions that are not connected.  Everybody’s taking a slice of the huge problems that we have in healthcare and trying to come up with a solution. My wish for the next five years, and I don’t know how to do this, is that we take a little bit of a more interoperable approach.  We took a broader lens at solving these instead of many point solutions solving one thing. But honestly, depending on where the funding comes from, they are under pressure to make money and get ROI.  Somehow, we have to balance this, connecting the dots in healthcare, and that’s a huge task.

The second thing is truly disrupting healthcare, whether it’s selling drugs for lower cost, getting rid of some of the intermediaries or changing care delivery from pay-for-service to VBC, whatever these huge disruptions in healthcare are.  Coming back to your digital topic, we all know that we need to digitise healthcare. But not all aspects are ready to be digitised either. It’s very complex; you have a lot of older patients who don’t want to be working on an app. They’d want that personal touch.   This is an industry where you have to understand where digitisation makes sense and where you need a personal touch, but on the whole, the whole experience in the U.S. is extremely complex, very manual and very inefficient. My hope in the next 5, maybe 10, 15 years is that we move the industry to a more efficient, less complex and more patient experience-oriented approach.

Liv: It will be interesting to see what we look like in the coming years. Let’s move away from the data side now. What are the things that motivate you outside of work?

Bharti: I’ve had this nagging feeling for years and years about doing a lot of volunteer community service outside work. I studied public policy because I wanted to make that my career. It didn’t happen that way. But there are always times when I think about how I can volunteer more.  I do a bit of that outside work.  Whether it’s donating some food to an area close by in Jersey where many people are looking for supplies, snacks, or food. I also volunteered with an organisation around foster children.    There are times when I get busy with work and kids and life where I’m not volunteering, and suddenly, I have these periods where I can’t sleep.  And when I reflect, it’s that aspect that’s missing in my life, which is service, community service.   That’s just something that speaks to me a lot. At some point, I hope I can do something major and big in that space. I don’t know what, but I’ve had that period, especially when I remember when my three kids were smaller; they’re two years apart, you can imagine, all of them under five and six.  And it was great. It was amazing. Work was going well. I had these amazing kids and started a family. But I remembered not being able to sleep for two or three days. And I’m like, what is going on? And I discovered it was because I wasn’t volunteering at all. I hadn’t volunteered a day in eight years. I like to do that. That’s one. And second, on a lighter note, I like to dance. And we do some performances regularly with this group that I dance with.

Liv: Fabulous! What kind of dancing?

Bharti: Indian, Bollywood dancing.

Liv: Oh, amazing. It’s fascinating that you get so much from the volunteering that you identify it as a root cause of not sleeping.  

Bharti: It’s related to the need to give something back. It was the reason that I started public policy and thought I would make a career out of it, but I went in a different direction.  It’s always been pretty strong, even through college. It just gives me a lot of fulfilment.

Liv: Thinking of that service focus, do you offer mentoring to anyone you work with? 

Bharti: I do. Again, I wish I did more of it. It’s always a function of what’s happening at work and outside. I do on and off, but probably not enough, I would say. There are these formal mentoring programs that I’ve done either at work or through organisations like the HBA, et cetera. But what I find is these informal connections where, and at some point in your career, that pivot happens, you realise that, okay, now it has to flip. You have to take different sides now because most of the folks calling you are looking for advice, and there’s something on their mind. And I think at some point when I woke up as a leader,

I started self-reflecting on what kind of leader I wanted to be. And I looked at what I did. I looked at myself. Honestly, I was blessed to have fantastic bosses throughout my career.

All male, by the way, I haven’t had a single female boss yet.  But they are amazing bosses. When I reflect back,  I’ve learned the good and the bad, right, from people I’ve looked at and my own journey of maybe not starting out as a great leader and then reflected and tried to improve and focus on things. And I think what we have going for us as women is we are naturally emotional and empathetic. I found that people get a different taste of leadership when they’re working with somebody who has a little bit more of that emotional touch, and they take a personal interest in the development of people. And sometimes, you do a lot of mentoring, coaching, and hand-holding, all in informal ways, to help develop your team. And I enjoy that.

Liv: When you reflect back on your career, we all lose touch with people who have been a big part of our lives, that’s just part of life, but do you ever think of one person in particular that you perhaps lost touch with that if you bumped into them in the street, you would say thank you? Someone who impacted you in a way maybe they didn’t even realise?

Bharti: I’ve had a few. I don’t know if there’s one person; I mean, the one person that has had a huge impact on my life is my dad. That’s the one person. The way he was. He retired as the chairman of one of India’s largest public sector banks. And I didn’t know how accomplished he was professionally. I guess I used to see it because sometimes we used to go on these visits with him to local, regional banks.  And they used to, in India, they stand there with a garland and thousands of people. I was like, okay, whatever… Just put a garland on my dad! I’d sit in the audience, listening to his speeches. But then, when you grow up, you realise his professional accomplishments, but that’s not what stuck out. There are two things now that I remember. One, and talking about service and why I have this thing of, okay, how can I help, is I have seen him help people his whole life. And I’ve seen people come home or call him for advice almost daily. It was annoying. The phone used to ring off the hook in the morning when you’re trying to sleep. That’s something I’ve seen. And my mom, as well, did a lot of volunteer work. And I think I’ve seen that growing up.  Giving back to the community. And the second thing was how he was as a person; he was loved from CEOs to people high up to people at all levels. You can’t emulate that. That’s a personality trait. There’s no way.  That’s the one person who’s had the biggest impact on my life.

Liv: He sounds remarkable. Bringing it back to leaders in a work environment, those that had an impact on you that perhaps they didn’t know they had.

Bharti: Absolutely.   I’ll tell you what I learned from each one. And I didn’t have that many.  In my consulting days, I had a couple of bosses. I mean, they were partners. You were a consultant, a senior consultant growing up the ranks. I had three or four people, three or four different partners who I learned a lot from. The first one was basic skills as a consultant. Being able to communicate, being able to write, being able to do PowerPoint, being able to write proposals. I was horrible at writing proposals! This one boss took me aside and said, Oh my gosh, you need to know, how you write in business is very different from how you write a college essay. I got some training in business communication, which was super helpful. And then, in consulting, I learned very quickly as you start managing big teams, particularly doing large public sector engagements with teams of 80 or a hundred.  I soon started managing 20 people, 40 people, 50 people. And I had to learn a lot on how to manage. The one thing I remember is.  I was always very work-oriented and not empathetic about work-life balance in those days. Let’s say that. Nobody in consulting had a work-life balance, and that’s what I saw around me. And as a leader, I did not give my team a work-life balance.

At some point, I didn’t learn that in consulting, but after consulting and after kids, I learned the importance of life and work, and they have to be very symbiotic.  Those were my consulting bosses, and the common thread was the trust. They stretched me and gave me assignments and roles beyond what I was probably ready for, but that’s when you grow. The common thread was quick to trust all my bosses in pharma; I mean, the one boss, and he knows who he is, the boss I had when I was having my three kids. Imagine, for six years, I had to go to him and tell him,  one year pregnant, next year nursing…  Pregnant nursing, pregnant nursing… For six years, he saw me with childcare. And I remember when we were having the third child, which was, by the way, a surprise. I was talking to my husband, and I had no idea how to tell my boss I was pregnant again. But he was amazing—so much trust.  I needed the flexibility to nurse from home when I wanted—not come in some days—many doctor’s appointments. I don’t think I felt once that the clock was being watched. I don’t think I remember even one statement he may have made in those six or seven years that made me feel bad.  And then you want to contribute. When you have a boss like that and have all this stuff going on, you want to give your best at work. It made me give it my best, as best as possible, during those days.  He was an amazing, amazing boss. And the only way I could have a good, flourishing career and have those three kids in the span of six years.  And then I got a couple of other bosses, two more bosses, actually, not that many, who, again, I learned from. One was just the nicest person. Such a warm person. He was a little bit of a micromanager in the beginning, but then he developed self-awareness on his own and gave us the trust and the freedom to fly. And then my other boss there, just the structure. Structured, organised, how you run a team, the management structures to put in place so people are moving in the right direction, you’ve got this vision, but what are those processes you put in place so that you have a handle on what the team’s working on? And I learned that from him.  And then I had a couple of bosses again when I changed pharma companies; those two bosses elevated my leadership because I had such a huge span, huge team. I think I learned how to navigate a little bit better. I don’t enjoy the politics at work. And there’s always this point where you’ve grown because you’re doing good work. And then there’s all these alignments that I don’t enjoy. I’m pretty straight. And if there’s an issue, you say it to the person directly. You don’t go around them.  Those were good lessons. And then, at the start-up, I learned how to be innovative and set up a solid structure and operating model for teams to succeed, especially if you’re doing a start-up within a big company.  I’ve taken a little bit from every boss. Have I had perfect bosses? No, we’re all human beings, but I don’t think I had a nasty experience with anybody. And if there were things I didn’t like about somebody, I told them that, listen, you’re doing this, and it’s driving me nuts; I was just nicely direct.  I think that’s a skill I realised I have. If I don’t like something or need to push an agenda, I can do that in a nice way and not offend people. And I had these nice conversations, even with difficult bosses or situations. I have been in toxic environments, I will say, but I don’t know if it’s always one person. My lens is to have a little bit of a balcony view of these kinds of things and not attribute it to one person but look at it like I’m watching a movie and say, okay, what’s happening? What are the dynamics? If something is not good or toxic or some behaviour, what is it? What’s causing it? What can I do about it? And  I have a very practical analytical approach to conflict.

Liv: It’s a really good skill to have been able to have those difficult conversations with people nicely!

Bharti: It’s a work in progress. Have I mastered it? No. I mean, there are times when it’s really difficult, I think, to set a complex or a conflict situation right. You don’t succeed every time. But honestly, I wouldn’t change who I am because of the situation. I don’t beat around the bush. I don’t go around people. I don’t play games. I don’t have agendas on the side. Just because I am in a situation where there are agendas on the side, I don’t change my behaviour. I operate the same way. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. But hey, that’s who I am. And I’m not going to play politics. I can’t.

Liv: You’ve had an amazing career, you are extremely accomplished, and you are obviously confident in what you do. You come across as someone who would never suffer any feelings of insecurity or self-doubt in your career.  Do you?

Bharti: Listen, we’re all humans.  I will say that insecurity is not a dominant thought in my being. Usually, when there’s something I’ve, and by the way, every role I’ve had, I had never done it before. If you look at my career… When I joined consulting, I think the first few months, one of the partners said, I don’t know if you’re cut out to be a consultant.  Because I came straight from India, never studied, never worked here. Straight to grad school and working in a new country, the language communication and how I had lived in India were different. You treat elders with a lot of reverence. I had all these partners around me, and I was a little timid. But I was always, I don’t know, I had this weird mix of, I was never shy to talk.  But I knew I didn’t have the skills. I had to learn a lot.  I knew that. But what I don’t do is beat myself up for not knowing something or being in doubt. It’s, I don’t know it yet. What do I need to learn? And how do I overcome it? It doesn’t make me feel insecure. It is just analytically saying, okay, these are the three things you need to have in this job. You have two of them. You’ve got to learn the third one.  But of course, I have doubts. But it doesn’t dominate my existence.

Liv: And has that changed over the years? If you were to go back and see your younger self, have you always had that approach?

Bharti: I always believed that I could do anything, and I never let people make me feel that I didn’t have the skill sets required, which I probably didn’t, to do that other job or the next level job. But I don’t know; I was just secure in myself. And whatever people say, I don’t take it personally. It’s a really hard thing to do.  , and you get better at it with age, for sure. When you’re younger, you take it more to heart. Maybe I would think about it for three days and then let it go. Now, I think about it for a minute or two and then let it go. It does make you a bit more confident with experience.  My advice is, why go there? Don’t self-doubt and all that. Like why? Of course, nobody knows everything. Not you, not the people you’re dealing with, not the people around you, not your bosses. Everybody has some insecurity about what they do or do not know or what they can or cannot do.

Just don’t let that hold you back.  

Liv: I love that.

In series one of This Girl KAM, I would always ask everybody about the movie Sliding Doors, which is essentially about pivotal moments. You referred to it earlier; you were speaking about how you started in the industry, and then a pivotal moment impacted a decision as to whether you would go one way or another.  A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Charlotte Murrain, and she politely pointed out that Sliding Doors is basically a period drama now because it’s from the 90s. To continue evolving and keeping myself current and up to date, I’m asking instead, what’s your favourite movie, and what sort of impact did it have on you that has perhaps stayed with you throughout your career?

Bharti: One of my favourite movies is The Blind Side. It’s about this homeless child, somewhere in the South or the Midwest, who is found on the streets by this woman. A typical southern midwestern woman and family. She’s got a husband and kids, and she takes him home, spends some time with him and then decides to adopt him, and he ends up joining the NFL, and she changes his life.

Liv: That makes sense, given everything you said about yourself and your commitment to service. That’s why that’s stayed with you!

I need to let you go, don’t I? Any last thoughts before I do?

Bharti: I will say this because I get asked this question a lot. Especially folks who are earlier in their career. In how to think about your career. How do you grow? What direction do you take it in?   A couple of things. One is that sometimes life happens while you’re planning.  I don’t know if you can plan every move. But take the chances if they do come up. Take that risk. I’ve taken a few risks in my career, and I’ve grown the most because of that. Otherwise, I’d probably be comfortable and safe at the same level doing the same stuff.  But I took risks. Sometimes, the risks were given to me, and I took them. Sometimes I went looking for them.

Secondly,  you brought up this self-doubt. I would not waste your mental energy on, “Do I know it? Do I not? Am I good enough?” Nobody ever is. Just move on.  Figure out what skills you need and what you need to work on, and work on it. Don’t hesitate and hold back in your career because you think you’re not ready.    Nobody is. Some people hold themselves back because of that thought. Some people don’t care about it, and they move on.  There will always be moments of doubt, but that cannot paralyse you.  Use it as a learning moment and go for the roles you think you’re not qualified for. Honestly, go for them.

And if you’re lucky enough, like me, to have great bosses, they will spot that potential and give you those chances, or they will move you into those roles you don’t think you’re ready for.  Hopefully, everybody’s as lucky as that, but if not, go for it and talk about your career. Network inside your company and outside.  Tell people that you’re looking for more responsibility, or you want a stretch assignment, or you want to try, because unless you say it, most leaders at this point…Great leaders will suggest things beyond you.  Good leaders are too busy, but they don’t make the time or anticipate your development actively. You have to talk about it and think about it.

And the last thing is to surround yourself with somewhere where you’re having fun. If you’re not, then it’s okay to leave. And sometimes leaving is hard. I mean, I’ve stayed in companies eight years, 11 years, five years.  I haven’t had short stints.  Sometimes, I think I probably should have left earlier and had a different experience.  Don’t stay somewhere just because it’s comfortable. There’s always something happening in life. There’s never a right time. Just go for it.

Liv: That’s really good advice. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show, Bharti. It’s been lovely to get to know you and fascinating to hear everything you’ve got to say.

Bharti: Thank you very much. It was a lot of fun.