This Girl KAM with Alison Pulte

Liv: Alison! Welcome to This Girl KAM!

Alison: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here, Liv.

Liv: Oh, it’s fabulous to have you. So normally I start these interviews by asking to hear all about what you do and tell me all about yourself. Now all of that is going to happen, but in the spirit of being purpose-driven, as that is what we are here for today, I’d love for you to tell me a little bit about why you are working in the pharmaceutical industry.
Tell me why you do what you do.

Alison: Yeah. Thank you so much for asking that. Gosh, there are so many reasons that drive me. As I started doing work on developing my purpose, I realised, that it was a deliberate choice, but maybe somewhat accidental, but I think it was deliberate that I stayed.  I joke, I told this story recently, when I was maybe eight years old, if you had asked me what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be, I would have said, I either want to be a doctor or I want to be a boss. I didn’t know what I wanted to be the boss of, but as the oldest of three girls, I was very proficient in bossing them around. And so I thought, “Hey, this is pretty fun.” Maybe I wanted to do that in some way, shape or form. My aunt was in corporate America, and so I saw her as a people leader and I thought, well, that seems good. I’m pretty good at directing my siblings and friends and things like that, and I was always the one coming up with the ideas and orchestrating who was going to go where and do what. So I thought that sounded great.
When the medical career did not work out for me becoming a physician, I got some experience working both bench lab research as well as working in a clinical setting in a hospital where they were doing bone marrow transplants, helping a physician to track his outcomes. And that was where I got my first exposure to pharmaceutical sales specialists. So that’s how I fell into pharmaceuticals. But then what I found once I got there was it was this perfect marriage, of what I loved. Helping to advance healthcare and caring for others. I didn’t even know what it meant to be a “boss”, as my 8-year-old self would say. But I just knew how much I loved leading teams and leading people. Then as I reflected on it further, I realised I wouldn’t love leading a team of people that were selling cars or selling paint or copiers. I loved the intellectual component and the medical component and knowing we were helping people to make decisions that impacted outcomes and patients’ lives.
So that to me was so important. And, so maybe why I landed in pharmaceuticals might have been somewhat of a lucky break, but why I stayed was because everything about it was so aligned with my purpose.

Liv: So tell me a little bit more about yourself now. Alison.

Alison: Sure. I mentioned this before, but I was the oldest of three girls in my family. My mother was one of three girls, and I now in my very own home, have three daughters. So, super amazing girl-power driven life that I’ve led. I’m married to my husband Kevin, of almost 27 years, which I just can’t even believe that we’ve now been married for half of my life and I’ve lived with him far longer than I ever lived with my parents, which is pretty crazy.
I grew up in California, went to college in Boston and lived all over the country throughout the Midwest for several years until we settled in Cleveland where we’re living now, which is the longest we’ve ever been anywhere. We’ve been here for 13 years.
My two older daughters are in college and my youngest one is 15, still in high school. They are my driving force. One of the things that I got involved in early in my career before I even had children was the Women in Leadership, Employee Resource Groups at all the companies that I’ve been in. And so now I look at this as this opportunity to make the workplace more inclusive, to make the workplace more diverse. And I feel this responsibility for the next generation of workers. Some of the most motivating work that I do in my job is to, support our Employee Resource Group, Women in Leadership here at Novartis, to create a community where people feel really good about coming to work and to motivate. Organisationally to make the workplace more inclusive, and more diverse. Novartis has a huge commitment to this epic pledge, for equal pay and pay transparency. And we’re making tremendous strides, but we continue to reinvest and to do more. And I try to do my part, to create a better future for my three daughters. One of the ways I like to do that is, by engaging men in the conversation about gender equity and the importance of our associates and our clinical trials reflecting the patients that we serve. I love doing that as part of my personal/professional life, it really motivates and inspires me, and aligns beautifully with my purpose. So, I started in pharmaceuticals as a sales specialist. And then moved into some regional training roles and ultimately became a first-line people leader. That’s where I got my first taste as a very young manager, and realised I had a lot to learn about what it truly means to lead a team and to inspire others.
That’s really what my leadership philosophy is all about, inspiring folks to do more than they ever thought possible. By believing in them and helping them see their potential. We can talk at some point about the story, of how my mum embedded that in me. But I was a first-line people leader for about 10 plus years, and then transitioned into a headquarters space training role for about three years, more focused in the product training realm, then came back out. , for flexibility. We moved to New Jersey for my career and then my husband had an opportunity back in Ohio. It’s always been give and take for us, and I love that the pharmaceutical industry has allowed me to do that and continue to serve, patients and healthcare providers wherever we were living.

So we came back to Cleveland and I transitioned back into a field-facing role again with a couple of different organisations.
Ultimately when I got the call from Novartis with the opportunity to launch a truly life-changing drug in the heart failure space, I couldn’t say no. So, I came back again as a people leader. That reinforced to me that my passion is around leadership development. So when there was an opportunity for me to join the training team at Novartis as the Director of Leadership Excellence, I jumped at that. Since then, for about the past five years, I truly feel like I’m doing what I love most because I’m in this space that I adore with healthcare but I’m also helping leaders see the best in others by helping them see their potential and help them to uncover how they can inspire other people to do more. I feel like it’s amplified my impact because now I’m not just leading my team, but I’m helping other leaders across Novartis to grow their skills.

Liv: There’s something about the magic space where your personal purpose is connected to your company purpose. Jill talks about those three Ps, your professional, personal and then the company purpose, tying them all together really is that magic sweet spot, isn’t it?

Alison: Absolutely. And, and Jill helped me to articulate that in the best possible way. I knew I loved leading teams, and I knew I loved the healthcare space, but I hadn’t tied it back to, what experiences have I had as an individual, as a leader, as a mum, as a sister, as a daughter, that made this such a perfect fit for me and how can I share that more with other people? I looked back and when we thought about it, I feel like it started when I was 12 years old and we moved to France. We moved to France and my mum dropped me off at an all-French speaking school and said, sink or swim! But she convinced me that I would learn the language. I still remember the night before school was starting looking at my mum going, I know you believe in me, but I don’t even know what to say to these people. I can’t understand a word. So, she taught me this little phrase which I memorised.
“My name’s Alison. I’m American and I don’t speak French yet.” But underlying that was this power of yet, and because of my mum’s belief in me and because of how the conversations had gone up until then, I knew that I could do it, and each night she eased my anxiety sitting by my side, helping me learn a little bit more of the language and navigate through these rough patches and reassuring me along the way that all these mistakes were part of growing. And believe me, I made some real doozies in terms of mistakes! I still remember one of the first nights I was really building my confidence and thinking I could actually try out some of this French on some real French people. My mum had some neighbours over for dinner and she asked me if I would pass a tray of appetizers around, and she tried to really build my confidence.
She said, “ Listen, the word hors d’oeuvre is the same in French as it is in English.” So I’m walking about with this tray, super excited. I’ve got my little skewers of prosciutto and melon. So I waltz very confidently into the living room, offering up my appetizers. I’m offering people this in my near perfect French now, in my opinion. And the guest kind of looked at me tentatively and they took a skewer. A few minutes later my mum pulls me back into the kitchen and she says, “Honey. You realize you’re offering the guests garbage, not appetizers?”
I said, “What are you talking about?” And she then told me my pronunciation was wrong and I’d been saying garbage. And so of course now I look back and I think. The guests probably thought that was the cutest thing ever. But as a 12-year-old, I was completely mortified. I stormed out of the kitchen in tears and never came back out to the party. But the truth of it is, my mum tried in the kindest possible way to help me not continue to put my foot in my mouth, and in the end, I persisted. People care about the effort that you’re making, that vulnerability, that willingness to try and with her support, I proudly finished the year fluent in French.
That’s what I love to do for other people now. As the Director of Leadership Excellence, if I can inspire people to do more than they think possible for the benefit of patients, it’s such a beautiful thing. Everything I do is focused on helping stretch people to become their best selves because I know that if leaders are doing that, they can do that for so many of their specialists. Build their capabilities and empower more healthcare providers to make the best decision to get the best solution to the patients. So that to me is how Jill helped me crystallize my purpose.

Liv: Your mum sounds incredible. What a woman. I have a 10-year-old daughter, and I can just imagine you at that age being horrified. My daughter would definitely stomp out of the room!

Alison: Exactly.

Liv: That instilled some real strength of character in you, didn’t it? You touched on it there, the word ‘yet’ is so powerful in that learning curve and how you approach things. Do you think that ignited that determination in you?

Alison: I think that was the key that made me realise I can do really hard things. It was that someone else believed in me in doing, what most people would consider an impossible task. To walk into a classroom full of native French speakers, no one even really spoke a word of English. The only class I felt like I could get along in was I had an actual English class! Because they were learning a second language. But even there, I wrote something on a test. “We went to the movie theatre”, and I got a point off because I was supposed to say cinema! The French teacher had British English versus American English.
So, I think it built my resilience, but it further sparked that growth mindset in me, which is still hard. I had always had straight A’s up until then, and then I came home with a two out of 20 on a test and I was mortified, but I realised that that fixed mindset was never going to get me to learn to speak French. So today I’d say that’s one of my bigger battles in life. I want to be great at everything I do, but I know that I can do much harder things, and so I continue to push myself and challenge myself, and it’s that curiosity. I think it unleashed that unending curiosity and the belief that not only could I do more because people believed in me, but I wanted to do that for other people. It just links back to that purpose. when I hear people who have that fixed mindset or don’t think that things are achievable, I just want to reframe it for them, and say, “well, what if this,” or “I wonder if,” and try to help people discover within themselves that they can do more, and help them find their purpose. Once I connected with Jill, I immediately went back to her and said, “How do I bring this to my team?” At the time I was leading a team within the training department. And so we all built our purpose stories with Jill and we still to this day have monthly follow-up conversations with Jill to reignite our purpose because it’s not something you can just do once, We have to revisit it. We get bogged down in the day-to-day. So then once we showed up as these purpose-driven leaders, and we were opening our training courses, talking about who we were and why we showed up in that way, we were seeing the results! I still remember one of my colleagues, Madonna, coming on a training call during Covid when everything was remote, and her opening with her purpose and immediately getting an email and a LinkedIn text from our participants saying, “I’m all in. If this is who you are and this is how you show up, you’ve got me listening with both ears.” So it was just so cool to see that impact.
Then I went to my boss at the time and said, I think our entire department needs to show up in this way. And he agreed. So, we did Jill’s training for all 60 people within our training department. Then when we had turnover, and our senior most leader left and we brought in a new guy, I said, “John. This is the expectation of our team. When you introduce yourself, I want you to be able to do it with purpose and share your purpose.” So he got to meet with Jill too, and he told me, with the vast amount of experience he brought, he had never been able to tell his story in such a succinct, direct way to link back to why he did what he did and why he shows up the way he does as a leader and why that gets him up and out of bed every morning.

Liv: Was it when you sat with Jill and only from that point where you started really connecting with your purpose, or do you think you were purpose-driven but perhaps just didn’t have such clarity on it before?

Alison: I think I hadn’t connected all the dots; I knew that I wanted to be doing something in healthcare and that was important to me. I knew that I loved, leading people and inspiring people to do more. I just hadn’t brought them all together as to why it was so important to me to be doing the two things in a space that brought them together. So I think that was the big difference.

And honestly, one of the other ‘a ha’ moments I had, that really helped crystallize for me the value of what we do every day was, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer five years ago. At that point, I gained this new appreciation for the importance of our daily work. I went into my doctor and just before we were scheduling my surgery, my oncologist told me, “Look Alison, I’m known as the queen of the robots. If we were talking a month ago, I would’ve said to you, we’re doing this procedure laparoscopically. No questions asked.” She said, “But I just went to a conference and the latest data shows without a doubt that an open procedure will give you a much better outcome, not only for reducing the chance of recurrence but also significantly reducing mortality rates.” So in that moment, I had this light bulb go off. The realisation that this is the kind of thing that we bring to our healthcare providers.
Now, I don’t know if at that conference she heard it from the main stage from a lecturer, or if she happened to stop by the booth of somebody in our industry, but it was a powerful illustration for me of the vital importance of our work. Oftentimes our physicians don’t have time to stop and read every journal, or to go to every conference. If we can bring that information that doctors otherwise might not see, we can make a meaningful impact on patients and their families. It also showed me I don’t have limitless time.
I am doing what I love to do. The life changing, life extending purpose of our work hit home for me. I’m also happy to say that it’s been five years and I’m still cancer free. That to me is an amazing legacy of our work in a sense that I can be here through all the milestones of my children.

Liv: Absolutely. Oh, that’s so lovely to hear that. That turnaround as well having attended that conference. That’s incredible. So tell me more about the Women in Leadership group you co-chair.

Alison: Yes sure. So, as we talked about earlier, there’s some serious girl power in my family, My mum’s one of three girls. I’m one of three girls. I have three daughters of my own. So, my relationship with the many women and girls in my life drives me to play my part to ensure that women can succeed and receive the best possible healthcare. It also motivates me to make the workplace more inclusive and diverse. So as Co-Chair of Women in Leadership, I feel like I’m helping create this better future for my three daughters and the next generation of the workforce. I love to do this by really engaging men in the conversation because it’s not about men versus women or men or women. It’s about how can we all help support each other. Pull each other up so that we can have the impact we want to have on our customers, the healthcare providers and the patients.
Because I know that if we’re having these conversations about gender equity and the importance of diverse teams and what diverse teams can accomplish, that’s so above and beyond what this kind of homogenous team could do. I know then that we’re going to have a greater impact on our associates and their development, our clinical trial populations reflect the patients that we serve, and we can show up in a better way to a wide range of the customers that we serve too.
We want to reflect or at least understand where each of them is coming from culturally and historically, so that we can present our information in a way that makes it meaningful to them, and connects with their purpose and how they like to show up. So with Women in Leadership, some of the things that we do are we create these local connect events where we invite all of the Novartis associates across a certain region to come together and talk about Big hairy business problems, and what are the challenges they’re facing? Maybe Liv, you’re having trouble getting access to a certain medical group and if another person at another part of Novartis who I may never come across otherwise has gained some access, we can share those great practices so that we again, can help bring our message, help get information to patients and physicians. So that’s one of the things we do. We also do Mentor circles. So we bring together eight to 10 people from across the organisation. And again, men and women are always included. We can’t be successful as female leaders without the support, allyship and sponsorship of our male colleagues. And I joked with the men when I first started trying to recruit men to join our employee resource group, I said, “Well, I know at the very least each of you has a mother. You may be involved in a relationship with a woman, or you may have children of your own. Right. And you definitely have female colleagues. So, we need your ears, your perspective, your insights on how we can make this a better workplace for everyone.” During the past five years, we’ve made these efforts and we’ve tripled the number of male allies that are part of our organization.
We’ve quadrupled the number of members that we have in Women in Leadership. I feel like there’s a real need for people to have this conversation. In these mentor circles, we bring together eight or 10 people from across the organization. We try to make the groups as diverse as possible. People from different places within Novartis so that they’re learning from each other, and getting these unique perspectives. And then we leave it up to them.
We give them some ideas, some podcasts, and some journal articles that they could talk about if they need a conversation starter. But otherwise, we say, “Hey, talk to each other about your business challenges. Talk to each other about your developmental goals and support one another.” We give them some powerful questions that they can ask one another to try to help people realise from within themselves how to overcome and solve their problems too, without becoming those advice monsters like Michael Bungay Stanier talks about. We’re trying to build people’s skills in being great listeners, and great coaches in these mentor circles, but also having a place that they can go to create community.
We’ve recently merged with the headquarters-based employee resource group for women. So, we’re working to connect our field-based associates with our headquarters-based associates too, so they can learn from each other how to better serve our customers.

Liv: Fabulous. What have you seen in terms of results from that then, and have you had positive feedback about it?

Alison: We have. From day one, people feel like they are now part of a community. They’re able to also build connections across the organisation. We’ve had a multitude of people who have been promoted within Novartis, now, obviously they brought amazing skills, but they had a contact within Women in Leadership, that they could then reach out to and ask questions. If I were interviewing in a whole different therapeutic area, I would know people from Women in Leadership that I could talk to. So it’s helping people feel more connected, more committed to the organisation and quickly build an internal network at Novartis that can help them solve their business problems, their personal challenges, and their work-related challenges. Creating a safe space for employees, especially when in the field, they don’t have that daily connection that people do in an office.

Liv: And what about you personally, Alison? Do you do any one-to-one mentoring? You’ve gone through this experience with Jill, so not only do you have your leadership passion and skills in that world, but now you have this purpose focus.
What, what are you doing with it?

Alison: I do. Yeah. I was fortunate enough about three years ago to attend a course with the ACT Leadership Group in Browns University and become certified as a leadership and development coach. So I do have a coaching practice that right now is more limited towards Novartis employees. I haven’t quite figured out a price structure to ask people to pay me to do it!
But as part of my day job, we have an amazing organization at Novartis called Power Up. It’s a community of about 50 internal coaches. And I was just doing the math the other day. I worked with 14 different coaching clients this past year, and the first one of the first exercises I always do with my coaching clients is talk to them about what do they value, what are their values, help them identify those and tie those into, how does that serve you, and how are you honouring your values in the daily work that you do? If something’s out of balance, then we talk about, “Is this aligned with your purpose and why you do what you do?” It just helps form this kind of grounding place for the work that we do. We talk about their purpose and whether they have figured out their why and who are they sharing it with.
I think that’s the most important thing. First, you have to know it yourself, but then how do you show up differently? At the workplace, at home because you’re truly finding purpose in your work and sharing that with others. I love to bring in purpose in the work that I do as a leadership coach.

Liv: Yeah. It’s that important piece of reflection, isn’t it? How would you recommend, if you were coaching someone or mentoring someone, how would you recommend they go through that process of reflecting and understanding their purpose?

Alison: The way I go about it is, I ask people to tell me about a time when they were at their best or a time when they loved what they were doing And it can be I’ve had people tell me about when they were on a basketball team in high school, and I just listen to the emotion, the feeling, who they were working with, what they were doing. It’s more than the ‘what’, but what made it such an amazing experience for them and then reflect that back to them.
Getting people to tell stories about challenges they’ve overcome when they felt at their best, and then maybe when they weren’t feeling so great, helps them understand what’s important to them. Just by listening to people you can help them tie it into why they do what they do, and Jill taught me so much. About how do you ask that next-level question and listen long enough to help people hone in and focus on what exactly is it? , asking those simple questions, to dig in, to get people to truly reflect, because oftentimes we’re moving so fast, we don’t invest in ourselves to figure that out.

Liv: It’s, it’s so true, and I’ve touched on that a bit with Jill as well, that there aren’t many times in life that you do get that chance to reflect. Is so important when you do. Talk to me a little bit about the industry as a whole and we’re talking a lot about purpose there is much more of a trend towards this way of thinking. Do you see that? And do you think there will be more of this focus moving forward?

Alison: Well, I certainly hope so. But like in all of my strategic thinking classes I teach…hope is not a strategy! But I think there’s a changing tide. Healthcare providers are listening more, the healthcare organisations are listening more. And if we in the pharmaceutical industry can listen more to the needs of the patients and the providers, I think we can all move forward together in the best possible way. I do think COVID while it slowed us down in terms of how we could see our customers, helped us to reinvent ourselves a little bit and improved slightly the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry. I do think it’s on each of us every day to show up at our best in front of our customers so that we can continue to build on that. It’s on us to show up as purpose-driven. specialists, leaders, whatever role we might have, and seek to understand others’ purpose, because once we do that and we have that mutual connection, we can probably do anything.
It’s the whole idea of do you show up trying to sell someone something or do you try to show up trying to solve a problem that they already have?

Liv: That curiosity about other people’s purpose is important as well. That’s certainly something that I’ve seen. Everybody has something, everybody has a story, or a drive, and it’s just taking the time to understand it. It’s so important these days, isn’t it? Life is happening so quickly.

Alison: It really is. And I think if you hear that purpose in someone’s story that they may not even be in touch with yet, and you can reflect that back to them, they may not thank you. They may not look and go, “oh, Liv or Alison helped me get to this”, but I think you can make their life so much richer and create a connection that they may not even have realised.

Liv: Yeah. And the knock-on impact of that, even just by that suggestion, imagine the good that that person can then go on and do if they show up with their purpose. It’s the ripple effect, isn’t it, of people just coming forward with it.

Alison: Yes, and that’s what inspires me every day to continue with my coaching practice. Having conversations with people about what they love about their day-to-day work, and then maybe some of the things they didn’t love as much, it helps them to identify the right role.
Women oftentimes will only apply for a job if they have nine out of the 10 listed skills, whereas men will have maybe half and they’re comfortable applying.
So if I can help people think about their development and their careers with that growth mindset and that power of yet, and if you show up as that purpose-driven leader and you tell your story of why you want to do what you are looking to do, I don’t think any hiring manager would hesitate to say, you can get these skills.
That is why I love what I do when I can help people get where they want to go.

Liv: So now that you have such a clear purpose, what do you think about your future? Are you now happy with what you’re doing and or do you have bigger plans and goals?

Alison: It’s so funny you’re asking me that, Liv, because I have a session with my own coach this afternoon.  My big question right now is I love what I’m doing and I think, part of me feels like I’m doing my dream job, I adore developing leaders at every level of the organisation. And so now the question is, is that enough challenge for me,? Because part of my whole philosophy is a growth mindset and learning. And so I don’t know, I ask myself that a lot. And my boss says the same thing. What do you want to do? How can I support your development? Quite frankly, to be totally vulnerable, I may be a little bit fixed in my mindset myself, and not being brave enough to take the next step because I’m a little afraid to walk away from something I love so much to try something different. So instead, I’m seeking ways to grow and develop in this role. Launching new programs. We’ve started developing Regional Director development, and Second-Line Leader development, which we had never done before. My next challenge is to start doing VP development. We most recently did a women’s director summit across our entire organisation. So I continue to find ways to do new things and challenge myself, but I will have to jump off at some point, I believe, to continue to fulfil my curiosity.

Liv: It’s a really interesting point though. When you get to that stage where you’re doing your dream job, to keep challenging yourself is tough.
It feels like an even bigger risk, I suppose.

You referred earlier to your 8-year-old self, and I would love to know what advice would you give to your younger self? I particularly want to speak to that 8-year-old girl who knew she wanted to be a boss, but didn’t really know why. Tell me a little bit about the things you’d say to yourself as an 8-year-old.

Alison: I think it’s a lesson, a story, I’m still telling myself is, not to seek so much external validation. To own who you are, and learn to love yourself, regardless of what you’re hearing from other people. I think at that age I was so focused on getting good grades and being a good sister, even if it was a little bit bossy! Helping my mum and doing all the right things. And so, I think I would say, “It’s okay. Do what you love and do it for yourself. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone but you.” And also to this day, and we just did a little at that training, we did a ceremony of what are you going to let go? I always thought, being told I was bossy was a bad thing. And even right now, to this day, that’s the thing I’m trying to reframe. It’s okay to show up as an assertive leader as long as you’re listening, I don’t ever want to be perceived as bossy, but some connotations come with that, and I think through my own lens, that’s not the word I want people to use when they’re describing me. Still, there are also so many positive things that come if you’re establishing a vision, if you can inspire people to follow you, if you give people direction, that helps them achieve the goals they want to achieve. If you can tell people what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it and let them figure out how, that’s a great leader.
So I think, I just want to reframe ‘Boss’ to ‘leader’ and to be okay with, nobody else has to tell you you’re good at what you’re doing, as long as you are good at what you’re doing.

Liv: And is that what you say to your girls now as well?

Alison: I should say it more. It made me reflect because we often reward them for their grades. And that’s when I realised maybe 10 years ago, I was reinforcing that pattern of external validation. And so I tried to reframe the questions in the conversation with them to talk about, that’s amazing that you did so well, tell me what you did. What was your process? How did you prepare for that test? What did you learn? And focusing more on the effort versus outcome because if the outcome’s not good, where do you go then? So really trying to help them do that. And, quite frankly, I feel like, the poor first kid, she was like the test child. I think I did it much better with the second and the third one.

Liv: This is my hope. You see with four… by the time these two get a bit older, I’m going to have nailed this!

Alison: But again, it’s that learning and growth mindset. I tell Isabelle, my eldest all the time, “Sorry, but I turned out okay and I was the oldest too. I was the test child!” So it all works out and, I’m just so proud. She’s got her first job offer, so we made it to one employed soon in the spring.

Liv: Well, that is a moment to celebrate. Do you think she will follow in your footsteps in that leadership focused space?

Alison: Well, she’s a computer science major, so she’s a software engineer, but I do think that she will lead teams at some point. I don’t see her in an individual contributor role behind a screen for the majority of her career by any stretch of the imagination. So, she’s got a lot of years. I keep telling her to figure that out. This first job she’s got is not her forever job. That’s the other conversation we’ve been having. And then my middle one is pre-med and wants to go to medical school. So I’m super excited for her, and then the youngest one says she wants to be a businesswoman of some sort!

Liv: Oh, it sounds like your mum has had an incredible impact and will continue to do so.

Alison: Definitely. She has. She was the shepherd of our family. And when I say that it’s that, she looked after everybody. We even welcomed a family of Vietnamese refugees into our home. And they lived with us for three or four years in the mid-eighties during that crisis. And so from her example, I developed some of that same passion for caring for others and the people around me. What she taught me was the more I give, the more I get. And I think if we can show up that way in our industry, being there to support and give to others and help find the right solutions, I think that that will help us.
And to me, that’s what it means to be a purpose-driven leader. The beauty of it in our industry is that we know that patients and their families win in the end.
Jill has created this amazing community and brought together so many incredible leaders and helped them to be skilled at articulating their purpose. So I love that Jill connected the two of us, and I can’t wait to listen in to more of your podcast about these purpose-driven leaders, and to read Jill’s book very soon!

Liv: I know I can’t wait to read the book either. And it’s fabulous to meet you, Alison. To have you on and to chat with you not only about purpose but also about women in leadership in general is everything I love all in one place! It has been awesome in every way. So thank you.

Alison: Perfect. Well, I agree 100% and it was such a pleasure to get to know you more Thank you. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful end of the year and happy holidays to you and your family.

To read Alison’s along with  99 other inspiring, purpose-driven stories, sign up for your free copy of  A Dose of Inspiration – 100 Purpose Stories of Pharma Leaders here!