This Girl KAM with Alejandra Betancourt

Liv: Hello there, Alejandra, how are you? 

Aleja: Hi, I’m well. How are you?

Liv: I’m good. Thank you. First to check, am I pronouncing your name right?

Aleja: You are actually, perfectly, but most people call me Aleja.

Liv: Oh that’s beautiful. Where is that name from?

Aleja: So I was born in Venezuela, a long time ago. I lived there until I was around 18 years old. And then I moved to the US for college. And I didn’t come back to live in Venezuela since. But it’s a Spanish name.

Liv: It’s beautiful. So you haven’t been back to Venezuela?

Aleja: I have been back, but not to live, no. I used to come to visit for Christmas and yeah, family holidays and so forth, but never to live.

Liv: You’ve been all over, haven’t you! Do you have a favourite?

Aleja: Yeah. So I have lived sequentially in . San Francisco, Florence, Italy, Los Angeles, Miami, Paris, Mexico City, and Copenhagen, where I now live. I’ve loved every place that I live, and I think they all serve the purpose at a particular period in my life. But I love, I really love Copenhagen. I think that Nordic, Nordic countries have a, an outlook of life in which the wellbeing of the whole is more important of that, of the individual.

I love that viewpoint, and it also translates beautifully into the company I work with because it’s a very Danish company, and it’s also founded on those principles. So I have found a way of integrating something that I really love into the country I live and into the work that I do, and that I think that’s fantastic.

Liv: So tell me, Alejandra, what led you into healthcare? Tell me a little bit about your story. 

Aleja: Okay, so I had, I have two, two different entry points in healthcare and there was a period in between where I wasn’t in it. So fresh out of college I worked in California and Loma Linda University Medical Centre in their marketing department, and in a subsequent start up agency that we created a couple of friends and I to service in particular, that big account of the Loma Linda Medical Centre.
I really got very immersed into the whole medical kind of community and in healthcare and had lots of friends that, that were studying in medical school. And I loved it. And then life happened. I moved, I did all kinds of things and when I had the opportunity to go back and I had raised my daughter and had the chance of just deciding what I wanted to do there was an opportunity to move to Paris and start working with the the learning academy of IMS Health called Actando.
IMS Health, which since has merged into IQVIA of course.   I thought it was great because it gave a little bit more meaning to what I was doing in life than just making a pay cheque with whatever company was the closest to my work or had the best benefits or something.

I could finally make a decision about what it was that the company was doing, and I remember how good it felt when I was working around healthcare of having more meaning to what I was doing and being able to, in a small part, contribute to that. So I started working with IMS and training reps around the world and first line managers and marketeers, and then got to see a lot more of what the industry has to offer, from a completely different perspective and I was hooked.
I knew that I would continue to work only in this industry and retire in it because it is exactly what I like to do. 

I always thought being in the vendor side was nice because then I could work with different companies and get like the little bit of the taste of both worlds, but, when I did come to Novo, it really changed everything completely because then you get a lot closer to the reason why you’re really here, which is after all the patients and that human factor, that, that goes beyond everything. In particular in a company like Novo, where we treat chronic diseases the change that you can make, it’s so significant. It’s lifelong diseases, it’s lifelong conditions and what you can do is amazing. I’m humbled every day to be able to, in some part be involved in this industry and in this journey.

Liv: So I think you’ve answered my next question! I was going to say as you explained what led you into healthcare, what is it that keeps you here? Is that it, is that, have you summarised it there for me?

Aleja: Yeah. It keeps me, because at the end of the day, I was once in a workshop in which somebody, I don’t want to claim this phrase as my own, but somebody said that “we are all just people waiting to be patients.” That all of us at some point will be patients and I think that we forget a little bit of that, how vulnerable we are, how vulnerable family members are, and people that we love.
So it keeps me in it to understand that there’s so much more than what I do. What I do within pharma is very limited to the content factory and the content supply chain and very specific. But at the end of the day, what we do as an industry, it really helps people. You see it every day.
We meet the patients and they’re young kids, and then you see, we just had our hundred years celebration, and there were so many videos and interviews that were made 10 years ago, 20 years ago… And those young kids, they’re now adults and they have had a fruitful full life.
That was only enabled by what the work that all of us are doing. It makes me so happy, it keeps me here and I don’t want to leave it ever.

Liv:  So talk to me about your passion then. I can hear it in your voice, your passion for what you do, but what is your greatest passion in this world?
Talk to me about that.

Aleja: Oh, I’m, I’ve always envious of people that have one great passion. My husband, for example, loves golf. He knows everything about golf, can quote it, loves to watch it, loves to play. He knows what he’s passionate about. I know people that always knew they wanted to be doctors or lawyers or something.
I don’t have that one thing.  I’m very curious. I love to experiment and to find out, and to read and to know what is happening. I think that in my life a lot of things have evolved and changed, but there’s an underlying bit to it all, which is serving others and that I’ve had since childhood.
It had to do with my family working in the public sector and in different areas and being very involved in the community and in the country and in different aspects of it. We were always told, we’re very privileged. We have everything, but there are other people and kids that don’t have it. That was of course, growing up in a country in the third world like Venezuela, but that remained with me. So I think I am passionate about things that are not very selfish, but they’re not very specific. 
I love to cook, but sometimes I don’t, and I love to do these things and sometimes I don’t. I am always keeping myself informed, I’m a social being. I thrive being around people I was just at a conference at Reuters Pharma last week and I became so energised. It wasn’t so much about the presentations, but it was about being able to see my colleagues and to talk and to put a face and a behaviour to somebody that you have only seen on screen.

Liv: That’s so true! We’ve become so used to seeing people on screens now and then all of a sudden when you see someone in real life it makes such a difference.

Aleja: It makes a great difference. And then that moment when you stop just being a professional and you go to get, I don’t know, chips and then they don’t like this one and they like this one and we like the same type of chocolate and all of a sudden you, you connect in so many other different levels. I work with digital tools, and of course it’s part of that interaction, but there’s something about that human contact that’s still fundamentally important.

Liv: I entirely agree. So you touched very briefly in in sort of one of the initial questions about your daughter. Tell me about when you had your daughter and how that impacted your career at that time?

Aleja: I have a daughter and a son, but they were born so far apart, 18 years apart. So it’s almost like I had two only children. They love each other and everything, but I had two single child experiences really.
Carmen, my daughter, was born when I was quite young. I was 24, just graduated college. And I was determined that it wasn’t going to affect my life decisions. But it did. And part of that I already told you about. I loved working in healthcare, but when I moved to Miami, at that time, getting a job in a company that had the best benefits and the best
healthcare and I could take her to school, became a little bit of a more important factor in what I was doing. But there was a big difference between raising my daughter and raising my son. When you’re younger, when you’re 24 versus when you’re 42, the way that you feel about life is completely different.
I was so worried about Carmen, but yet also about my career and being able to provide. I spent a lot more time at work than I would have wanted to, because I thought all I needed to do was to provide and give her all the opportunities and all the things that I had as a child.
But with time, when I had Lucas, and of course, it’s a difficult comparison because I was also in another stage in my life, I was further in my career, but I realised that there’s nothing you can give your kids that is more important that your time and your focus and your attention. I dedicate a lot of time to that.
I think that, again, one of the great things about working in a company like Novo Nordisk is that they really value that, and also living in the Nordic is that great balance of work and life.  I feel that I always worried a little bit that when I first got to Copenhagen,  I was used to being work until seven, eight o’clock at night, and here by four o’clock the office was empty.
I couldn’t see how you’d get anything done! But you quickly realise that when you have the time to really focus on your family and your life, when you come to work then you can focus on work and be very effective. You’re efficient  in less time because  you’re rested and you are calm.
So two different experience in that raising of the kids, the younger self worried, scared and overly protective. Then as the older parent I was more relaxed. Feelings of “Let me just enjoy it. I don’t need him to grow too fast. This is my last chance. It’s okay if you don’t walk immediately at nine months.”
My poor daughter, Carmen, sees me raising Lucas and she sometimes just hangs her head and says “Why can he do that and I couldn’t?!”  
With your kids don’t try to hurry. Don’t be so eager that they learn how to write and read and do this and all that.
They’ll do that in their good time. And once one stage is over, it’s over. You’ve moved into the next one. You cannot put it back.

Liv: That’s true. It’s so precious, isn’t it? You were talking then about work-life balance and that’s something I’d love to get into a little bit more, and I suppose in particular, you talked about it then in terms of having your children, but what about in the different places you’ve lived? Living in the Nordics, I guess it really lends itself to that better balance?

Aleja: It’s it’s been really different in the different environments that I lived, and there’s different reasons why it’s been so different. Sometimes it’s it’s just logistics. In a city like Mexico City, it’s very hard to have a good life balance because the traffic is insane.  You spend, three hours up to four hours sometimes just in traffic, two in the morning, two in the afternoon. And that is just time that you don’t have. In other countries you just have an unbalanced way of life and it’s mainly because of cultural issues in the US I think, a belief that if you don’t work extra hours it’s very hard to prove that you’re actually contributing. And there was a period in my life, and this wasn’t in pharma actually, but there was a period that I worked in a company and it was right when my daughter was at that difficult stage of turning between a tween to a teen, and I felt like I really needed to be there for her when she get home from school.  That’s when they start making stupid decisions if there’s no one there to talk it out with. So I made a conscious effort of leaving the office at, right at five o’clock. And for the period of time that I was there, I never got a good raise or good bonus and I was always on probation.
And but when I left the company, they had to replace me with two people and then my boss, ex-boss, just admitted that I had been doing all that work, but I just didn’t do that bit of, the socially approved staying in the office til late. In Europe, I find it to be a little bit different.
I think that is more understood and implied and implicit and actually it’s expected of us. And as you’re a leader in in, in some of this company and your people, you have people managing responsibilities. You have to lead by example and not only make sure that you have that balance, but that you also make sure that your employees are also living to that, those expectations.

It’s been life changing for me. To see that you can actually balance both and do well on both.

Liv: Do you think it’s changed since Covid?
Aleja: I think that the crazy travel bit has changed a lot since Covid. I think the days where you took, a long trip for one meeting to then come back, which I did a lot.  Or even short trips. I lived in Copenhagen, I took lunch meetings in Zurich, so I would take the 6:00 AM flight, try to take three or four meetings just to balance that trip and be back at midnight.  That’s not healthy, if you’re doing that, several days for two weeks out of the month. So I think Covid really changed that.
 I still think that it’s important that you continue to have a good balance. That you still see people. But that you have a good reason for it. I think the ability to work from home, that came from Covid and the fact that yes, people could still be productive and yes, you can trust your employees to actually do their work while they’re not in the office. It was a good thing. I think that we might take it too far. We talked before about that human contact, and I think it’s important. I think it’s important for teams too,  I think that it’s important that every so often you get to know your colleagues.
My daughter works in a company where she works remotely. She never is expected to go in. She has been working there without ever meeting anyone face to face, and I, maybe it’s because I’m a digital immigrant, I’m old, but I find that shocking.

Liv: Yeah.  I agree with you. I’ve spent, the latter half of my career purely focused on people working in a remote sales environment. We had teams who almost never met face-to-face. But then every now and then we’d have a meeting and everybody would be under one roof, and you’d  suddenly recognise how important that was.
We’re making the best of these digital tools that we have, but I do think you’re right. I think it needs to be complimented with the occasional face to face.

Aleja: I am admittedly a digital immigrant. I still need to print my papers to edit them and some things. So for me, that, that coffee break, that walking down the hallway, chit-chatting about something else, and you can do that. You can do that a little bit on teams right before the meeting starts or whatever but it’s not same.

Liv: Tell me Alejandra, what does success mean to you?

Aleja: For me, success is being able to articulate what my end goal is. And to have at least an idea of the plan to get there. That is like the guiding principle. I think that people sometimes get over perfectionist about what that should look like or how you should get there. I’m a little bit more lenient about how you achieve success. I just believe it’s  important to understand at least the essence of what you’re trying to achieve.
And for me that’s very important because there’s a lot of factors and you might change direction along your way, but if you know what your North Star is and you have a plan on getting there, I think that’s success because that North Star is always going to change and move, and if you achieve one thing and then you need to have the other one.
You can get a little bit lost in that shuffle of getting there.

If you’re talking about success in life, it’s back to that balance of being happy in your real life, in your family, in your environment and your home, your marriage, your relationship, your friends and feeling the same. Feeling the same at work that, that what you’re doing for a living has meaning, fulfils you and it’s more than just a pay-cheque. I think in that regards if you ask me, I feel like I have a pretty successful life. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I wouldn’t change much.

Liv: That’s a pretty good way of articulating it!

Aleja: Yeah. Although I don’t play the lottery, so it would be very hard to win it! But if I did, I would still work here because  it’s fulfilling and at some point when you have all of your basic needs covered, it’s just about a bigger car and a bigger house and whatever. I’m not that interested in that. I’m interested in, how your day-to-day is happy, how you touch other people and help them make their life happier. That you go from needing to have a mentor to being a leader yourself. That’s a measure of success for me as well.
That you’re able to give back. For those many people that paved the way for you to make it.

Liv: So conversely then, talk to me about how, in particular with your team at Novo Nordisk, how do you navigate failures?

Aleja: So we have four guiding principles. The first one is about a culture of empowerment. Leadership over processes, making the right choices and time being the ultimate currency.
I feel that those things encourage permission to fail and being able to learn from it and progress, of course. Controlled failure, and that’s partly about making the right choices. Saying let’s figure out if this works, let’s try to innovate, let’s check, but be very careful that we have a way of measuring. So that we know if we are going in the wrong direction, we can adjust. But I think it’s pretty much part of the Novo Nordisk culture to allow for those failures to happen. I’m pretty new here and I’ve always lived through this.
I don’t know if that has been part of the DNA n since the very beginning. I don’t think so because there’s so much emphasis on it right now from leadership and from the people management organisation that, it’s obviously part of a cultural change that is happening, but it is happening in the right direction.
 I think in the area that I am in, digital engagement, we have to give a lot more freedom for that, and the consequences of failing are less severe than in other areas of pharma. 
I think it’s important to to promote empowerment, to make people feel like they can make their own choices and they can, sometimes fail. But have a plan on how they’re going to recover from that and more importantly, what they have learned.
I think if you are able to have that discussion about what came out of it, what did we learn? What are we not going to do more of? Or what are we going to do more of? Then in the end it’s a little bit of a success. Because it keeps you moving forward. 

Liv: What do you think are the biggest challenges for our industry as a whole over the next five years?

Aleja: I think it’s important to continue engaging with our customers in more relevant ways, especially in the areas where I have the most purview. Thinking beyond the pill and understanding the patient as a whole is crucial, and we should be able to serve them with digital health and programs. It’s a more holistic view, and we need to convert an industry that has been too focused on one thing. Although some departments already think this way, moving the whole organisation, the whole of pharma, to think more in those terms is a difficult but necessary move. Otherwise, other players will take that space from us without having all the years of checks and balances to do it right.

Liv: So what do you think the priorities should be? 

Aleja: I think the biggest challenge will be change management because it involves a big mindset shift, both internally and externally. Other industries, like the consumer industry, have already shifted their focus to looking at the consumer as a whole. We, as an industry, have been hiding behind regulations and excuses, but we can learn from other regulated industries like finance, which have significantly changed the way they interact with their customers. We also need to pinpoint who our customer is – the patient, the healthcare professional, or a combination of both – and understand their needs holistically, not just focusing on selling a molecule in the form of an injectable or a pill. Digital health, connected devices, and data insights are game changers that can help us transform healthcare. Data insights can help us better understand the patient’s needs and act on it, but the missing piece is the change management aspect. We cannot continue to accept the rule of halves, where only half are diagnosed, half of those are treated, and half of those stay on treatment. We need to help patients titrate, stay on treatment, and collaborate with other companies to provide better care. Each of us has to do our part, and the patient will be better served when we think holistically about their needs.

Liv: It’s really exciting, isn’t it? When you think about healthcare in those terms, I find it so fascinating and so exciting.

Aleja: Yeah, it is fascinating. When you go back to who we are doing this for, the patients, we have several anthropologists on the teams here who are great at giving us a glimpse of their needs, daily life, and the patient’s journey. When you are privileged enough to witness these, to see these videos and journals, and to understand not just the change that you are making but all the different elements that are part of this journey. Because at the end of the day, and I don’t know why we keep forgetting this, that’s why I was saying earlier that we are all going, we are all people waiting to be patients. This is not something that is outside or remote. We all have an aunt or a daughter or a best friend or a husband who will unfortunately be ill one day. When you are there in the hospital, you realize that there is so much more than that pill that they are given, and now that’s given them nausea, and they are uncomfortable and worried, and they don’t understand what they are supposed to do. How do we manage that, and what is our responsibility as an industry to see that patient, to really see them, not just their medical condition? It is interesting, and it is very humbling to realise that it’s us as well.

Liv: Yeah. I really like that concept. Like you say, everyone, we’re all just waiting to be a patient.  I think when you talk about that, you can’t ignore the importance of collaboration really. Looking at other organisations and working together because it’s never going to be achieved in a single organisation, is it?

Aleja: No, it’s funny because when we meet at these industry events and talk about collaboration, we all go back to our little worlds and silos. We put on our blinders and continue working on our individual projects. I don’t know what it’s going to take to change that. There are many disruptors out there, and companies like Google, Amazon, and even Apple are going to give us a run for our money one day. They’ll fill in some of the gaps that we can’t.

Liv: You’re probably right. You mentioned earlier about being a mentor when we were talking about success and at one point needing a mentor and then becoming a mentor yourself. Do you have one specific person who you would say has been your biggest support throughout your career?

Aleja: Oh, I’ve had so many great leaders and colleagues who have been a great inspiration to me, and I’m not afraid to ask for help. They have been fundamental in shaping my outlook on life and helping me in different aspects, whether it be operational or otherwise. I think we thrive and learn from each other, and we are never just one person. To be fair, I have learned the most from helping others rather than just learning from my mentors and leaders. Mentoring others is a great way to grow as it forces you to articulate things that you do naturally without thinking, which makes you understand why you do things and perfect them. For instance, when I was selling for pharma on the vendor side, I was doing really well, but I never formally understood why. I had to mentor one of my team members who wanted to know how I did it, which led me to think about why I did certain things. This led to a lot of introspection and growth, which is what a good mentor does. They ask you the questions and lead you in the right direction, but you are also asking the question to yourself and answering it. It makes me happy and helps me grow.

Liv: That’s such a good point. There’s so many things that someone does in a role that they’ve become fairly competent at. You do so many things on autopilot and to have the power of somebody sitting there saying, but why exactly are you doing it? I can see how helpful that could be at times.

Aleja: You asked me before what my passion was, and I said that I was very curious. I think I ask a lot of questions. I used to ask a lot of questions in college, and I still do. I ask a lot of questions to my team, and I often inquire about delays in processes. I ask where, how, and many times, these questions lead not just to answers, but to more questions. But I think that’s how you really grow and succeed, by always wondering and not just accepting things at face value. Questioning things is not necessarily negative, but it’s also about asking why things are working.

We do a lot with the team. We debrief after projects and have a stand-up meeting twice a week. The focus is mostly on where we have an issue and where we need help. The question of why we are stuck or how we can move forward helps us get there. We know where our true north is, but we don’t necessarily have the route planned out. Constant questioning helps us understand why we’re doing things a certain way and if that’s the right way.

Liv: So Alejandra. Every time I do this podcast, I have one question that I ask that I’m always fascinated to hear, and it’s about the movie Sliding Doors.
You’ve probably heard me ask it before. I’m curious to know, have you had a, a pivotal moment or perhaps do you ever consider that your life could have gone in a completely different direction?

Aleja: Yeah, so I did have a pivotal moment, and that’s when I went to Paris. My daughter had graduated from high school and was going off to college, and for the first time in 18 years, I could make my own decisions. I moved to Paris, and I was supposed to just take a sabbatical and, I don’t know, go to galleries and museums, perfect my French and learn how to cook delicious pastries. Very quickly, I realized that when I had so much time on my hands, I didn’t have time to do anything. I wasn’t going to any museums or galleries or doing anything. I meandered into the offices where my husband was working, which were the IMS Learning Academy at Tando, and I was just kind of snooping around, wondering what they were doing. I realized that I love to work, and I cannot take a sabbatical to do nothing. I really loved this industry and wanted to be part of it in any possible way. I wondered, back to sliding doors, if I could have continued walking down that boulevard and forced myself to go to the museum or gallery, but I didn’t. I stopped and started working. Very soon, I was volunteering for so many hours that they gave me a job, and I worked full-time. Then I had the time to go to galleries and museums and learn how to cook some of the dishes and perfect my French. It was that moment in which I realized that for so long, I thought I had been working because I had to, but I realized that I work because I love to. I love doing what I do. It was that moment of deciding whether to keep walking down that boulevard or go into that office and see how I could help. I love what I’m doing, and I’m so happy that I’m doing it. It’s not just that I love to work; I love to work in something that is meaningful, and this industry allows me to do that.

Liv: What advice do you give to your son and daughter? Do you have common advice for them both or has that changed as we were saying earlier?

Aleja: Yeah, I’ve given both of them some advice that’s the same and some that’s different, but I think first and foremost, it’s always important to treat others with respect and how you would like to be treated. I believe this is the fundamental principle of how to navigate through life, and this advice has not changed whether it’s for Carmen or when I talk to Lucas every day. To be frank, I gave Carmen a lot of advice on how to be successful and what to focus on, but I think I went a little overboard with that. As I was saying before, I tell Lucas that he needs to be happy and not worry too much about the outcome of things. For example, when he plays golf and the round doesn’t go the way he wants it to, he beats himself down. I tell him that it’s just a game and that his life is happening every day, and he needs to live it to the fullest. He cannot let it go by worrying about the past or the future, but focus on what he has right now. So, I believe that treating others with respect and how you want to be treated is the key to leading a great life because it will always help you make the right decisions.

Liv: Absolutely.

Aleja: Kids are kids, and they need to find their own paths. We cannot hover over them forever. They have to, oh, it was one of those times when all the advice they give you about raising your kid, there was this one that sounded so corny, and I laughed so much about it. It was about giving them roots until they can find their wings, and I made fun of it. Because like any self-help advice, it always sounds so corny and easy to do. But the more you think about it, as a parent, all you can do is give them the right foundation because eventually, they’re going to have to fly and soar and find their place in life. And they just need to have the toolkit to guide them through that. So, if you concentrate on that, rather than the actual outcomes of everything, but the foundation of it, then you’re doing your best. But we’re all human beings, and we’re flawed. We try to do our best for our kids, but we don’t always succeed in everything we do, and we make mistakes, and we just sometimes have to admit that.
Liv: That’s part of the lessons in life as well anyway, isn’t it? Making those mistakes. I have one more question, can you tell me about any experience you’ve had with workplace bias or your feelings around workplace bias in general and ways to tackle it?

Aleja: I’m very privileged to work in a place where diversity and inclusion are some of the biggest subjects in our life culture. And I think that is a fantastic thing. That has not been the case my whole life.

I have been in conference rooms in the past where it was me and five men meeting a client, and I was the highest ranking person in the room. And when the coffee needed to be brought, I had five men looking at me, expecting me to pick it up.

Living in the US, I had to deal with the fact that I am Latin American and have an accent, and I’m not as white as my counterparts. I had a job where my name had to be Alex because Alejandra was considered too ethnic. My business cards and everything said Alex Betancourt, and for the years I worked in that company, it took me a double take every time they called me Alex because it’s not my name. So it took me a while to get used to answering to a different name.

So I think I have come full circle from the beginning of the interview when you were asking about the place that I love living the most, and I think the Nordics is my favourite because it’s the place where I think there’s the most equality.

That those things that you have experienced in life about being a woman, not being white, or having an accent, now working in the digital space, I’m way older than most people there, so there are different levels of bias. I don’t experience them because of the country I live in and the company I work for.

Having experienced discrimination in the past, you appreciate so much more that diversity and inclusion are emphasised in this company. My biggest regret is that it’s not universal, even though this is what Nordic countries would like, as you travel to our Indian affiliate or other affiliates, culturally in those countries, these things are still en route to improvement. So hopefully, it will be faster rather than slower.

Liv:  Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It’s been a pleasure to hear your story.

Aleja: Thank you for inviting me.