Liv Nixon speaks to Mehrnaz Campbell about her formula for work and life, and how growing up in Iran gives her a slightly different take on gender equality here in the UK!
Mehrnaz moved to the UK aged 20 barely knowing a word of English. Not one to let anything hold her back, she learned the language, then became a nurse, and then joined the pharma industry as a hospital rep working for The Wellcome Foundation which then became GSK. Fast forward 30 years and Mehrnaz now runs her own global company, Cheemia and Cheemia ReSET, a now global organisation built to help pharma companies accelerate their sales performance. Chatting to Mehrnaz left me with the impression that this is a woman who has no concept of the word “can’t”!
Liv: Hi Mehrnaz Welcome to This Girl KAM!
Mehrnaz: Hi Liv. It’s great to be here.
Liv: It’s lovely to have you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Mehrnaz: It’s a good start for a Monday morning. Thank you for inviting me.
Liv: You are the first guest for 2023, it is an absolute pleasure to kick off the year with you.
Mehrnaz: Thank you Liv. I’m quite excited about 2023, but I’m really grateful for the break we had between Christmas and New Year. I think it’s the best holiday of the year because nobody else is working, so we are not coming back to work to millions of emails!
Liv: Can you please tell everyone a bit about yourself? We can see on LinkedIn your previous roles or what you’re doing now. But, I like to get a feel about the person behind those job titles as well, that puts you into context for us in terms of the roles that you’ve held.
Mehrnaz: I am founder of Cheemia and Cheemia ReSET. Cheemia is a Scottish based company that offers sales and marketing solutions and helps companies in the UK to accelerate their sales performance. Cheemia ReSET was a brand that we developed during covid, which is an online learning platform that helps sales professionals and sales managers to get themselves from the point of being uncomfortable with omnichannel to being really competent and confident within six weeks. That brand allowed us to go from being a UK based company to becoming global. We’ve got users across Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and hopefully we will soon have people in America using it as well. So, how did I get here?
It’s been a bit of a jagged journey. It wasn’t straightforward I was born and raised in Iran , I lived there till I was 20. My first job was over in Iran. I was working as a freelance typist, that helped me save money to move over to UK.
When I came to UK I didn’t speak English fluently at all. I’m sure a lot of people in the UK do French and German, but you wouldn’t be able to go to Germany and hold a job. So I did English from the age of seven. I could speak pigeon English, but when I came over here it was a real struggle to be able to hold a conversation.
I remember I used to watch BBC news and I used to get a headache because I had no idea what they were saying. I said to myself one day I would be able to speak English so fluently. Nobody will know where I come from and I think I’m almost there! In America, they think I’m Scottish or English. In England, they think I’m a bit Scottish and in Scotland they think I’m English. I’m confusing everyone with my accents!
So, I came to the UK and I spent a year improving my English and then I started nursing a year later. I qualified as a nurse and worked as a nurse, and then I went into medical equipment, sales and training. I was a nurse advisor and advising nurses how to use the medical equipment, and I had a fascination about pharmaceutical industry because pharma invested a lot in education of their staff. So I moved to pharmaceutical industry 30 years ago in 1992 as a hospital representative with Wellcome Foundation, Wellcome became GSK and I progressed in my career, became a therapy specialist, and then I joined Park Davis when we were launching Lipitor.
Park Davis became Pfizer and I stayed with them for about nine years. I did various roles. I worked in regional marketing. I was a portfolio manager for Scotland and Northern Ireland, I held a senior position as a business unit director in Scotland, and I was an account manager, so I did lots of different jobs and then, I moved to Takeda as one of the Regional Account Directors back in 2008.
That was an amazing job. We had so much autonomy. I was responsible for p and l, it was almost like running your own business. And because Scotland was so different and I had a marketing background, I was able to do all kinds of marketing aspects of the role.
That brought me till 2017. And during that time I had a family, I had two children. While I had my children, I did three postgraduate diplomas.
It was hard. I remember having my son in the bouncy thing hanging off the doorframe while I was doing my assignments for my courses and I was breastfeeding, I was doing a joint assignment with some of the people in my class. It was an evening class and I remember I was feeding him and then passing him to one of the guys to burp him while I’m typing the assignment.
It’s a bit mad, but yeah, it can be done. I’ve married twice. I left my first husband in 2010 and I raised the teenage boys on my own while I was working.
I remarried after both of them were over 18 in 2016. Then I decided to set up Cheemia and moved to America. So I moved to America with my new husband and established a company in the uk. So it was like a mad, strange career path I’ve had, but I’ve loved it. It’s been fun.
Liv: What do you think your drivers were at those times when you had young babies you were feeding, but yet still pushing yourself to do that additional study?
Mehrnaz: I think for me it’s always about why, and why I do something is because if I want something badly, I’ll make it happen. It’s like I’m a laser beam. I need to know what I want. I was living a good lifestyle back in Iran and coming here to UK with a suitcase, no education, no language. I wanted to recreate the quality of life I had in Iran, but I had to do it on my own without any support. I wanted a good life. I wanted to live in a nice house. I wanted to send my children to private school. I wanted to have a good quality of life so I can go on family vacations.
For that reason you look up to see what’s happening. You see people in senior leadership. getting a better pay, better bonuses, better career progression. And I remember my, my first manager when I was a hospital rep, I said to him, what do I need to do to become a manager?
He said, “You either need to do the studying and have the qualification, or you need to have the experience.” I said, “well, how do I get the experience?” He said, “Well, you need to get the job.” I said, “How do I secure the job?” He said, “You need to have the qualification!” So I thought, okay, that’s what I’m going to do.
So I went to evening classes and did two years of postgraduate qualification and management. And I think those things really did help, because when I look at my CV, every 18 months I had a promotion within the companies I worked in. I was really fascinated by marketing, not because I wanted to necessarily go into marketing, but because a lot of the materials we were getting were not really fit for purpose, so I thought if I went into marketing, I could maybe influence that. So I did the postgraduate diploma in marketing
I failed my case study first time. But, every time I fail in my life, I just think, okay, what did I learn from this? What can I do differently? Dust myself off… I don’t give up easily!
I’m just a bit maybe stubborn. When I want something, I go for it. And then second time I went for it and I got it. I think if every time I fail, I learn, like a driving test. I remember I had a driving certificate in Iran, then came over here and failed my driving test.
But that made me go and take more lessons and I became a better driver as a result of it. So when I got into marketing, I found you could involve the Sales force to create content. You can involve customers in thinking about what is it that they want to hear to influence them to change.
What really drives my motivation is be able to do a job where you can influence all of it. That’s why the RAD role really appealed to me, and that’s why in my company now in I’m still involved in the interface with customers because the minute you move away from them, your knowledge becomes a bit outdated after six months, so you need to somehow stay close to customers to really understand what their experience is, and the experience changed so much during covid and even now, the pressure points for them are changing all the time.
Liv: It’s interesting hearing about your motivators and who you are as a person, because I think when you describe yourself and those factors that drive you, it isn’t surprising to learn you set up a company yourself and, and have done this yourself because that has given you the opportunity to bring together all of these capabilities that you have and put it into your own baby.
Mehrnaz: Yeah. It’s really funny, when I left Iran, my reason was because I wanted to raise my children in a country where they can have freedom to study and be who they want to be. So they’re not like worried about war and instability. That was a big driver and I didn’t see my parents for seven years.
I raised my children with hardly any family support, but now I’m looking back and thinking, I’m glad I did that because my children have freedom to be who they want to be and do the jobs they want to do. And my motivation for starting Cheemia was, I wanted to have a company where I can live with my husband, but also come and visit my children as frequently as I wanted. I wanted to use the skills I’ve learned in the last 20 odd years in the UK to help the NHS. The projects we do, we only do it if it’s going to bring efficiency and savings for the NHS. We only do it if it adds value to patients. So I think my nursing experience is still weaved into what I’m doing now.
If a project is not adding value to the NHS, if it’s not adding value to patients, then I don’t even take it on. It’s actually easy to say no to clients because I’m taking work that is aligned with my own personal values rather than just the work that pays us. I believe if you follow your own values and align with your own values, you can enjoy working and enjoy life.
Liv: I completely agree. I did quite a lot of work myself last year as I turned independent, just establishing my own values and working out what I actually wanted to do.
I made a conscious decision that I was only going to do things that felt right. Some call it a gut instinct. I now call it just knowing my own values. If it doesn’t feel right there, then I know it’s not in line with, with my values. It’s quite liberating.
Mehrnaz: It’s a brave decision, but then you thank yourself later for doing it because you don’t end up doing things that feel wrong. Sometimes you could work in a company which could be amazing and great, but for whatever reason it just doesn’t sit right with you.
But we are all individuals and we are all different.
I found when I moved to Takeda, I suddenly felt I wasn’t expected to follow a framework of being a particular type of person. They really valued diversity and I suddenly felt I could just be me. I can just use the skills I had and be me. I remember I went to one of the senior directors in the company to ask them a question about something and they said, “Mehrnaz, we pay you the salary we do so you make those decisions.”
I thought, ok great. Now I can make decisions and make mistakes and learn from it. I remember my previous boss saw me in the airport six months after I joined Takeda, and he said, I didn’t recognize you. I asked why and He said, “your hair is down. You look relaxed, you’re laughing with your colleagues!”
I just felt I could be me. So I think we need to look for places and work because we spend eight hours at work every day, that’s a big chunk of our life. We need to spend it in a way that makes us feel we can be ourselves and thrive in the way we are. And people value our diversity.
People value our differences. We don’t have to all be the same and fit set in a box. I think when you follow your own values, then you are more aligned with who you are. It’s easier to be me rather than be someone else.
Liv: You’ve clearly had some fairly pivotal moments. Tell me about any particular moments that were so pivotal, sliding doors moments, if you like, where you could have taken a different route.
Do you ever think about what your life would’ve looked like? Had you done something differently?
Mehrnaz: Yeah. I think my biggest sliding door moment, Was actually back in 2016 I was doing a charity ride from London to Paris to raise funds for Myeloma uk with my colleagues at Takeda.
At the time when I agreed to do it, I didn’t even have a bike.
It was an amazing experience. We were cycling with patients who had myeloma and oncologists.
On the last day of the ride, I was so excited. I was going too fast down this hill and I tumbled and landed on my shoulder and broke my shoulder and my arm.
They told me I could only ride if I could put my hand on the handlebar, I couldn’t. So they had to drive me to Paris. Just before getting to the finish lineI made them stop so I could at least cross the line on my bike. I asked two of the captains to hold my jersey and I cycled across the finish line before going to the hospital. Then I came back to Edinburgh.
I was in so much pain. I didn’t need to have an operation and luckily I didn’t hit my head. But it was a big moment because I realized life can just go in a flash like that. I felt so lucky, I was doing the ride for a cause to do with myeloma, which is to do with people who have cancer of the bone. I knew my bone would heal, I’d be fine, but they couldn’t say the same.
For a week I was on Tramadol and feeling sorry for myself. And after a week I thought, I’m coming off tramadol. These drugs are too strong.
I rang, my employer at the time which was Takeda and asked to come back to work. My doctor had signed me off for two weeks, but I knew I’d be bored sitting at home for two months doing nothing.
I could have just spent that two months just chilling. I was getting married in September. But I thought, no, I want to go back to work. I just felt I could make a difference.
The big difference this made for me was I had told my employer, I’m moving to America. It was just a case of when. So when I said to them in January, I’m moving to America at the end of March, they actually put me in touch with people in America.
That’s when I had opportunities to go to Boston and Deerfield as they thought, as this girl is so committed doing this while she’s off sick, she could do great things in America. At that point I said to them, “What if I set up a company to provide similar services I’m doing for you now to allow you to continue this?”
I had given them the confidence to give me that project, and that was the start of my career as an independent consultant.
The rest is history. So yeah, that was my biggest sliding door moment. That started as an accident and turned out to be a wonderful opportunity later.
Liv: Do you ever wonder what it would’ve been like had you not gone independent, and what sorts of roles you’d have enjoyed?
Mehrnaz: I’ve got this attitude to life that you come across a T junction, you can go right or you can go left. I say to myself, if I go right, stuff’s going to happen and I’m going to figure my way out of the challenges and I’ll be fine. If I go left, stuff’s going to happen. I’m going to come across challenges and I’ll be fine.
I believe in serendipity as well. Sometimes we take a different path, but it leads us to the path we went to be anyway. My husband now was my first boyfriend when we were 19. He wanted to marry me. I said no to him. Then years later after I’ve married someone else and had two children, our paths crossed and we married.
Do I ever think, I wish I had married him first time? No, because I wouldn’t the the person I am now. I wouldn’t have the children I have now. I would be a completely different person. So I don’t sweat the things that have gone past.
We tend to be too critical of ourselves as women, and I think that’s the big difference between us and men.
We seek perfection and I think we just need to accept ourselves with all our flaws and our talents.
Liv: It’s respecting the choices you’ve made, knowing that at the time you made the choice because that was what was right , and making peace with that rather than, like you say, beating yourself up if something isn’t as you thought it was going to be at a certain time, finding peace with that and respect for yourself and your choices.
Mehrnaz: I think every time we make a decision, we balance things out. We look at all the different information that we have, and we make a decision.
I think we just have to. trust ourselves that we made the best decision at any moment when we are presented with opportunities or challenges, and just pat ourselves in the back. Say, well done. Okay, you made some mistakes. Doesn’t matter. Just dust yourself and move on. I think that’s where the value comes in. If your decisions are based on values and principles, then how can you beat yourself up by sticking to your own values?
Liv: You’ve had a hell of a journey in your life. I’m interested in, in chatting to you specifically about gender and if there’ve been times where you felt more conscious of your gender than others in any particular?
Mehrnaz:. Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s relative as well, because I was raised in Iran.
I remember as a child, I wanted to be a boy because boy had so much fun. They could go outside, play a football, they could go on a bike ride in the streets. I wasn’t allowed to go outside to ride the bike because it was not the right thing for a girl. They could go and stay in a friend’s house overnight. If I wanted to stay at my friend’s house, my parents needed to know, like the whole family history before they allowed me to go and stay. I think there was a lot more restrictions for girls. My mom, my dad were really good. They knew the environment where we lived gave more opportunities to men.
Dad had high expectation from us girls. I was the youngest of nine, so he expected us to have higher education. He expected us to be strong people. I did everything boys did. I did play football, I did ride a bike, but I just did it within the limitations that I had.
When the revolution happened, the girls, we had to have restrictions about our dress code. We had to wear scarfs. There were a lot of things that you couldn’t do. I think in life you just have to accept what you can’t change and change what you can’t accept. So I decided to move to UK to continue my education and then have a life here for myself and my future generation.
So in the UK pharmaceutical industry, I never felt my gender prevented me to go for the things I wanted because in relative terms, I thought there were loads of opportunities!
There was one time I noticed that I think I had my first senior position and I had my direct reports salaries and looking at them I saw two people, two men in my team. That though they were reporting to me, their salary was higher than mine. I remember I challenged my boss. I said, how come these guys getting paid more than me? He said, well, they started at a higher rate.
I thought, okay, that’s a clue for me. So next time I’m going for a job, I’ll negotiate my salary, and I’ve done that.
I remember when discussing a new role with my previous employer at Park Davis after a short career break, he tole me the salary he was going to pay me. I said, okay, I can take this salary, but I need to have a nanny to cover the childcare for my children, and I need to have a salary that makes it worthwhile for me to go back to work because by the time we pay the nanny, it needs to be enough to make it worthwhile. So I can take this salary, and stay here, for a while. But in the back of my head, I’ll be looking for another opportunity that pays me better so I can have a better quality of life. Or you can change that offer now and make it something that I can come here totally committed and concentrate on adding value and not worry about how I’m going to manage my lifestyle that I want to have. I pushed it back to him and he re revised the offer. It was a significant pay increase compared to what he first offered me.
I’ve got a formula in life I follow. If every time you want something, just think about why you want it. The why is important because it’s the fire in your belly when the going gets tough.
If you have a clear goal in mind, it’s easier to achieve it. But often people worry about the how. Don’t worry about the how. You figure it out along the way, all you need to do is take positive steps towards what you want and keep reminding yourself why you want it, and you figure out the how.
Liv: I’m assuming you’ve read Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’ have you?
Mehrnaz: No, I haven’t. A lot of people actually mentioned his book , but I’ve not read it. but I think I’ve lived it that through my life experience.
Liv: It will definitely speak to you. I will add a link to the book in the show notes to this podcast because I read it a few years ago and it’s stayed with me.
It’s been a real pleasure to chat to you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Mehrnaz: it’s a pleasure to contribute towards your cause that is so close to my own heart and I really appreciate having this chat with you today.
If listeners are thinking, I’m not happy where I am, or this place is not giving me the energy, just do something about it and reach out to the TGK network, we are all here to support each other.
You can make a difference. Believe in yourself and, and just do it.
Liv: Fabulous. Thank you so much.
If the formula Mehrnaz talks about has inspired you, I highly recommend reading the book we discuss in the interview, Start With Why. You can purchase it through Amazon here.