This Girl KAM with Emma Chaffin

Emma Chaffin has 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including senior leadership roles at Leo, Otsuka, Shield and Jazz. Her most recent role is Vice President, Country Head and Site lead at Galapagos. Emma has experienced significant personal traumas in her life, including her now healthy teenage daughter Briony being born at just 26 weeks, and then Emma herself received a diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer in November 2017. Despite these challenges, Emma continued to take huge professional strides forward, and she was open and honest with me about her experiences and the thinking behind the decisions she made at the time.

Liv: Hi Emma, welcome to the show!

Emma: Morning. How are you, Liv?

Liv: So, we’ve got a fair amount to talk about! Can you start us off and talk us through your journey from your perspective? Because from an outsider looking in, it looks like there’s not much that slows you down!

Emma: It’s kind of you to say that. I don’t know really. I guess everyone just works through their own career. I knew I always wanted to do something in the medical profession and I settled on pharmacy to go to university and study, which I did. I got qualified and then worked in the NHS for about six to seven years. And then I’ll be completely honest, I got a little bit bored, and I knew I could have a bigger impact. So I then moved into a consulting role at what was IMS, Iqvia at that point in time and had a couple of different roles there. I worked for a couple of other consulting firms too. Fast forward a few years, I fell pregnant with Briony. I knew that actually my consulting lifestyle, which involved jetting off around the world for two or three days a week, really wasn’t going to work. And obviously with what happened with Briony, there might have been a bit of foresight there as well. But actually, I also took some advice on my CV, and one of the people I trusted a lot said to me, ‘you’ve got a great CV. It shows that you know how to develop strategies, but actually, if you want to become more senior in the industry, you need to show that you can implement the strategies that you’ve developed.’ So at that point, I decided to go into pharma. And that was my first role in pharma, which was in Leo. And then really, I’ve worked in a variety of different roles, progressing through to general management roles. So yeah, quite a varied career!

Liv: You are about to leave the Galapagos. So you are in another period of change at the moment, aren’t you?

Emma: Yes, I am. And if I can give any advice to people, it would be to take those moments to stop and think about where you need to go or where you want to go next. Because they’re really quite rare. And I think over the last few years, one of the things that has happened is I’ve become a lot more confident in who I am. I don’t know if that’s just a female thing, but like anybody, I do get imposter syndrome. But I think over the last few years, I’ve really learned to accept who I am. And with that comes the maturity around where do I want to go next? And having the confidence to say, you know what? That’s not quite right for me. That’s not where I want to go next. And having the confidence and the reassurance that something will come along that does fit in line with what I want to do.

Liv: So take me back a little bit further and tell me about when you started at Leo.  Briony was born at 26 weeks and she then had 14 weeks in the hospital, which is a surreal time. I think anyone who’s had that experience will understand that. Then you brought Briony home and presumably, she had additional oxygen requirements for a while, and there were all the additional visits that you had to facilitate. A lot of people would have forgiven you for taking a longer career break than you did because, seven months later, you started at Leo, which was quite a senior role as a New Product Strategy Manager.

Going into any new role is a lot to take on when you’ve got a new baby around. But given all those additional circumstances you had to navigate, and it was a particularly senior position, tell me a little bit about that particular experience from your perspective?

Emma: Yeah, sure. And I guess the other piece that happened around the same time, we say things happen all at once, but that doesn’t mean it certainly did with us. I was studying for an MBA at that time as well. Briny was born in July, and I had my first year MBA exams in September of that year. We also moved house in September of that year as well. And we thought we planned it really well because we thought all those things were going to happen after Briny arrived. She was actually due at the end of October, so we thought that would be a great time for all these things, but obviously, she had different ideas.

So yeah, you’re right. It was a time when, when you have your first child, they always say, don’t they? You talk to someone, and they’ve got all these wonderful ideas in their head of what it’s going to be like and live. Those of us that have children know it’s not going to be that way at all, but you don’t like to spoil their feeling about it all. And I was exactly the same. I had all these ideas about what I was going to do on my maternity leave, and we’d booked Brian into the local nursery. We thought we’d really got ourselves set up for it all. And then obviously, it all got thrown out the window with what happened.

So yeah, she had 14 weeks in the hospital. She couldn’t come home until she was three pounds because she couldn’t fit in the car safely until she was three pounds, and she actually ended up coming home on her due date, which was the end of October. And then you’re right, the role at LEO came about because I was working on a consulting project with Leo when I was with IQVI, and they came to me. Leo came to me and said, would I like to work with them because they liked the work I was doing? I said no at that point in time because it wasn’t quite right, but I thought this might become fortuitous in the future. And sure enough, when what happened with Brian happened, I reached out to them and said, I’m going to be looking to change roles when I come back. Is there something that you have available? And that was when this role came up. So they were fully aware of my situation. They knew of me before I’d had Brian, and I guess I’d got a certain amount of credibility with them as well. They were great during the interview process actually. And I had to pump because she couldn’t breastfeed, but I did have to pump every three or four hours. They set aside a room where I could do that. They actually allowed me to bring Brian in with me as well and bring in someone who could sit with Brian while I was actually doing the interview. So that reassured a number of concerns that I had from the outset, because I could see that they were really trying to be very helpful. I ended up having lunch in the canteen with Brian there, and obviously, it was a bit of a talking point. Several people came over.

But my decision to return back to work was an interesting one. Throughout the process of having Briony, I was referred to as Mum. And that really got to me because I was in the hospital for 14 weeks. I didn’t really feel like I was Emma anymore. I felt like I was Briony’s mum. It’s a subtle distinction, but it was a really important one to me. And I felt that I wanted to go back to work to really maintain the identity of who I was and who I am.

Work was important to me, and quite honestly, my maternity leave had been absolutely rubbish. It started obviously the day that Brian was born. I’d been in the hospital for 14 weeks. I was there literally all day. When she came home, we weren’t actually allowed to take her out anywhere because her risk of infection was so high. And quite honestly, we were petrified about the oxygen at that point in time. So, I really felt like I’d been kind of cheated on the whole maternity thing and just wanted to get back to a sense of normality. A part of me that was really important to me. It was an ongoing source of discussion with a number of friends, actually. And I could tell that they didn’t really agree. Some didn’t agree with what I was doing, but I think it’s so personal that I have the confidence to say, “Do you know what? This is what I need. This is what is important to my mental health, and I’m not gonna be afraid to admit that I enjoyed going back to work, I needed it.”

Liv: I 100 percent get that. And you’re so right. You’re not even referred to as Briony’s mum. You’re just referred to as Mum all the time in that setting. It’s interesting that you say you could tell that some people had different opinions on whether or not it was right or wrong. Did you experience that while you were at work, or was it more just on a personal level?

Emma: No,  I think at work the conversations are perhaps more superficial, and people are more accepting. I don’t know what they thought about or what they said when I wasn’t around. But yeah, I was perfectly comfortable with it, and I was really happy explaining why I’d taken the decision that I’d taken. I didn’t want to back away from it. I didn’t want to apologise for it. So it’s quite clear about the reasons why I’ve done that, and I don’t feel that as a woman, you should need to apologise for whatever decision you make. And I still truly believe to this day that it has made me a better mother to Briony. And I’m sure other people would think that staying at home would have made them a better mother, and that’s fine for them. But I absolutely knew that I needed the mental stimulation of going back to work.

Liv: I couldn’t nod anymore vigorously after a week off with a couple of two-year-olds! So let’s go a little bit more forward then. You moved on from Leo. You’ve held some pretty senior roles. You joined Jazz in 2019. In 2017, you had your breast cancer diagnosis. Talk to me about the role at Jazz, first of all, and how it felt going back into a workplace after going through such a huge, significant event in your life.

Emma: Yeah, so you’re right, the diagnosis was in 2017. It was at the end of 2017. I had my first chemo on the 6th of December 2017, and then I had my second on the 27th of December. And we shaved my hair after the second because it was coming out. I took about a year out. Unfortunately, I actually got made redundant.

It was the first time in my career I’d ever been made redundant, but the company I was with essentially ran out of money. So I got made redundant towards the end of that time. And again, it was one of those moments in life where I sat down and I thought about whether I wanted to go back to work and whether it was the right thing to do.

And again, I knew I did want to go back to work. My husband counseled me quite strongly, and he said, “Look, just be kind to yourself, Emma. Take a step back. You don’t need to go in at the same level that you left at.” And he was absolutely right. So my diagnosis had really given me a mental and physical knock. It had shaken me to the core of who I was and made me challenge pretty much everything in my life. You don’t expect to be confronted with your mortality so brutally in your early forties. The role at Jazz came about because someone I’d worked with at Otsuka had read my blog where I wrote that I was thinking about going back to work. I think it’s the right time. She contacted me and said, “Look, there’s a role going at Jazz. It’s not as senior as you were, so it was a business unit director role rather than a GM role. But actually, I think it was exactly what I needed.” So I met with the then-general manager. We met in the coffee shop in Marlow. I immediately clicked with him. I didn’t have much hair at that point in time, and I was really transparent about where I was and what had happened. And that was really tough. But it was important to me that people were aware that I might need some support, and the situation I was in was a bit unusual.

Anyway, to be honest, the industry’s small, and my ex-colleague who’d given me the lead around the role knew all about things. And I felt that I wanted people to be aware because, again, I didn’t want people to be embarrassed either for me or because of something I said or did. So I was always upfront about it. And they were brilliant. They accepted where I was at. I was still on treatment once every three weeks. That would continue for my first six months. And then there were the ongoing surgeries and other things that I needed longer term. So they were really good on many different levels. They gave me the time that I needed, allowed me the time off for appointments, and were supportive in whichever way they could be. And actually, I ended up doing a talk with them around people with a cancer diagnosis returning to the workplace. So we had a charity every year, and it was the Maggie’s Foundation. They offer really nice spaces for people who have a cancer diagnosis to just go and be themselves and relax, and there’s one in Oxford, which is where Jazz is based. And they wanted someone to talk through how we can be more considerate of people who are returning to the workplace. And there are some statistics around one in two people will get cancer at some point in their lifetime. So it’s going to become more and more frequent that there are people in the workplace who need that understanding of what they need and what it looks like.

They were really good on many different levels. They gave me the time that I needed, allowed me the time off for appointments, and were supportive in whichever way they could be. And actually, I ended up doing a talk with them about people with a cancer diagnosis returning to the workplace. We had a charity event every year for the Maggie’s Foundation, which offers really nice spaces for people with a cancer diagnosis to go and relax. There’s one in Oxford, where Jazz is based. They wanted someone to talk through how we can be more considerate of people who are returning to the workplace, given that statistics show one in two people will get cancer at some point in their lifetime. So it’s becoming more and more frequent that there are people in the workplace who need understanding of what they need and what it looks like. They were amazing, and I couldn’t have asked for a better employer going back into the workplace. I consider myself really lucky because I know that’s not everybody’s experience from the forums that I’m on.

Liv: Going forward, what are the sorts of things that you would like to see put in place for people in the workplace who are either directly impacted by a cancer diagnosis or have a family member who has been diagnosed? Are there certain things that you would like to see companies do more or less of?

Emma: I think there are general things that employers can do, and to be honest, there are a lot of things in place already. It’s just that you don’t always know about them. Cancer is a registered disability. The moment you are diagnosed with cancer, you are protected by the Disability Act, which gives you the legal protection that you need. So it’s things like time off for those appointments. It’s a protected characteristic, so you can’t be made redundant as a direct result of it. You can’t be discriminated against. My husband’s employer was also great because, again, as he became effectively my carer, there are protections in place for that as well. So it’s not just the individual themselves, it’s also people who need to attend important appointments with them. For instance, when I was having pivotal scans and the results were coming back from those, he took the time off to come with me too. I didn’t want him at all of them. It’s a lot of time. There wasn’t a huge amount to talk about.

In terms of other things, it’s just the fatigue and the tiredness. I think cancer treatment is a long process. There are different types of breast cancer, there are different types of cancer, obviously, and everyone’s experience is different. So mine was 18 months of treatment. And I think people are with you for that initial shock around the diagnosis and as you start to go into treatment. But then the support tends to wane, as people think that you are getting over it. And actually, when you come out of treatment, it’s the mental burden that then hits you because you’ve spent all your time physically just trying to get through it, and it takes a long time to get through that mental part as well.

So I think it’s just the acceptance and the understanding that it’s not just the treatment. It’s the mental health portion of it as well. It’s the fatigue that can take a couple of years to get back from. For me, I had to have my ovaries out as well to reduce the risk of it coming back. So I’m now in early menopause, which has a whole load of associated things going with it as well. So I think it’s just an ongoing dialogue and an appreciation and empathy of that situation.

Liv: You referred to that in your blog as well. Of course, you initially get a lot of well-wishing and people showing empathy at the time that it’s happening. But as the months and the years start to pass by, yeah, people start to just assume a certain level of normality when you’ve gone through something like that. Regardless of how your prognosis might change, you yourself will always be impacted. And when you’re at this moment of “what’s next,” having been through what you’ve been through, I imagine your priorities are slightly different than what they might have once been.

Emma: They are, but I think, again, time is a great healer. And while I will never forget what’s happened, things do have this habit of slipping back to where you were before. I think actually part of that has been around my decision to leave Galapagos. It was my five-year anniversary, obviously in December just passed. And at the time, I made myself a number of promises, and I realized that I’d gone back on a couple of those. So things like the work-life balance, things like the priorities in my life had slipped to a level that I wasn’t hugely comfortable with, and the anniversary was a reminder actually that life is short. And is this meeting my expectations? So it wasn’t the sole reason, but it was part of what made me reassess and look at things. So no, I will never forget, and I’ve been changed forever, but time does have a habit of making you forget. I guess I think about it less now. There are triggers that make me think about it as there are with any event. I still have scans, unfortunately, and those will always be particular triggers, but I can get on with my day-to-day life without it popping into my mind or being there all the time. But yeah, it’s interesting how five years on some of the things I promised myself have not happened, a lot have. So we’ve had some amazing holidays, some amazing times, but it’s just about constantly reminding yourself and just, again, being.

Liv: What are the things that you talked to Briony about in terms of what you’ve been through and priorities for the future? What are the key bits of advice or guidance that you give to her now as she approaches her teenage years?

Emma: I guess the most obvious one is to check your breasts. Yeah, that’s the first one. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t check. So I was incredibly lucky, and I’m quite embarrassed about that because I work in the industry. You’d think I would. So that’s obviously the first one. We were transparent with Bri. We’ve always been transparent about things. Actually, as a family, we’re quite open. We took some advice from McMillan around how to tell her and what to tell her because obviously, we wanted her to be aware, and she knew something was going on. Kids are so intuitive. She knew there was something going on. So we told her, we contextualized it in a way that was appropriate for her age. One of the biggest lessons she learned was about how who we are as people is not defined by how we look. She learned that in a difficult way because she really struggled with me having no hair. But there are a few pivotal moments where I think it really came home to her that who I am is internalized. It’s not defined by how I look. So that’s been one really big thing. The other thing was that she is very open with her feelings. She had some support in the form of counseling when we felt she needed it, and I think that’s a really good skill for a young girl to have: to recognize that it’s okay to not be okay and to raise your hand and say, “Do you know what? I need some help.” Yeah, we had a thing where we would talk about memories. So every day we’d sit down, and we’d say, “What’s your lasting memory of the day?” And I think I was just probably a bit nicer to her as well. Because in the busyness of life, with everything going on, you do lose it sometimes with your children. You ask, and I certainly am sometimes a bit cross with her when perhaps the situation doesn’t warrant it, just cause I’ve got 101 other things in my head. So it made me think about what impression do I want to leave as a parent and what impression do I want to leave her with as she gets older. I think the other thing was that, again, throughout, when I went back to work, that was a discussion we had. She didn’t want me to go back to work. She got quite used to me being around, and it was quite nice having mommy pick her up and drop her off and make her breakfast.

I used to sit down to her and say, do you know what? You are really important to me. That work is also an important thing about who I am and what I do, and it gives us the lifestyle that we want to have.

So just those messages around, you can do this if you want to as well. It’s about choices.

Liv: Do you see a lot of that in her and her approach to things?

Emma: I think so. Yes, she’s always talking about the job she wants to do when she grows up. She still wants to marry Davide from Love Island, but we’ll work on that one! But yeah, I think so. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want them to be strong, independent women, boys, whatever child you are raising. Yeah, and just be happy. That’s the thing that we want to leave her with, to just do whatever makes you happy. And we are not fussed what that looks like, as long as you’re happy. 

Liv: So going back to when you were a little girl, did you always want to work in the pharmaceutical industry? Did you always know what you wanted to do?

Emma: I knew it was science-based, and I originally thought I wanted to be a doctor. Then two things happened, actually. I realised I didn’t like the sight of blood, and actually, I don’t think I was quite good enough academically to be a medic, if I’m completely honest. So I spoke to the careers advisor at school, and she said, “Why don’t you look at pharmacy? It’s similar. You earn pretty much the same, but you don’t work as long hours.” And so that’s what set my mind on it. I joined a choir when I was at school, and in the choir, there was one person who was the chemist at the local Boots store. So I approached him and asked to do work experience with him, and he took me under his wing, actually. And I’m very grateful to him to this day. He employed me when I was 15 years old, and we did all the paperwork, went to the council because at that point, you had to ask the council if you could employ a 15-year-old. Then I worked all my summer holidays at university back at Boots as well, and did a couple of shifts there when I qualified. Actually, I didn’t quite get my A-level grades that I needed to get into my first-choice university. He contacted my second university, which was Aston, and told them about what I’d been doing and said he thought he could see I’d make a great pharmacist. So that was really nice to have someone on my team batting for me, and I’m sure that played a part in me being able to get into uni to study pharmacy.

Liv: Wow, that’s a lovely story. Do you think he was your first mentor?

Emma: I think he was, actually, without me realising. And that’s the thing. With a really good mentor, you don’t realise that they’re there and doing things for you and guiding you until you look back. He was great at picking me up and saying, “You can do this, you can do this,” and he really had my back when I was at a point where I was really quite low and couldn’t see a way through it. He helped guide me through that and did some things in the background that were just really helpful.

Liv: Have you had many other mentors over the last few years?

Emma: Yeah, I think I have, and there are mentors in the formal capacity of it, and then there are people that you just talk to. And I would actually say that one of my closest friends is actually one of my best mentors. I met her working at Leo years ago when Julisa was born. We weren’t hugely friendly at work, and we were good colleagues, but it wasn’t until I left Leo that we made space and time to get to know each other on a personal level, and we’ve been great friends ever since. Our girls have pretty much grown up together, and she came with me when I went wig shopping, which was the most surreal experience we’ve ever had. But she’s been brilliant just because she knows who I am to the call. And then there are formal work mentors who are useful when I’ve had tricky conversations to have or when I don’t know how to handle things.

When I’m struggling with people internally or with situations or just getting a bit frustrated, I’ve always found mentors outside of work, so not directly related to the job that I’m doing. They are more helpful if I’m honest because I find they can bring that impartiality and that lack of agenda. They can suggest seeing things from a different perspective. I don’t always feel the need for one. They float in and out of the background as I have situations. I think over the years, I’ve become more insightful and more aware of when I need to reach out and speak to somebody.

Liv: So you’ve got to know yourself better?

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. I think, and also, there are mentors, and then there’s, I guess, the other part of it is mental health as well because I think mentors are really useful for mental health in the workplace. So, again, perhaps saying you need to take that step back. You need to just be a bit kinder to yourself. Go out and do a run more often, which is what I do to de-stress. So just being kind again.

Liv: So do you think moving forward in your next roles, you’ll likely play that role for more people given the experiences you’ve had and your journey? Do you think that puts you in a position to guide others?

Emma: I don’t know! I always get a bit embarrassed when people ask that, actually. I’m happy to help people in whatever way I can. And if that’s formal mentoring or informal or whatever it looks like, then I’m just happy to help people talk through that, particularly I guess women who are perhaps earlier in their career and then maybe struggling with that identity piece when they come back to work or whether they come back to work or what it looks like. How do they navigate through that? How do they deal with the inner emotional turmoil of, should I be here, should I not be here? Is it okay for me to down tools at five o’clock and leave? And just all of those internal conversations and also creating an environment where people feel that they can perform at their best, whatever that might look like. And I think COVID has had some amazing benefits, has had some amazing benefits about us all being more accepting of a more flexible workplace. And I think flexibility, you’ve got to be careful how you interpret flexibility because what’s flexible to me might not be flexible to you. And it’s really just about finding the right solution for people.

Liv: It is just letting people be human beings, isn’t it, really?

It’s adapting to everyone’s own individual human needs. That’s all empathy is. That’s inclusion, isn’t it? It’s just allowing people to be their whole selves.

Emma: It is, and the other thing is it’s okay to say, “I don’t know” or “this situation is new to me. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

Or, “let’s work through this together.” And that was again, one of the real learnings from both the cancer and when Briony was born. People found it difficult to talk to me because they didn’t want to upset me or offend me. So, some people felt it best to say nothing or stay away.

That can be quite hurtful because you don’t know how to cope with it either, and you are trying to pick your way through it as best you can. So, I think to call it out and just say, “look, I don’t know how to deal with this either, but we’ll do the best we can. I have not had cancer before. Let’s work through this together.” And I think it’s, again, just the difficult conversations, but they need to be had, and they need to be had with empathy.

There are some things that are sensitive, but what’s sensitive to me might not be sensitive to somebody else. And there’s no formula for this, is there? There’s no formula for working your way through life. We all just do the best we can every day. And I firmly believe that everybody’s coming at it from a good place.

And that’s what you just need to remember, isn’t it?

Liv: Exactly.  So, talk to me about your key motivators. What do you look for when you’re considering your next position or looking for a new role?

Emma: So, it has to be something that interests me, and generally, what interests me is new experiences. So, what have I not done before? What is this role going to give me that is going to really fulfill me? Because I like learning new things, that, for me, is the first thing that I look at.

And I don’t tend to look at, I don’t set out and say, “I’m going to look for this role.” It’s generally a variety of things. Because my CV is quite varied, it can lend itself to a number of different things. I look at the company. I think it’s becoming increasingly important to me. And I ask to speak to a number of different people from the company if that’s not going to happen as part of the interview process.

And this links back to what I was saying earlier, Liv, about perhaps becoming more confident in who I am. I now feel that it is very much a two-way process, whereas I guess earlier in my career, I felt it was very much me trying to sell myself to them. I do now feel that I need to understand a bit more about this company. Where’s the experience for me? What are the financials of the company? Does it have a solid base? What’s the culture of the company? Who are the people that I’m going to be most closely working with? What are the benefits? What’s the package? Is it the right move for me and for the family? What are the travel expectations?

Things like that. So, I guess I’ve become more confident to ask those questions, whereas before, I would’ve asked them, but I’d have felt awkward doing it. Then I guess it’s about the team. So more recently I’ve had larger teams. So it’s about what’s the leadership position that I can take and what’s the broader impact that this role is going to have?

That could be either over a broader team or over a broader portfolio of products or earlier in the product life cycle, therefore impacting more people. It’s not really a definitive answer. I look at a number of different roles and then see what I feel fits, and that’s indeed what’s happened here.

I’m looking at roles within industry. I’m looking at a couple of roles on the consulting side. Within industry. I’m looking at commercial roles. I’m looking at earlier in lifecycle roles. If I don’t find something I’ll do some consulting work until I find something that does tick my boxes.

Liv: What do you perceive success to be? When do you think you’ll feel that you’ve achieved success in your career specifically?

Emma: Good question! Oh, it’s as you mature. So I sat down when I was, I don’t know, 21 and just leaving university, and I thought I had my career all mapped out in front of me. Where I’ve ended up is incredibly different from where I thought I would. And I quite like that, actually. I quite like the sort of organic meandering through a career rather than setting it out from 20 years ago. It’s a really good question. I think for me, when I was working at Shield, which was a pure startup, I used to say to the team, “What I want you to be able to do is look in the mirror at the end of the day and say, ‘I did everything I could possibly do today in the best way that I could.’ And if you’ve done that, nobody could ask anything more of you.” So I think there’s a personal success that you hold yourself to, and then there’s professional success. And for me, that personal success is, can I do that? Can I look in the mirror and say, “I’ve done a good job today?” Do I go home feeling fulfilled? Do I go home feeling proud? Longer-term, I guess it’s having that broader impact. But I wouldn’t say that I’m aspiring to get to CEO of a particular company or anything. It’s more, “What have I done?” And when I’m, hopefully, 75 and sitting in my armchair, I can reflect back and feel that I made a difference in what I’ve done in my working career. So I think it’s probably as simple as that for me.

Liv: What do you think Briony will want to do?

Emma: So there are two things she wants to do. She wants to do either corporate law or become a clinical psychologist.  I think the corporate law has been because she’s been watching Legally Blonde, if I’m completely honest. But hey, they’re not bad things to aspire to at this age of life!

Liv: That’s brilliant. For a 13-year-old, regardless of her reasoning!

Okay. So the one thing that we always talk about on this show, which you may be aware of, is the sliding doors aspect. I don’t know if you’ve heard it before. Have you seen the movie, for a start?

Emma: It’s one of my favourite movies.

Liv: Excellent. That’s a good start! We’ve talked about some fairly significant moments in your life. Is your sliding doors moment related to your first discovering your lump? Or do you have other sliding doors moments in your life that could have significantly shaped the way your future looked? And do you ever wonder about the other side of what that would have looked like?

Emma: I think probably Briony is the main one, more than the cancer diagnosis, actually. We’d struggled conceiving and remaining pregnant, and she was our last go. So actually, had she not made it, I think my life would have gone in a different direction. I still think I would have stayed doing the career that I had done, but I think I’d have made different choices. And obviously, my personal life would have been very different without the wonderful being that is Briony in our lives. So that would definitely be one. And then actually, I think the other one was the point earlier in my life that I spoke about when I was 18 years old and couldn’t see a way forward for what I wanted to do and the path I thought I was on. So I think that would have been very different had the wonderful gentleman not stepped in and supported me in my career moving away to university.

Liv: So if that particular gentleman hadn’t taken you under his wing, do you think you’d have had an entirely different career? You knew it was always going to be science, do you think that would’ve always been the case, regardless?

Emma: So I think I’d probably have ended up studying to be a pharmacy technician rather than a pharmacist, which wouldn’t have opened the doors that are now open to me in terms of the pharmaceutical industry. So I can see that I would’ve still stayed doing something that I was passionate about, but it would’ve looked very different and wouldn’t have had the breadth of what I’ve done. Because really, the science degree was what opened my eyes to the broader opportunities out there. And it was one of my good friends from university who was actually working with IQVIA that made me think about moving there, and that first move from pharmacy to the industry side, albeit consulting. It’s interesting actually because within the NHS and I guess just more generally in the general population, the pharmaceutical industry is often painted as the big bad enemy, I wouldn’t have considered it if I hadn’t had that friend who was working for Iqvia at the time.

Liv: It’s so true about the pharma industry being painted as the bad guy, and it’s only since doing this podcast that I’ve started to recognise just how much good there is in the industry. I get a lot out of that personally, being able to see the potential for good that the industry has.

Emma: And that was my motivation for moving from pharmacy to the industry because I felt I could have more of an impact and make more of a difference than I could in the pure pharmacy world. That was the sole motivation, and people struggled with that. It was an interesting discussion with some colleagues. 

Liv: You don’t seem like the sort of person who would tolerate much in the way of bias in your career, whether it’s gender bias or otherwise. But, is it something that you’ve come across much? Do you think you have ever been impacted by any workplace bias?

Emma: Yes, two instances spring to mind. The first one would be after I’d had Briony. There was definitely an assumption that I was going to take more time off to have another child, and it was never stated. It sounds odd, but I could just feel it to the point where I made it clear that my family was complete. I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do or not, but I felt that I needed to provide clarity that I was done because I just felt that, for three or four years afterwards, it was just hanging there in the air. And I guess maybe because my friends and my family were making similar assumptions, that maybe that was where it was coming from. So that would be the first time. And the other time was actually earlier in my career. Again, I’m not going to say where, but it was a very male-dominated culture, and the men in the office used to disappear off on a Wednesday afternoon to go and play golf, which was just what happened. So I think I accepted it as normal. It’s not until you reflect on that, that you understand that there is a gender bias piece happening there as well. And actually, I just thought of the third one. I think probably the third one is some age bias as well. I think because maybe because I’m relatively young to have done the roles that I’ve done, there is often an assumption that I don’t have the right level of experience, and that really irritates me. Really irritates me, as do all of them actually. But I think that’s probably the one that irritates me the most.

Liv: And all of these things contribute. We refer a lot to imposter syndrome in this, and coming across those attitudes sometimes definitely contributes to the way women or people in general bring themselves to work and how they carry themselves at work. I think it is only once you start to recognise them that you can change the way you approach work as well.

Emma: I think so, yes. And obviously, my role as a leader now is to make sure that I create environments where that doesn’t happen or that isn’t happening either consciously or unconsciously. And it’s part of a larger dialogue, a larger debate. But I do think that will be one of the things that as female leaders, we have a real duty to do, and to create that environment where we’re calling it out and we are just more conscious of it.

Liv: Absolutely. Well Emma, I wish we knew where you were going next, but I’m glad that you’re getting this period of time, and you are at a point in your life where you can choose because I do think whatever it is that you’re going to do will be hugely exciting. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much.

Emma: Thanks, Liv. 

If you’d like to read more about Emma’s story, you can find her blog about Briony’s early weeks of life here and the blog she kept in the months and years following her cancer diagnosis here.