This Girl KAM with Manuela Buxo

Manuela is the European Head for Specialty Care at Sanofi, and has experience leading diverse teams across the world from France to Switzerland, Mexico and the US. An inclusive, global leader, Manuela is passionate about developing the future leaders who want to make a difference.

Liv: Hi Manuela, welcome to the show! Before we begin, could you please give us an explanation of what you do now, and more importantly, your story to date and your career?

Manuela: Hi Liv. Absolutely. So I am the European Head for the Specialty Care business at Sanofi, leading the region for Sanofi, which includes everything from immunology to neurology, oncology, rare diseases, and rare blood. I have always worked in healthcare throughout my entire career. Before joining Sanofi, I worked for Bayer for around 15 or 16 years. I love making an impact on people’s lives and helping patients and their families during difficult times. Outside of work, I am married, and my strange last name comes from my husband, who is originally from Spain. We now live in Germany, and I have two sons who are 11 and 13.

Liv: Oh, lovely. I’m glad you told me how to pronounce your surname because I would have definitely gotten that wrong!

Manuela: Yes, everybody gets that wrong, but that’s not a problem.

Liv: So take me back a little bit further. You said that you’ve always worked in healthcare. What was your very first role?

Manuela: Interestingly, after university in Germany, I started at Bayer in a corporate trainee program. The program allowed me to do six-month stints in different parts of the company, including investor relations, accounting, controlling, and mergers and acquisitions. After completing the program, I started in a controlling finance role and loved it. I enjoyed understanding the long-term vision and ambition of the company, being part of several transformation projects, and working on a business development deal. Then, the head of the business I was working on approached me and suggested that I would be great in a marketing role. I was hesitant at first because I loved finance, but I followed his guidance and started working internationally in the US. I loved experiencing different parts of the business, and I never looked back.

Liv: That must have been a scary leap.

Manuela: A lot of things I’ve done throughout my career were courageous moves. I thrive off of challenges and love learning something new. I’m very curious about learning new things and experiencing new parts of the business, working in different cultures, and leading in different cultures. I always knew that I wanted to work internationally because I grew up in East Germany. I was 14 when the Berlin Wall fell, and I knew that I really wanted to go and experience the world. That curiosity drove me to take on new challenges. Of course, there is always a level of anxiety around starting a new role, but there is also excitement to it. I always think about what I can learn and what I will get out of it, which gives me the courage to do it anyway.

Liv: So can you tell me more about growing up in East Germany? As a 14-year-old, that must have been quite an experience.

Manuela: Yeah, it definitely was. Up until that point, everything that I knew was part of a completely different system – a socialist system. Suddenly, the world that I knew and relied on was gone, and we had no idea what to expect. It was scary.

Both of my parents – my mom was a teacher, and my dad was a forest ranger – had to rethink their careers. My dad went back to university at the age of 40, and my mom took over a youth hostel. They did something completely different from what they had done before.

But I think it was also encouraging to me because instead of being stuck and wondering what to do, they went out and reinvented themselves. They gave us wings and made us feel like we could do anything we wanted to do.

Even though we went through some scary times, not knowing what the future held, it ultimately opened many doors for me. I was able to travel and study abroad. During my university years, I did all of my internships abroad. So, it was really an opportunity for me, even though it was initially a little scary.

Liv: That’s very interesting. And it seems like that mindset has carried over into your work roles as well. Can you talk more about that?

Manuela: Yes, for me, any new venture has some risk to it, but it also brings a lot of opportunity. I always feel like there’s so much that I’m in control of – how I approach a challenge, learning something new, and giving myself the time to learn something new. When I start a new role in a new country or with a new company, I always approach it by giving myself time to learn.

I know the beginning is probably going to be a little rocky until I figure out how it all works and which value I can add. Until I know enough to start making decisions, I take it one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other. Rather than looking at the big mountain I need to climb, I focus on taking one step at a time.

Then, after a month or two, I reflect on everything I’ve already achieved. Instead of putting more pressure on myself, I try to give myself credit for what I’ve accomplished. It’s important to be grateful for everything you have been able to accomplish and celebrate it, even if it’s just the little things. It helps you recognize how much has already happened rather than always looking at what else you need to do.

Liv: Yeah, absolutely. So you went into your marketing role. Can you tell me more about your journey, in a bit more detail? Did you always know you liked leading people?

Manuela: I didn’t have a plan, to be honest. When I started out, I just knew that I wanted to work internationally. I always loved learning new things, and I tend not to be driven by power and status. So it was never about the big jobs. It was always about expanding my responsibilities, learning new things, and tackling new challenges.

The marketing role was in what was then called biological products, and it was a rare disease role. I was working on primary immune deficiency disease, a completely new area for me because I had not worked commercially on the business. It was already in the specialty care field, which is what I’m doing now, and it was in the US. But on the global team, the business just happened to be headquartered in North Carolina, which is where I was located. So I learned a lot about that business and its customers. It was a rare disease, meaning that the patient advocacy groups were very organized as well. So I got to meet a lot of the patients that we were working for, which was super meaningful and very motivating for the type of work that we were doing.

Then, about three years in, I was in a conversation with the region head for Latin America at that time from consumer healthcare. He had a role open in Mexico to go and lead parts of the consumer healthcare business there. That was really my first leadership role, leading a team. There were quite a lot of firsts for me. It was a new country, I’d never lived in Mexico, and I didn’t speak Spanish at the time. I was the only woman on the leadership team and the only foreigner. As I said earlier, it was a rocky start, but it was probably one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve had throughout my career because I learned so much about myself. I grew tremendously, thanks to my team and colleagues who helped me understand some of the nuances of the business, the country, and how to lead in a different culture. The Mexican culture is much more relationship-based than my own culture, so really understanding how to adapt my leadership style effectively to that new environment was a huge learning curve for me. I still look back at that experience today and say, “Wow, I learned so much.” I’m very grateful for all the rocks and challenges along the way because they helped me become who I am today.

Liv: That’s a really important point about adapting your style in different cultures. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and some of your learnings from working in these different cultures?

Manuela: Yeah. Up until I went to Mexico, I had worked in Germany and the US. And I feel that the German and American cultures are quite alike in many ways. You’re very task-focused, and you get things done. As I said, Mexico was much more of a relationship culture. So it’s much more about people. You have to start building trust first. You have to start building relationships, whether it’s with customers or your teams or your colleagues before you actually do business. So the way you engage with people is important. The lines between what you discuss in the professional space and personal space are sometimes blurry. People bring some of their personal situations to work as well, which was something that was new to me.

After that, I went to Switzerland and worked in a global role where you work across many different cultures, and understanding to create wins across different cultural environments, different countries for your global business was another challenge. When I then left Bayer and joined Sanofi, I went from working for a German company to working for a French company in France, in Paris. That was a big learning opportunity for me because I had, up until that point, worked more in explicit cultures. And the French culture tends to be more of an implicit culture. Understanding the difference here and how you can be successful in different cultures and environments.

I always made a point to understand the culture before I actually came there or very shortly after I arrived, so taking a few cultural lessons and comparing directly who am I from my cultural background in which culture am I working in right now, and how is it different from mine and how does it then present itself in the day-to-day? What does it mean to have a discussion in Germany and a discussion in France and a discussion in Mexico? What gets put on the table and what gets discussed outside of the meeting room, and all of these little things that are not written down, the unwritten rules is what you really learn through some of those cultural immersions.

And I think they help you grow and become a more effective leader because the higher you get in an organization, the more you will work across a diverse network of culture. So really understanding what drives and motivates an individual, but also based on their background and where they grew up is really important.

Liv: But would you tell me a little bit more about that implicit and explicit cultures that you referred to then?

Manuela: Yeah. Yeah. So for example, as an explicit culture, Germans tend to be, when we have a problem or when we discuss a challenge, we will be very upfront about it. We’ll put it on the table. We’ll be sometimes very blunt, not understanding how to say something so that it lands with the other person. So everything is more out in the open, and decisions are made in the room and with the people at the table basically. You don’t necessarily need to have discussions prior to meetings to realign on things. So it’s much like what you hear is what you get, right?

Implicit cultures, and I’m not trying to broad brush anything, because there are also nuances, but implicit cultures tend to be cultures where some of the things that are happening are not necessarily discussed as openly. People tend to feel more comfortable to discuss things and have one-on-one pre-alignments. You feel a little bit of the audience prior to you getting into a meeting, for example, by having discussions with people individually and figuring out, okay, what is that person’s intention? Where do they stand with regards to this topic?

That way, in the meeting you already know where people are coming from. It’s not that the decision necessarily has been made already beforehand, but a lot of the discussions have already happened before you get to the actual meeting.

This was something that I needed to learn when I came into that environment because it just wasn’t the way I was operating. It’s also true for some Asian cultures, and for some cultures in Latin America. It’s just a different way of working.

It’s not any less effective. It’s just different. Understanding how that culture operates and how you can be effective in that culture. As the leader that is coming into that environment, it’s really important understanding some of those nuances and then being able to navigate accordingly.

Liv: So it must get quite complex when you’re dealing with multiple cultures in one environment.

Manuela: Yeah, absolutely. The more diverse your teams get, culture is just one element, such as someone’s nationality or heritage. There are many other elements of diversity, but the more diverse your team is, the more challenging it is for the leader to bring people together and move them in the right direction towards a common goal. But I do think it’s possible, and once you get there, the richness of that dialogue and what the team can achieve together is tremendous because of that diversity. What I usually try to do with the team is to co-create and align on a common goal. What are we trying to achieve collectively? If you have a joint vision and a common goal that you jointly want to achieve, it’s much easier to compromise and potentially make everybody happy. Sometimes somebody has to give in order for the broader team to be successful, but if we understand our common goal and where we want to go, and that we can only be successful if we jointly drive towards that, eventually, the team will come with you.

For example, in my current role, I have a European leadership team with seven multi-country organizations on the team. We know that we can only succeed as one European team. And that means, in the world of limited resources and many priorities, we have to focus on a few things and do them really well. If we have an opportunity in one country and other countries have to contribute some resources in order for us to win, because overall in Europe, we’re going to win if that country is successful. Then everybody chimes in and says, “I understand the bigger vision, I understand the overall objective, and I’m happy to contribute to it because I know how my piece fits into the overall picture.” If you bring people together who have common values, vision, and objectives, then the diversity they bring to the table enriches the conversation and allows for better decisions than a more homogeneous team. But you’re right, it’s not an easy thing to achieve. It needs work.

Liv: Is that something you coach with your leadership teams, inclusive leadership?

Manuela: Yes, absolutely. First of all, you have to role model it as well. When I started in this role, I had a fairly non-diverse leadership team of people who had been enrolled for more than 10 years. It was a predominantly male team. But I knew that I wanted to really drive the level of diversity starting with gender, but not only gender on my team. I brought in people from different businesses, some people from external sources, and promoted internal talents to the team. Now, I have a gender-balanced team that is much more diverse, representing different parts of Europe and cultures as well. Of course, you’ll never be done, but I think role modeling that and then also working with my team and coaching my team and learning from them as well. It’s not just about me coaching them; they also coach me. This is how we then inspire the rest of the organization to follow.

Liv: Can you talk to me a bit about your move from Bayer to Sanofi and the thought process behind making that move?

Manuela: Yeah, that’s a great question. Whenever I feel like my learning curve starts to flatten out and I’m not making the impact that I want to make, I start thinking about where I want to go next. What makes sense? Where can I contribute the most? Where can I add value? What would be interesting and motivating for me personally, but also where does the organization need me? The move from Bayer to Sanofi was not triggered by me, to be honest. I was approached by a headhunter. I had been in the US for close to two and a half years. After my global role in Switzerland, I moved to a US role where I was leading several of our businesses in the consumer healthcare space at Bayer. It was a real operational role, and I had no intention of leaving at that point in time.

But as it always happens, I got approached. The headhunter was saying, “What do you have to lose? Just have a call with that company and have a conversation.” It wasn’t even an in-person meeting; it was just a video call since they were in France and I was in the US. Then, it was the leader at that point in time that really caught my attention. I loved his vision and what he was trying to create with his team. It was one of those things where I felt like I had been with Bayer for 15 years and loved working there, but I wanted to prove to myself and others that I could make it somewhere else as well. It was an opportunity to really help him create a consumer healthcare business within Sanofi that up until that moment didn’t really exist. They had consumer healthcare brands and business, but it was not a priority.

I made the bold move to go from the soon-to-be number one consumer healthcare business in the world because Bayer had just bought Merck US’s consumer healthcare business, and Bayer was going to become number one. I went to the number five, and everybody was like, “What are you doing?” But this opportunity to really help create a new business within a large company from scratch was something I couldn’t pass up. I was basically, today we’ll probably call it, the Chief Marketing Officer of that team. So I had all the global businesses, everything from media buying and planning at the end, to our extra OTC switch and all the marketing excellence topics. It was a real opportunity to create something from scratch with a group of great colleagues and peers. You don’t get that opportunity every time.

Looking back, it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. I learned so much. It was a risk. When I arrived in France, it was a new company, a new job, a new team, and I didn’t have any network. It wasn’t easy for my family initially, but in the end, I learned so much. I was able to contribute a whole lot more than I think I would have been able to do in my next role at Bayer. I would always make that decision again because it really helped me grow as a leader. It helped me broaden my horizon in terms of my ability to make an impact, and it helped me become more confident that I can make it somewhere else.

Liv: Yeah. So, how old were your boys when you moved?

Manuela: They were two and four. Wow. Yeah. My boys and my husband, of course, we’ve moved quite a bit. It was always funny because my husband and I both know where our roots are since we grew up in the same place. Here we are, moving our kids around several times throughout my career. I have to say, though, that they are growing up as true global citizens. They’re so flexible and adaptable. As long as our core family unit, the four of us, is strong, we always call ourselves “Right?” We’re one team. Everything around us can change, and it’s still gonna be okay.

Liv: Definitely. Oh, you must be so proud of them, though. That’s incredible. I bet they’re so adaptable because they’ve been used to that, getting into new environments. Do you think either of them will follow in your footsteps? Do you think they’ll go into life sciences or healthcare?

Manuela: We have talked to them about what they wanna do when they grow up. What I do is not in the picture at the moment, but that may change. I believe that they need to do whatever makes them happy, and they need to do something that they’re really passionate about. That’s what I do. I love my job. I love what I do every day. I have fun at work, no matter how challenging it is. I want them to find that one thing that makes them as happy and that they’re as passionate about as I am. At the moment, my oldest wants to be an actor because he loves acting. So he’s a part of every theater performance at school, and he’s currently working on a show called Clue where he plays the Butler. It’s really funny. I prep for the role with him. My little one is torn between becoming a professional soccer player or a YouTube star. I’m still trying to work with him through the fact that I’m not sure how feasible either of those careers might be. At the moment, I still let them dream.

Liv: I’ve got a nine-year-old boy, and it’s about he wants to be a footballer or a YouTube star.

Manuela: Exactly. I think we still have time until they have to get really serious about their job choices! At the moment, I just let him be and enjoy himself. Let them dream. Hey, it’s the only time in life where it’s actually encouraged.

Liv: Fabulous. You said that you’ve always been in healthcare. Have there ever been moments in your life when things could have gone very differently? Or perhaps you wanted to do something different, perhaps when you were a little girl or when you were growing up? Obviously, your experience at 14 growing up in East Germany was fairly significant. Yes. We talk about sliding doors a lot on this show. Have you seen the movie?

Manuela: I love it. It’s such a great film.

Liv: Have you had any “sliding doors” moments? What were they like?

Manuela: So, I’m sure there are more, but the two that come to mind are when I was growing up. I wanted to be a teacher like my mom. I loved the work she did, how she taught, and how she helped kids learn. When I was little, I thought I was going to do exactly the same thing and become a teacher.

Then, when I went to university, the world opened up to me. Before that, when I was 14, I had to make a choice: do I go and study or do I do an apprenticeship? In Germany, you can do apprenticeships first to learn something before going to university. I decided to go directly to university and study intercultural management initially, then went into more controlling, organizational management, etc. I realized that teaching wasn’t really my thing. I was able to contribute in different ways. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have the patience to teach in today’s world, so I’m glad I didn’t choose the teaching profession.

When I decided which company I was going to work for, consulting was a very big thing at that point in time. Everybody wanted to go and work in consulting. I interviewed with a couple of consulting firms and Bayer. I chose Bayer because I felt that the people I met and what the company did, and back then Bayer had a healthcare business but also had other divisions. What the company stood for, what it believed in, and the type of culture it stood for was much more the environment that I could see myself in, and that’s what I went with. I didn’t go for who paid the most money or the coolest, flashy thing to do at that point in time. I went for what I felt I belonged to more than anything else.

Every sliding doors moment throughout my life has been much more about intuition and gut feeling. I make decisions based on facts, but at the end of the day, the final decision of whether to stay with Bayer or leave it was all based on what felt right given everything that I knew at that time. That has never proven to be wrong. Of course, I make mistakes, but the big decisions and pivotal moments throughout my career and personal life, in hindsight, were always the right ones.

Liv: Somebody once said to me that it was listening to your soul. Yes. And it’s you have your ego voice and your soul voice, and it’s learning to tune into your soul voice.

Manuela: I think that’s such a… Look, I’ve just talked for five minutes, and whoever said that said it so much better than I.

Liv: You talked about your mom being a teacher and one of the things you most wanted to imitate almost was her style of teaching. Tell me a little bit more about that. What was her particular teaching style? It sounds like you have carried quite a lot of that forward.

Manuela: That’s a good question. You’d have to ask her. She was demanding as a teacher. When you were in her class, people respected her. Sometimes when you are in class, teachers are just basically there, and the students do whatever they want. That never happened in her class.

Yeah. So she really didn’t demand respect, but she got it because of the way she was teaching, the way she took her students seriously, the way she was listening and caring about them as individuals. It wasn’t just a job for her; it was her passion.

She loved it. She prepared well for all of her classes. I still remember her never pulling out the stuff from last year and then teaching it again to the new class. It was always, “How can I make this interesting? How can I learn from past experience to make it better? Who are the people in the class that need more help? More support? How can I bring them along?” But she expected a lot. She demanded that people paid attention. She demanded that they prepared and that they come prepared to class. People loved working for her, and it’s amazing how many students she’s still in touch with today, many decades after she stopped teaching and working. The teachers of that area still meet every month, like 20 people that were teachers 30, 40 years ago. So the point on community: you’re part of a team. You’re not in this for your own good. You do something to bring other people along to help them develop into amazing adults. Hopefully, one day, you do your part as much as you do, but of course, you also expect something in return from those students, that they put in the work, that they put in the effort. Yeah, that’s how she taught.

Liv: Do you think that you embrace a lot of that in your leadership style?

Manuela: I think I do. The core values that my mom and dad educated us on, or that we all believe in, around just being honest, showing up with integrity, showing empathy as well, but trying to be reliable, being committed to what you do, just all of those are very much aligned. And of course, it’s not a surprise because my mom and my dad raised me. So I think that is the foundation for all of it. But I do think she has been a role model for me. There are few things that I do differently than her, but for the majority, I really admire my mom for who she is, what she stands for, and what she has role modeled for us as her daughters.

Liv: Another thing we talk about a lot on this show is bias. Any bias, whether it’s gender bias or any other that you come across in the workplace, what experiences have you had in that regard?

Manuela: So personally, first of all, I think we all have bias. I’ve actually done an unconscious bias test once. And there’s also a slight bias because, again, it’s little things like, when you ask anybody really, when you think about a doctor, would it be a man or a woman? And most people of my generation still think more of a man, right? The same is true for a lawyer. So really putting people into buckets. A kindergarten teacher, mostly a woman, right? So a nurse, mostly a woman. So that traditional bias, even though I have chosen my husband, and I’ve chosen a very different constellation for our family, I’m working, my husband is a stay-at-home dad, right? But even though that is the case for us, I grew up in a different world, where there were still gender roles, so I need to be really conscious of biases and fight them. The same is true for people who are more like me. I tend to be high energy and very passionate about things, but I’m not a full extrovert. I need to be cautious that I don’t just hire people who are like me, but that I bring people together who complement each other. For example, my finance head is an introvert and very different from me. I’m grateful for that because she thinks and looks at things differently. I need to make sure she has a voice in every conversation we have as a team, and that her voice is being heard because it matters. So, I try to be thoughtful about recruitment decisions, check my bias, and have people with different perspectives interview with me.

Personally, I have never felt passed over for a role or had a harder time in the work environment because I’m a female. However, I hear that a lot from my colleagues. This is a general topic, not just for women in this industry, but beyond. I try to champion women because we are not yet where we want to be. Ultimately, we need 50/50 representation at all levels of the company. That doesn’t mean women get preference in any case, but if you have two equally talented individuals for a role, and you need a gender-balanced team, the woman should get the preference. I mentor a lot of women throughout the organization and help them with career advice. My job is not just about doing well in my role, but also bringing a lot of women with me on that journey. Ideally, in a few years, we won’t have to talk about this anymore.

Liv: Absolutely. And people like you coming on shows like this is really helpful, so thank you! One of the things you said earlier was when you moved to that marketing role there was a particular person who encouraged you to do that. Have you had specific mentors yourself throughout your career? 

Manuela: Yes, I did and I do. I actually think mentors are really important, ideally not just people that work with you in the same company. Sometimes they’re people that are not even working in your industry, but people who have a real interest in seeing you succeed, who want to see you move forward, but that are also willing and able to be brutally honest with you. Because that’s what you need in order to grow. You don’t always get everything right, and to have a sounding board as well, somebody that is not as close as you are, or your bosses or your colleagues are to the business and the environment, that can look at your career also from an external perspective and say, “Is that a good decision for you to make and why?” So that’s why I think mentors are absolutely critical.

Liv: Have they always been internal for you, or do you have mentors externally as well in all sides of your life?

Manuela: Yeah, also, I have external mentors. I have one or two internal ones. I have some from my previous company still, and I have people that I have crossed paths with throughout my life that become either friends or people that I look up to that have been a part of my journey that are very insightful, and that I check in from time to time with. You have to nurture those relationships, right? But they’re some people that work at different companies that no longer work there. I have a former coach of mine who has become a mentor right now, who is a poet and an actor and has nothing to do with business whatsoever. So very different walks of life, but people who know me and, as I said earlier, who are willing to really be honest with me and reflect, “Here are your choices. How do I see it?” And to ask the right questions as well, because it’s not necessarily that they will and they should be making a recommendation for you. It’s more of a sounding board.

Liv: Sadly I have to let you go, but I could honestly just sit and talk to you for hours, so thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate it.

Manuela: Pleasure. Thank you.