This Girl KAM with Diana Lagalante

Liv: Hello there, Diana. Thank you for coming on the show!

Diana: Hi, Liv. Yes. Thank you for inviting me. I’m very excited to be part of your podcast.

Liv: I’m excited to have you. Fabulous. So, to get us going, Diana, would you give us a little introduction? Tell us about yourself first.

Diana: Absolutely pleased to do so. So my name is Diana. I am Swiss and Italian, so I have to be careful not to say Swiss Italian because some people might misunderstand that thinking that I am from the Italian part of Switzerland, but no, I was born in Basel, Switzerland. I was raised in Italy, in the south of Italy, and I came back to Switzerland as a teenager around the age of 14.
So I have two nationalities and two passports.  I’ve been working in the healthcare industry for more than 20 years in different pharmaceutical companies. I started more than 20 years ago at Seba Specialty Chemicals. That is now known as B A S F, a German company. I moved then to Novartis for a short time, and then after Novartis, I went to Syngenta.
And now, I am at Roche and have been for over seven years. As I mentioned before, I was born in Switzerland, but I grew up in Italy. So I did all my schooling in Italy until the age of 14. Then I came back to Switzerland, and I continued with my business school. I learned German. It was a difficult time, it took me about one year to learn the language with some extra support and help after school.
It was a little bit of a culture shock at that time, but even so, that motivated me to be the communicator that I am today because having language barriers, when you are a teenager, it sticks with you, right? So you really want to make all the effort to make yourself explainable to everyone, and you want to be included also in the society.
So this was always my aspiration and my motivation to be an engagement communicator or a change manager, which I am today.

Liv: Tell me more about your personal life. You’re married, aren’t you?

Diana: Yes, I’m happily married for 13 years, with my husband Pedro. Pedro is from Lisbon, Portugal originally. He is actually half black American and half European. So, it’s a very interesting mixture, and I met him 13 years ago in Zurich at my cousin’s birthday party.
He had the opportunity to meet all my friends and family at the same time. So it was already a done deal from the first moment.

Liv: Fantastic, get it over with!

Diana: Exactly! We moved pretty quickly with our relationship, in a few weeks’ time my husband moved into my apartment, and we decided to start a company. At that time, he was an IT consultant, and  I always had a dream to be also financially independent and have my own company. But we had to make a decision,
one of us had to have a fixed income, and the other one has to have the company. So we decided for him to open up his company, and the company still exists after 13 years.  I’m very proud of that move because it takes courage. It’s not easy to be self-employed, and you always have to work to create your customer base and get the incoming projects.
So, at the beginning, I helped a lot with the company, but of course, now he’s managing everything himself. So we are happily married, and we have a dog. His name is Muffin. He’s a French bulldog.  He is quite a character, I must say.
He is very energetic. So we always take turns in the morning and in the evening, to go for at least a one-hour walk with him. It helps me so much to just break in between meetings, go for some fresh air, and come back with new ideas. He’s a great addition to our family. I would’ve never imagined I would have a dog, he’s my first , but it’s just great. 

Liv: I completely agree with you about that need to get out and about. My dog died a couple of years ago now, and because we’ve got so many children, we’re not getting another one just yet until the children are a bit older. But, that’s the one thing I really miss. There’s always that reason to be out walking, it is fabulous.

Diana: Exactly.

Liv: So go back a little further for me if you would please, Diana, talk to me about your education and any specific training education that you found helped you in your career.

Diana: Absolutely. By the age of 17 just after I finished business school, I had the opportunity to go to Australia because I have relatives and family in Perth, Western Australia, so I decided to go there for a language study for about one year, and it was a great experience.
I really wish that every young person could just go outside of their normal environment and experience something new to come back with such a great richness of knowledge besides knowing English, of course, which was the main task. That helped me so much. And the reason why I’m saying that is because with that knowledge, that accelerated my continuation of my educational studies.So I am an economist by education with a profound interest in change transformations, coaching, and project management. And that helped me a lot in gaining a 360-degree understanding of all the different stakeholders I’ve been working with for the past 20 years in the pharma industry. Currently I work at Rosche and  it’s a very diverse community of different stakeholders.
We have scientists, we have General Managers in affiliates,  I work a lot in the finance space with IT and procurement and being a continuous learner, I like to challenge myself with new educational programs and I must say I’m also a person that gets bored very easily. So during Covid I decided to register myself for a master’s degree in corporate communications.
I was lucky that my employer gave me the time to do that and yes, I have completed it successfully one year ago and I got also promotion out of that. So, yes, I’m very happy about that!

Liv: Congratulations. That’s no easy task, especially at that time as well.

So go back to the beginning of your career in the early days, what things do you know now that you wish you’d known then?

Diana: Patience  would for sure be one attribute to put there! I’m a very enthusiastic person and I like to tackle challenges head on. And, I’m a people person, so I like to move on with projects in a very enthusiastic way.

But , for certain, one thing I would give my advice to my younger person is to first analyse, first do an assessment. What are the gaps? What are the needs before you run off with a project? Apply a more strategic view and process to everything rather than just run off.

So , that’s something I would certainly tell myself as a younger person. Also, the other thing that is super important is the power of network. I encountered a great organisation. It’s a women organisation, the H B A Healthcare Businesswomen Association, about 10 years ago.

It was great because I was invited to an event that they organised at Novartis in Basel more than 10 years ago, and it was a women in Science, after work event. I was so thrilled by all these female talents around the table talking about all the problems that they were facing, their challenges and talking about how you can develop yourself with additional skills, with personal brand and how to negotiate conflicts. 

I’m talking about 10, 15 years ago, there were not so many women organisations, and this was the first one that I encountered, and I felt it was a very safe space. And I’m still in the safe space after 10 years. I would encourage everyone, not only women, but also males to be part of such such an organisation where you can also test your ideas and bring them back in your day-to-day job.

Liv: Yeah, absolutely. And, and that’s one of the things I can say, having met  some women who are part of H B A is that career growth is is really incredible.  So what about the opportunities for women in pharma? When you reflect on that, what sort of changes have you seen over time?

Diana:  As I said, there were not so many women organisations 20 years ago, and maybe I was just younger and I was not so  interested in the other women organisations. But I think that the world has changed since, and compared to the past, I see more women present in VP roles than before.

I personally think that the presence of women should always be linked to the will and skills of a specific woman to engage in a specific role and not to a specific quota or percentage that the company wants to achieve at any cost. This is also something I’m so passionate about with the Healthcare Business Women Association.

We change the storyline. It’s not about gender parity, which implies also the costs associated with that, but it’s more about gender equity.  I see many opportunities for women in the pharma industry and specifically now in my role being a volunteer as Engagement Board Director of H B A EMEA, our aim is to make systemic progress towards an equitable work environment by providing exciting leadership programs.

And in fact, at Roche, we are going to launch an ambassador program in just a few weeks from now. This will inspire the next generation of women leaders to diversify also our member base and also activate men as allies to create a supporting environment. We also have the fortune to have our  C E O, Theresa Graham, who is supporting the H B A and is also standing behind the Ambassador Program. So with that, this is really a unique opportunity for the next GMs in our company to advance their career.

Liv: What a fabulous thing to do. So that’s kicking off soon, is it?

Diana: It is kicking off in a few weeks time, and today we handed out the third nomination email communication to already identified leaders, but also we want to expand to other leaders throughout the organisation. So it’s a pilot that we are running for the first time in Roche Pharma. And if it’s successful, we’re going to repeat it again next year to a wider, a wider selection of of people.

Liv: Awesome. It’s programs like that that are , gonna really help those, those opportunities for women. The more we can do like that, the better.

Diana:  Also the opportunity there is that you get two external coaches that come into your organisation. And you basically co-work together on specific topics that you would bring back to the pharma leadership. So it’s about also coming with a specific conclusion and suggestions that you want to shape the strategy of the company. So it is a very targeted mission. And, and that’s why I love to be part of the organisation team helping these potential female leaders.

Liv: Tell me a little bit about how you first came across H B A, if you would, Diana?

Diana: Yeah, so as I said, it was more than 10 years ago, it was an after work event called Women in Science. And we were a very small group of women, around 10, 20 women from all different pharma companies. So we would have Roche, Novartis, J&J, Takeda… and we would meet in different locations across Switzerland.

My first encounter was with the events program because next to my day job and next to my volunteering role, I also like to host events! I love to organise events and host events.

This is what , I was really inspired by when I saw I could be part of this events, organisation team, and moderate also, and or co-moderate some of the sessions.

This is what triggered  my motivation to be a volunteer. So I started in a chapter. It was a Basel chapter,  then to move on into a more regional role and to move to a global role where I am right now. So I actually have had a great career at H B A from a volunteering perspective because you get to see all the different layers of the H B A organisation. And currently we are even expanding to other locations with this new operating model that we just went live with a few months ago. We have Northern Europe, we have Southern Europe, we have Western Europe. Now we are looking into expanding into Middle East and Africa, for instance.

So that’s already the next level of H B A, reaching out to places like Dubai and, and Morocco and so on. That’s really great and lots of fun!

Liv: Fabulous! The other thing I wanted to ask you about Diana was any experience you’ve had with workplace bias and your thoughts around that in general and where we are as an industry.

Diana: Absolutely. So there are different forms of workplace biases. A workplace bias can be an age bias, religion, gender attribution… I mean, there are so many levels of biases. And one example that comes to my mind of the status quo in a company is  continuing hiring team members from the same demographic groups. So if say you are a marketing team in Switzerland, and want to keep recruiting people in Switzerland because you know Swiss people have a super quality  level of education. That’s basically your bias already, right? Because that’s the way you think. So you don’t make any effort to move towards any diversity goal in a company. And by always repeating the same hiring practices, you will miss great candidates with fresh ideas from and perspectives that could bring you more quality to your work.

So this is something I must say in my particular organisation where I work we are very diverse. We have 70 nationalities. 70 nationalities with a high representation of underrepresented nationalities. So I’m very proud of that because that’s a unique position. And we, we get to work with people and colleagues in Costa Rica, in Budapest and Kuala Lumper.

I love this dynamic because you can exchange so much about the cultural differences and learn from each other. So this is one aspect about workplace biases. The other thing is that lots of HR organisations, in order to check the D E I guidelines, provide the unconscious biases tests to leaders and to employees.  I agree it is important to have that level of awareness. I agree that you have to go through these programs and mark your score of 80% at least . But I don’t think this is enough. We are just scratching the surface and we don’t really understand what is beyond that. Lots of people might be confused about what is unconscious bias?

If I am a white male, how does that impact? Because at the moment we are always talking about minorities. We’re always talking about gender inequalities. Where does it lie with the average white male? We need to make sure we include the average white male and we don’t exclude him, right? So, it is, it is really a very complex narrative here, and that’s why I think it’s important to have a deeper understanding of what that means, not just completing your test score of 80%, but go beyond that and make an effort in understanding what it means.

Liv: Can we talk about mentoring? More specifically what role it’s played in your career?

Diana:  Yes. Again, this comes together with the H B A.  H B A has given me the pleasure to have experienced being a mentor.  I had the opportunity to mentor someone outside of my organisation, and I can see the progress. the achievements and the goals that this person is achieving step by step.  I feel this is such a personal space that I have the honour to help the person to move in to their desired outcomes and desired goals that she has set herself too.

It’s a great experience. Of course, I have been mentored and I have mentioned already, I had opportunity to work closely with our newly appointed pharma CEO Teresa Graham. I’m working continuously together with Rebecca Vermeulen,  she’s the Vice President for Global Patient Networks for Roche.

And Kristen Pressner, who you might know, because she was one of the first ones six years ago that gave a TED Talk show about Flip to test it, also about this workplace biases. So I think these are my three great mentors that I had to the pleasure to work with in the past six, seven years.

Liv: And they’ve all brought something different, I suppose?

Diana: Absolutely! They have all the different characteristics and , it’s great to get a taste and the flavour from each one of them and, you know, take something from each one of the, of the tree and, and use them in your, in your day-to-day job. So, I feel very fortunate to, to have had that, that experience.

Liv: And as far as with yourself being a mentor, I know you said you had the opportunity to mentor someone. Is that something you’re doing on an ongoing basis now or looking to do more of or?

Diana:  I must say this is something new. I started to do it three, four months ago only, and we meet on a monthly basis, more or less. I would like to do it more with other mentees and, and also get some feedback on how happy they are with my mentoring skills. I think it’s important, not only to mentor, but also the reversed mentorship.

So sometimes it’s also important to hear what I can learn from the mentee. I hope I will find some time at some point to get more mentees and develop myself in that aspect. 

Liv: It works all the way around, doesn’t it? As a mentee and as a mentor, either way, you’re developing. It’s so valuable.

Diana: Absolutely. I think if you can make room for yourself, you know, after work for one hour, two hours, I know it’s difficult but it’s important to make room for these type of things because this is your own development journey.

Liv: And as a mentor, what would be the one piece of advice that you would give to women in the pharmaceutical industry now?

Diana: My first advice is not to shy away from any challenges, even if they might sound, like enormous, and you think, oh my God, I can never do that because this is a too high leadership role. I’m going to report directly to the vice president of so-and-so, and I would say, don’t shy away.
Go for it. Do it. This is exactly what men are doing all the time. Why are we always conflicting ourself and saying this is too big of a role or I cannot do it. It’s just like playing a game, playing poker. Go for it and find out what are your possibilities.
Also, not being afraid to speak up, share your opinion in a transparent way. The more natural you are, the more transparent it comes across and the more authentic it comes across. And also what I mentioned before, we are living in a very complex world where with social media, everything gets magnified 3, 4, 5 times more and everything is black and white.
 I would say there are lots of different gray shades in between. So use your creative mind and your system thinking not to fall into the trap of the black and white, but always use that to analyse how many shades of gray are in between. That is my advice to, to all the women in the pharmaceutical industry, and of course to join the H B A!

Liv: (Laughing) Quick plug! So Diana, you may know that in season one, every guest that came on to this show, I asked them about their Sliding Doors moment. Now, last week, Charlotte Murraine did quite rightly point out that it’s…perhaps a little dated. She reminded me it’s from the 90s and not everybody’s going to get that cultural reference for much longer. So, so I’m looking for a new movie but in the meantime, as I’m going to ask people to reflect on their  favourite movie of all time? If you can give me one and tell me a little bit about why it was so important to you.

Diana:  So Liv, there are so many favourite movies I have, but I can tell you something. There is a series called The Morning Show. I think they’re already in season three now.
The plot covers the sexual harassments, about the news anchor that has been sent off the program from this news agency. And then we have Alex. Alex is the protagonist together with a younger female news anchor, and she’s been working for this news company for  I think 30 years.

Liv: Yes I love The Morning Show!

Diana: She’s thrown by the fact of all this news that has been magnified about the behaviour of her male news anchor colleague and she leaves the show for a bit and when she comes back she finds herself faced with a younger person that wants to take over her job.

Liv: Yep.

Diana: So this is a little bit about the workplace biases that we were talking about, about the age biases before, right? What I find fascinating about, about this series is all the dynamics that are played out in the background in this news agency. I find it really fascinating the way the protagonist has to always face new challenges, always has to fight to get what they want, and, it’s not necessarily fighting against men sometimes it’s against the whole environment.

Liv: Yeah. Such a good example.  I’ve just started watching series 3 and agree it’s fabulous! I mean, I love Jennifer Aniston.  She can do no wrong in my world, ever.

Diana: Exactly!

Liv: Thank you so much Diana, and thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. It is fascinating to hear about your background and everything you’ve done since starting your career, so thank you so much.

Diana: Oh, you are welcome and I’m looking forward to even more shows on your podcast. It’s always a pleasure to listen to them.