MedImmune's Bahija Jallal On Changing The Diversity Narrative
Executive Summary
Bahija Jallal, vice president of AstraZeneca and head of MedImmune, told a packed room of mostly female health care employees that in her career she has "followed her heart and the science" to reach goals she had not imagined possible, as she accepted the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association's 2017 Woman of the Year award.
Bahija Jallal, executive vice president of AstraZeneca PLC and head of the UK big pharma's biologics subsidiary MedImmune LLC, says it is time to change the gender parity narrative to highlight the importance of varied opinions when it comes to innovation and success in health care.
On May 11 in New York, Jallal was honored as the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association's 28th Woman of the Year award winner. She told Scrip in an exclusive interview that the award is more than an acknowledgment of her own success, "it is about encouraging young scientists and young women in this industry, or in academia, that they can do whatever they put their minds to," she said.
Jallal was presented the award by AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot at an HBA luncheon with more than 2,000 people in attendance.
Diversity Drives Innovation
The pharma industry has been under the spotlight in recent years for its lack of diversity in the higher ranks, and until this year there had not been a single female CEO of a top 10 big pharma business. This was transformed in April when GlaxoSmithKline PLC named Emma Walmsley its chief executive. (Also see "From Witty To Walmsley – The Priorities For GSK's New CEO" - Scrip, 4 Apr, 2017.)
Ballal said she wasn't aware she had been entered for the award until being proclaimed the winner and thought the honor had been granted to her because she is a champion for diversity within and outside of her company. "I believe that for innovation to happen you need diversity, these two things go hand in hand," Jallal said.
She highlighted though that more needs to be done to reach gender parity in pharma as well as greater diversity all around. "The industry is still not diverse enough. We know that people coming from different genders and different cultures have varying opinions and that having all these views makes your knowledge richer. Our customers, the patients, are all diverse so you need this internally as well," she said. "Not realizing that diversity is what makes companies richer and more successful is a mistake," the AstraZeneca exec said.
The issue of gender parity is one that has surrounded the pharma industry and many other sectors for years without much progress, but Jallal noted that a recent "change in narrative" has helped the issue. "If you just say we need gender parity you don’t make a case for the issue. But if you say that to be innovative and successful you must have more than a homogenous population, then you bring that diversity and creativity link to light," she said.
Despite this change of message the scales are not balanced yet. "We are data driven people and the data is still telling us that we are not where we should be when it comes to gender parity in this industry," she noted.
Scrip's own research from late 2016 found that although the decade from 2007 to 2016 saw an 8% increase in female involvement in upper management circles of the top 20 pharma companies, this growth has stagnated in the last five years. (Also see "Will New CEOs Make C-Suite More 'She-Suite'?" - Scrip, 5 Oct, 2016.)
Bahija Jallal addresses healthcare crowd at the 2017 HBA Woman of the Year event
One message about the pharma industry Jallal promotes is that the people behind novel medical discoveries are more passionate about progress than profits. "The men and women behind the scenes, our scientists, we almost don’t see them at all. To fight the myths about this industry I want to better promote the people behind these drugs," she said.
Jallal added that some of these scientists go to school for years after high school and college, "if you counted it up in the American system it is like 28th grade," she said. "This is not because they want to make money, it's because they are passionate about what they do."
Looking ahead for AstraZeneca and MedImmune, Jallal wants to investigate the use of digital technologies in clinical studies to cut down the time it takes to develop new medicines. "A dream of mine now is to utilize that intersection of healthcare and technology to disrupt the industry ourselves in a good way," she said.
MedImmune started life as Molecular Vaccines Inc. in 1988 but changed the name to MedImmune just a year later. Since joining the company in 2006, Jallal has guided MedImmune through an unprecedented expansion of its pipeline, from 40 drugs to more than 120, and entered into many and varied licensing and collaboration relationships with other companies.
Other HBA Winners
J&J's Joaquin Duato, winner of the HBA's 2017 Honorable Mentor award
The HBA Woman of the Year event also lauded Joaquin Duato, worldwide chair of pharmaceuticals at Johnson & Johnson, as its 2017 Honorable Mentor; Ceci Zak, principal and chief operating officer at Batten & Co, a strategic consulting firm within the Omnicom Group, as its 2017 STAR (Strategic Transformation Achievement Recognition) winner; and a group of around 100 Rising Stars and Luminaries, noted for their accomplishments and contributions to the health care industry.