As part of our ‘Female Leaders: Inspiring Together’ series, we interviewed Emmanuelle Lepine – General Manager at mAbxience – about becoming a CEO of a pharma company before the age of 40 and how she learnt the hard way not to push yourself past your limits.
Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Firstly, can you tell us a bit about your current role and the company you work for?
I’m the General Manager of a biotechnology company called mAbxience. It’s a Spanish-based company with subsidiaries and manufacturing sites in Spain and Argentina. We are focusing on developing, manufacturing and commercialising biosimilars through B2B partnerships. In addition, we also have a vaccine operation and other types of biotechnology products.
What inspired you to start your career in the pharmaceutical industry?
As a student, I was a pharmacist assistant and that’s where I found a passion for the industry. I have always been interested in business but having completed a degree in biochemistry, with a strong concentration on chemistry, I thought the whole chemistry area was a bit soulless. The purpose that you can find in the pharmaceutical industry is unique because your work improves the lives of patients. This is what keeps me in this industry, and I have been it now since I was 16 years old.
What kind of barriers have you encountered during your career growth and success as a female leader?
“I have found that as you grow older as a woman, many of these barriers disappear. As a young woman in the industry, it was hard to be credible.”
I have found that as you grow older as a woman, many of these barriers disappear. As a young woman in the industry, it was hard to be credible. There are a lot of egos in the pharma industry. At a pretty young age, I switched from regulatory affairs into business development, which is definitely more of a man’s world. As a young woman facing men that have been there forever, it was quite the challenge to build my credibility. I played the smart-arse and was jokey and friendly and that’s how I got my way through developing a partnership and building credibility. But I felt that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to know what I was talking about. While my male colleagues were just off winging it, I needed to be extremely knowledgeable and competent.
How do you manage your work-life balance?
Well, I have a fantastic husband from the pharmaceutical industry. We met at work and so we understand each other’s careers very well. We’ve been progressing in parallel and we both know how demanding it can be, so we look out for each other. When we see that one or the other is getting off balance, we pull the other one back. We disconnect, we go out or we go on a trip. We’ve been very, very good partners to each other and we have helped each other to manage this work-life balance. I think everybody needs this support, should it be a friend, your boss, a colleague or your life partner, but just somebody who knows you, who loves you and is capable of telling you you’re unseeing yourself now and you’re going too fast. I think this has been the key for me.
What accomplishment are you the most proud of?
Well, it has to be being the CEO of a pharma company before the age of 40 as a woman, so it was a big accomplishment for me. I signed the contract at the age of 39, so, I was like ‘yeah, I made it!’. So, to me, this was big. Maybe many young women – not that I’m that old, but a woman at 20 years old today – won’t realise what it was 20 or 30 years ago to be a woman in the industry. So, I was extremely proud to reach this at such a young age.
What’s been the biggest challenge you have faced and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge I have faced was very personal. Earlier in my career, mAbxience was at startup stage and there was a lot to do. The team was also going through a transformation and the mandate was very ambitious. I kind of drove myself a bit in the ground, working too much, travelling too much, totally lost my balance, didn’t listen to my husband and I got sick. I caught a very, very serious lung infection, which ended up putting me out of service for a few months and it had important consequences, including surgery.
“It is very easy to let your ambition let you forget what your body needs and what you need to do because it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”
It is very easy to let your ambition let you forget what your body needs and what you need to do because it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So you need to manage your energy. I didn’t feel forced to overdo it at all, but I was so passionate about my role and I wanted to go all the way and support the team and participate that I overdid it. We are all humans with our limits, and I went over the limit and I learnt the hard way. This was the biggest challenge in my career: to learn how to not let my ambition and my passion make me forget what my limits are. I think any professional has such a crucible in their career that really transformed the way they see things – mine happened at a young age. So basically, I’ve learnt a lot out of that and moving forward, if I want to be able to really materialise something substantial in my career, I need to be healthy.
Do you ever suffer from self-doubt, and if so, how do you manage that?
Now, less, but when I was younger, yes I did. In French, we say ‘Syndrome de l’imposteur’ which is when you feel that you don’t belong there, that you are false, and you feel the people around you will realise you shouldn’t be here. When I was younger, I always had that feeling and thought somebody will discover me at one point. But with age, you realise that everybody is somehow ‘false’. Everybody has limits to their knowledge and nobody knows at all. Once you come to a stage of maturity, you realise that and you’re honest enough to verbalise ‘OK, guys, I have no idea what you’re talking about, bring me up to speed so that I can participate’. I think there’s this authenticity and this self-confidence that you gain with time and it is the best remedy against this feeling that you don’t belong there or that this is too big for you.
What are the main challenges for women in the pharma industry?
Well, I think in all industries it’s the egos you may face at certain levels. One of my former colleagues told me, ‘you will realise the air gets very thin up the leadership ladder’ and he was right. To me, the biggest challenge is being a leader and not getting into this game of ego, especially as a woman. Just stay away. Do what you have to do to do your job, verbalise your opinion and ignore the mediocre minds that may try to undermine you.
What is the best advice you have received?
Well, it’s not advice as such but I did a week-long training session at Harvard Business School and you go and live there with a team on the same floor. It’s called the Authentic Leadership Program, and whilst I’ve always thought I was an authentic leader, I was attracted by it, so I decided to do it.
“Spending time with all these people made me realise that any leader, any CEO of any company, is a human being. We all woke up with our hair stuck up in the morning, we all had our coffee together and we all have our doubts, our pains, our families and our histories.”
Spending time with all these people made me realise that any leader, any CEO of any company, is a human being. We all woke up with our hair stuck up in the morning, we all had our coffee together and we all have our doubts, our pains, our families and our histories. It was a great eye-opener for me to be with hundreds of leaders from all around the world and realise that we all have the same struggles and we’re all human beings who love to love and who are all ambitious and love to share. This was the best lesson, or advice, I experienced. I would recommend for anybody to do this type of training.
What women have inspired you the most?
The women who have inspired me are the women around me – my friends, my mother and my sister. My mum was not a businesswoman at all. She’s now retired but she was a psychologist and she is very balanced, very calm and very warm. My sister, who takes it a day at a time, said ‘you could pay me a million dollars, I would never do what you’re doing’ and she is so very down to earth. So, the women who inspire me are authentic women with good values who have influenced me directly through my entire life. They look at me and they tell me what they think. Their core values, to me, are very inspirational.
What do you think is the best way for women to work towards senior management and executive-level positions?
It’s all about how you position yourself and how you see yourself. No one should see this as unachievable because if you see this as unachievable, you’re putting yourself in the lower range of who is allowed to be there and that should not be the case. So, it’s all about attitude; it’s all about feeling that you belong there and that you didn’t cheat. You didn’t steal this from anyone else. You also need to be in an environment that allows you to feel like you deserve to progress and give you that confidence. I’ve been in places in my career where I didn’t feel good and you just have to get out of there. If you don’t feel good in an environment, it’s not an environment that is for you and you will not develop yourself or flourish. Ask yourself, ‘am I happy here, am I comfortable, are people listening to me and can I contribute?’ and if the answers are no, get out of there. You’re going to just block your own self-development. There are so many companies nowadays that have a more, let’s say, feminine leadership style, which is less autocratic, more participative, honest and authentic. Being in an environment like that is how, as a female leader, you should achieve higher positions and develope in your career.
Our ‘Female Leaders: Inspiring Together’ series is running throughout March with the aim of inspiring and supporting women to become future leaders in their respective industries. Follow us on LinkedIn to join the conversation and hear the insightful stories of our featured female leaders.
