The PharmaBrands Podcast

Leandra Wells, GM of Galderma, Reflects on Her Career Journey and the Evolving Role of Leadership in Pharma.

• Propeller Events • Season 2 • Episode 7

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Leandra Wells has had an incredible career that has landed her at the top spot in Galderma. Now leading teams across a diverse set of portfolios and categories, Leandra sat down with us to reflect on some key stops in her journey, what great marketing looks like and how marketers and leaders can stay current in a rapidly evolving landscape.

After you check out the episode, don’t forget to head to pharmabrands.ca to get your tickets for our June 17th Age of AI event in Toronto, before they sell out!  

Our host is Neil Follett, Co-Founder of PharmaBrands and our Producer is Darryl Webster with Chess Originals

Speaker 1:

Leandra Wells, general Manager at Galderma, canada. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you, neil, pleasure to chat with you.

Speaker 2:

Let's start with Galderma. I'm sure lots of people listening are very familiar with the Galderma portfolio. Some may not be, so give me a sense of the Galderma portfolio as we sit here in early 2025.

Speaker 1:

Sure. So Galderma is a company that has actually been around since 1981. And our mission is to advance dermatology for all skin stories, and it's a really, really great mandate and purpose for myself and for our organization. The organization is really kind of divided into three business units. One is centered around our consumer brands, which includes Cetaphil and Elastin, and a lot of people know Cetaphil because it's been around for a very long time, over 70 years.

Speaker 1:

Another portfolio that we have is our injectable aesthetics portfolio that include our key brands, including Restylane, dysport and Sculptra, and these are used for, you know, aesthetics treatments and really to allow people to feel like their best selves. And then our third portfolio is our therapeutic dermatology portfolio, and that portfolio contains a lot of brands that, again, people are very familiar with, including Acleef, differin, metrogel. These are brands that are well known for their treatments in acne, rosacea. Another brand is Rosiver. And then we are on the cusp of launching a brand new product in this portfolio that will support patients in atopic dermatitis and prurigo nodularis, and we're really, really excited about the new phase that Galderm is entering with this new launch.

Speaker 2:

A quick LinkedIn scan. You've got kind of like the pharma greatest hits like MBD, medaffairs, marketing Manager, a little bit of MBA prof thrown in there for good measure RBM director of business unit head and then GM. So I want to talk about all of that. But let's start with kind of the stuff that's not on your LinkedIn profile. Where did you start? In pharma? You have a PhD. What's your PhD in? Let's go way back.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I did my PhD at U of T. Actually, I did my undergrad at Western in genetics and then went to U of T to complete a PhD in molecular developmental biology and from there I really kind of wanted to see what else was out there besides the academic world. And that's where I was, you know, informed about the opportunities around MBAs. And you know I always say I got the most value out of my MBA because I came in having grown up in immersed in science and the MBA was a total pivot for me. But it was. It opened my eyes to a whole new world around in the business world, and that's where I got really excited about the combination of this deep scientific background with this business mindset and opportunity.

Speaker 2:

So was the NBD role, your first kind of foray into the kind of world of work after what is a lot of education or what was your first kind of business role?

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, I was hired. After my MBA at Schulich, I got hired as a business development director in at the time. What was a startup company with six people in the organization, at, a company called Inamar Strategies, which has significantly grown since then, yeah, a little bit bigger, yeah, but back in 2003,.

Speaker 1:

We were six people and it was really exciting. So I didn't have a blueprint or anything to go from. I was just asked can you sell? And I said I think I can. And I really had to dive in and just kind of figure my way through. What does the organization do? How do we really kind of understand our client needs and build solutions?

Speaker 1:

At the time it was really focused on the reimbursement landscape and working on behalf of clients that needed support in reimbursement dossier development, and then we were just starting up patient support programs and at the time it was early in you know PSP kind of, I guess, program development. So it was a really, really exciting time and over those four years that I was there, you know, leading the business development effectively, the sales aspect I had an opportunity to see a startup basically take off and thrive and you know I had the opportunity to build our client base to 55 clients and expand the company from you know six and I think when I left we were about 155 people. So it was really really fun, really intense, but really exciting, did that?

Speaker 2:

sort of set you up, for I really want to find these dynamic environments that are completely fluid and where really there's no blueprint. Or did you come out of that four years and say, okay, I wouldn't mind going to a place that's got maybe a bit more scaffolding and where I'm not necessarily the one defining the process? What did those four years do for you in terms of the what comes next for Leandra?

Speaker 1:

I think you know, do I go and search for companies in the same sort of state? I don't think that's necessarily true, but what I think I learned from that is that you know I I really am a learner and I am clearly very like. I lean on my agility because I don't need a blueprint, but I really love learning, I love figuring things out, I love problem solving and I love the industry that I came into and I think for me it's become a real passion to try to make a difference, and I think that this is where, for me, the opportunities that I've come through have always been extremely impactful for me in my professional development and more so for, you know, canadians, and for what we do as an industry. So I think those are the strengths that I kind of lean on and have served me well over the last 20 years.

Speaker 2:

I had a conversation yesterday with somebody from another pharma company who's in a leadership position and one of the things that they were reflecting on is a desire within that organization to keep people a bit more focused on a specific career path within what I would call like a craft, your craft being sales or marketing.

Speaker 2:

And they were, I think, trying to walk back a little bit from what is often the pharma path of you know, you're a sales manager, then you're in a brand management position, then you're an RBM and then you sort of bounce back between sales and marketing. They were looking at building people who have more craft experience in marketing specifically. What do you think about kind of that breadth versus depth dichotomy? Like, do you? Obviously you've jumped around into different parts and picked up, I think, learning from all of that and that's landed you where you are? When you're looking at people for roles, do you look at them having a long tenure in one part of their career or having a lot of different parts? Like, give me a sense of what you think about that breadth versus depth?

Speaker 1:

So it's a good question, I think for me, you know, I do believe that you need to build proficiency in the role you're in and I believe that you know I love breadth and I love, you know, the experience I've had, because I have. I do have a very diverse perspective, even though some of my, you know, early reimbursement experience is outdated at this point. But I can still lean on some of the principles and I can follow the kind of path that our reimbursement market has taken, path that our reimbursement market has taken. So for me I do like breadth. I think it gives you a broader and more empathetic perspective with all of your collaborators because, especially now, neil, like everything requires input and collaboration from every stakeholder in the organization. So I think you know, the broader your perspective, the better.

Speaker 1:

But at the same time I also do look at people's backgrounds in how quickly they progress through roles. Because what I do appreciate is when people have taken on a role and you know for me it takes you a year to kind of figure your way through that role and you know what is expected of you. Then by year two you're starting to apply those learnings. And I know that sounds kind of rigid, but for me I always think that you know a good two to three years in a role will give you that proficiency, because for me, third year you're now really able to excel, yeah, so having a good amount of time to allow you to kind of build that depth is really really, really critical. But at the same time, do I see a linear route to success versus a, you know, kind of sometimes lateral? I do appreciate a lot of broad experience. Do I require it? No, but I do appreciate a lot of broad experience. Do I require it? No, but I do appreciate the broad perspectives.

Speaker 2:

When you think back, and I guess maybe when you're sitting in the position that you are, are there roles or experiences that you've had in your past where you find that you're drawing on those learnings a bit more than others? Is there sort of a few greatest hits of those stops on your career journey that have made the biggest impact for you?

Speaker 1:

Yes, I'm smiling because that is such an important question for me. What was formative, I'd say, in my career? I came through. I had the good fortune, after my early days, to experience medical affairs at a manager level, experience reimbursement and health outcomes at a manager level, experience marketing at a manager level, and I thought I love the strategy, I love the strategic aspect of these roles. And I was one of those that thought you know, do I want to do sales? Do I need to do sales? I don't think so. I think I can continue to progress my career.

Speaker 1:

And I had an incredibly great mentor who was my manager at the time, mike Park at Janssen, who just said, leandra, do yourself a favor and really think through this.

Speaker 1:

And because he put a sales manager role in front of me and I was kind of reluctant and he was like just just try it. You've done a whole bunch of other things, just try it. And he said it's going to. It's going to help you be better and help you as a leader in your career. And I can't emphasize how grateful I am to Mike because I took that role on for actually three and a half years and it was the hardest but most rewarding and most formative role in my career and I always say to people like, when you come through and lead brands, it's amazing and it's really challenging, especially in the environment we're in. Leading brands and brand strategy is really really challenging. Leading a team of high performers who are all so different in how they view success, how they view engagement and kind of getting them to rally and get behind you and well however, you lead but like supporting them and making sure that they're successful and really seeing that their success is your success.

Speaker 1:

That was a real eye-opening experience for me and you know I've kind of taken those learnings, I think, more than any in my career as I've continued to progress.

Speaker 2:

I imagine part of what you're doing as you drop into an organization like Galderma is you're trying to quickly evaluate a really, really diverse landscape and we had talked earlier about as diverse as from consumer to aesthetic to therapeutic big team really changing dynamic landscape. Those are also really kind of wildly different markets. Aesthetics is a really interesting market so, yeah, it's really interesting that it's that experience and that sales position that helps give you that perspective.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's just it. Everybody's so different, Everybody is motivated by different things, Everybody's at a different stage, and then that kind of experience really allowed me to see what does a high-perform, performing team look like? And there are certain criteria for me that I think about. In including you know, you want that balance of, like, super eager, super driven and really, really you know strong potential to continue to excel. But you need to balance that with people who just love what they do and do it really, really, really well those you know high professionals and start to kind of figure out, okay, really well, those high professionals and start to kind of figure out, okay, what does a good team look like? Because it does require some diverse backgrounds like that.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I was thinking about coming into this conversation is the combination of how different leadership is at the GM level. That's a much bigger, broader mandate that you're not going to be able to be as hands-on you have to sort of lead through people and all these other nuances, but you're also you started in May of 2024. We're in this sort of post-pandemic, quasi-hybrid sort of a different world, and so you're not only coming into a new organization at the most senior level, you're also coming in at a time when some of the tools that might've proven successful for you in the olden days like 2019, aren't even available for you. So what is it like? I mean, what's leadership like in 2025 and how do you, you know, how does one mentor effectively when you're not even around your people all?

Speaker 1:

the time. So I think you might be hitting a bit of a sensitive spot for a lot of people, but I do believe face-to-face and you know, in-office presence is so important for collaboration, for connecting, and I think it really does help to build the culture. Is it required to build culture? Maybe not, but for me, especially in a time where my organization and I think a lot of organizations are going through a lot of change, really connecting and having that face-to-face engagement is so much more impactful and so much deeper than constantly being remote. So would I ever want to go back to 2020 or 2021? No, but do I appreciate the balance of, like you know, some a couple of days at home or a bit of a balance between that in that hybrid model?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I think we're we're in a really good place now, but I'm all for encouraging a really strong balance that includes in-office time and home time, and the in-office time I find is sure meetings are a bit more effective and all that other kind of stuff, but it's all of the stuff around the edges where you really get to know people and also have opportunities for ser of serendipitous conversations. It's like the. It's the walking into and walking out of the meeting with your colleagues, where you get almost more than than you pick up in the meeting itself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what, like I just remember in 2021, when we were completely remote, like if you just wanted to ask a colleague one question, you had to book 15 minutes in their calendar or a half hour in their calendar, Whereas I get to walk around and just ask people one question really quickly and move on and it just I feel like it's quite liberating.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, it's that. It's like remember the days when you could look sort of through the glass, when you could look sort of through the glass and you could hold your finger up in the hey, do you have one minute kind of motion Right? And people would go like, yeah, sure, I think about this big world of flux that we're in, I think and Omni has been something we've been talking about for ages data-driven marketing, and you know, really, I don't think we've even begun to see the impact of AI on healthcare communications. You talk about sort of collaborations and all these different channels and I think that's having an impact on our customers and HCP's desire and ability to engage with brands, and it feels like there's a lot of fluidity. Do you go back to fundamentals, like what are those kind of core principles that you bring to the team in an environment where stuff is changing as quickly as it is?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think you know, ultimately, impact is absolutely dependent on engagement. If we want to have impact on anyone, we need to have an attentive audience and we need to be able to offer some value in the why, in why they should consider my products or my offering more so than, say, a competitor out there. So I think the fundamentals aren't any different. I think you know to your point, the way in which we engage has dramatically changed and I think that that's really critical for all of us to consider, and I think our desire to keep up sometimes is not matching necessarily with the tools, the tech or the regs in which we have to kind of work within in the environment in which we currently sit.

Speaker 1:

But you know, I think everybody like at the end of the day, everybody is a consumer. Everybody, whether you're an HCP, whether you're, you know, a consumer looking for a consumer brand everybody consumes information in their own way and I think, more and more now, the way in which we consume information has evolved dramatically and I think it's on us to really keep up with that. But the foundation is really still just how do you kind of differentiate yourself in a very, very crowded, busy market where people are increasingly busy. Increasingly, you know, time is increasingly becoming more scarce. How do you capture attention and keep that attention and make an impact?

Speaker 2:

How do you, how do you do that, leandra?

Speaker 1:

But I think it depends on you know what that offering is. I mean, you know you said it that we have three wildly different business units.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and you know the demographics in each of the business units completely well not completely, but they do differ in a lot of cases. So it depends on what your product is, what your offering is and how you want to engage with those customers. But I think, in terms of making impact, you still need to be able to use multiple channels, more so now than ever before. Maybe communicating different things, communicating in different ways, but ultimately digital is becoming, or digital or, you know, virtual is becoming increasingly important because, like I said, everybody at the end of the day is a consumer. Where they're, you know, lying in bed, like I am at 10 o'clock at night, kind of scrolling through, trying to catch up, maybe reading some data, maybe, you know, scrolling through options, and that's when they have their quiet time and they can actually digest information. And I think we just have to recognize that and say you know where can we provide the information that our customers need? That makes an impact no-transcript.

Speaker 2:

Experiment a little bit where they weren't 12 or 14 months ago. Give me a sense of how the marketing mix is evolving for you guys, or where you're most excited about opportunity.

Speaker 1:

So I think you know the social media aspect is not new. It's, you know's, something that we've all been living in in the last several years, but it has become increasingly important month to month and I think where you can leverage social media, you can have tremendous impact and you can also really get specific on who you're targeting, what channels you're using. So it has become a very effective and efficient mechanism or channel to promote in and to engage with. On the other side, you know our other business unit is focused on and in that regard I was thinking more along the lines of the aesthetics and the consumer brands. But when you think about therapeutic, once again I mean you know we have some stronger restrictions around what channels we can use and how we use them. But again, I'm going to go back to HCPs are still consumers and they're still very digitally savvy and in fact, in Galderma, as I've gotten to know our dermatology group of incredible physicians across the country they're way more savvy on social than I am.

Speaker 2:

Oh for sure, Dermatologists are a really interesting category that are quite business savvy, I think, in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1:

Business savvy, and they know how to use these platforms so effectively whether it's sharing, whether it's building awareness, whether it's for business purposes, but they're just really really great on these platforms. And again, you know, gone are the days where you can only rely on face-to-face engagement. I think you have to be able any person in the organization needs to be able to pivot between new tech and digital and hard copy or paper. So I think you still have physicians at the other end. But the way in which we engage physicians also looks different than it did four years ago, five years ago, and I think it's you know, it behooves us to recognize that they're on their phones and their iPads or whatever way more often than you know. They have somebody standing in front of them for, you know, a couple minutes talking to them about a product.

Speaker 2:

So, and so when, when you're looking at you know sales and marketing innovation within Galderma, is that mandate distributed through the organization, so brand managers are expected to kind of be able to understand and adopt new tools and be innovative. Is it embedded in a specific group? Do you have an innovation group or a technology team or an AI working committee, or is it a combination of both? And again, sensitive to? I'm not looking for you to reveal state secrets, but I just I think that people are really interested these days about how organizations can learn and disseminate those learnings in a really fast paced, complicated environment.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's one evolution that I probably am very proud of. I do not see the benefit of having a marketing team that is comprised of your traditional marketer and your digital marketer. That, to me, was kind of outdated a couple of years ago, because I believe firmly that everybody who's doing marketing and everybody who's doing sales needs to be able to embrace technology and use the channels that are available right across the board, and I think you can't have a marketer that doesn't know how to you know design and deploy a digital campaign as part of their, you know, omni-channel vision, just like you can't have a rep who can only do face-to-face and can't deploy email or, you know, social.

Speaker 2:

So I think this is where.

Speaker 1:

I think everybody needs to have these skills, and when I think about what competencies and skills I look for in my teams right across the board, neil, one of the things whether you're applying for a regulatory role, for customer service, for sales, if you embrace technology and the pace at which things are changing, we're going to win. If you are not embracing technology, even in regulatory, even in, you know, say, supply chain, like everything is starting to have AI and tech embedded because it's making our systems and our processes so much more effective and efficient. So I think that those are skills that everybody needs to have.

Speaker 2:

We just had our AI Europe event quite recently and, interestingly, a really big part of the conversation was around MLR and how can AI make the workflow more efficient to have content and campaigns reviewed and feedback, and how do we free up really really, really valuable intellectual capital in the organization from doing what are often quite mundane tasks. So it's interesting that you mentioned regulatory. That's an area where you don't necessarily think there's a ton of innovation, but imagine really unlocking the human capital in those groups.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. And I will also say do I expect people to be technically savvy with the actual platforms or the technology? No, and I've said this before, but it's embarrassing, but if I just got a new laptop, if you knew how many people I had working with me to try to figure out how to get my printers back online.

Speaker 1:

I always say I don't need to know how to build it, I just need to know how to use it, right? So I think that's that's kind of my expectation, like just be open to how you can use it in your day to day. Somebody else will take care of the technical part around. You know implementing it and embedding it in your, in your systems, but you just need to be agile enough to know that the pace of change is so fast now and that you just need to be able to adapt to doing things differently. Even if you've been in the same role for 10 years, the way in which we work is so different than it was, you know, three years ago.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely. You know, as we get deeper into 2025, what are the kinds of things that are keeping you up at night, like kind of things that you're sort of like I really I need to tackle this, I need to solve this. And then what are the kinds of things that are sort of getting you up in the morning where you're like I am really excited to implement this or dive into this, or keep this thing going, like, but give me a sense of what's on your mind. Give me a sense of what's on your mind.

Speaker 1:

So I would say that my biggest priorities, but also my biggest areas of passion, are are we delivering the value in the products that we offer to the Canadians that we serve? And for me, this is why I've been absolutely proud and passionate about working in, you know, the now I would call it the skincare and pharma industry. For me, just seeing patient testimonials or consumer testimonials on the impact my own kids like use you know, cetaphil and you know some of our other prescription brands and seeing the impact that it can have on somebody's quality of life or somebody's, you know, confidence is so motivating and that's what truly gets me out of bed every single day. I think the other equal priority is making sure that my team here, at every level, feels as engaged, passionate, enabled as they can. And there's always room to grow and, you know, be better, be more efficient, be smarter in the way in which we work and the tools that we use.

Speaker 1:

But if you ask what's keeping me up and keeping me motivated, those are the two key things I'd say. We're chatting at an incredibly dynamic, interesting time. So the other side you know I have a consumer aspect to my business news that we are well, I'm obsessively reading all day long around. You know the tariff impact and the economic concerns and volatility Absolutely is. You know it impacts me not only as a business leader but also as a consumer, as a mother, as you know you know as a Canadian yeah, so I think these are the things that I have to also balance.

Speaker 1:

How do I make sure that I'm mitigating any risks on our organization, on our business, and keeping everybody as positive as possible, because it can be a challenging topic in some discussions, because it can be a challenging topic in some discussions.

Speaker 2:

Well, in an environment that has so much going on, I am so incredibly appreciative that you took some time out of your day to chat with me. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Neandra.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Neil. It's so great to catch up and I appreciate the conversation.