Was leadership part of your career plan, or did it happen organically?
I've had a curious nature for as long as I can remember. Even from a young age, I had a passion for understanding what's happening behind the scenes – how things really work. For me, choosing science as a career path felt completely natural. But as time went on, I realized that curiosity alone wasn't enough. I wanted to translate problem-solving into something actionable that could make a real difference.
That's when I understood I needed to combine scientific expertise with business capability to solve real-world problems and the goal of science leadership began to take shape.
What prompted your transition from academia to industry?
I was incredibly fulfilled by my work at University Hospital Basel, but I felt this growing need to scale up the impact of what we were doing. That's where a company like Thermo Fisher becomes so compelling. They are at the cutting edge of technological innovation, and have the capacity to create tangible impact at a scale that's simply not possible in an academic setting.
When I joined Thermo Fisher, I went from serving a community within my region of Basel to serving the entire global oncology community. The decisions we make and the solutions we develop every day reach laboratories and clinicians around the world. Being part of such a large, influential organization is a privilege I've experienced every day since joining.
How would you describe your leadership philosophy?
My leadership style is really the product of the incredible mentors I've had throughout my career. They taught me so much, and one principle I've truly embraced in my daily work as a manager is this: when projects are delivered successfully – the team needs to be recognized for its achievements while the manager steps back into the shadows. But whenever there's a problem or a failure, the responsibility falls squarely on the manager.
What else shapes your approach to leadership?
I would describe my philosophy as people-first, but I'm also deeply purpose-oriented. In my experience, I couldn't do what I do without strongly believing in our mission and vision. But it's also about how we execute that mission – that's what truly makes the difference, and that's a core part of my leadership style.
I'm not there to make decisions for other people, but to create the environment that enables my team members to make the best possible decisions – and execute on them. It's about enablement, not direction.
As a global leader, how do you maintain your own development and stay current in such a rapidly evolving field?
I'm privileged in this regard because, in my position as global leader of medical and scientific affairs, I’m essentially paid to stay on top of science. Part of my job is to continuously learn what's happening out in the field. Even with the busy agenda we all have, I always make sure to carve out what I call a safe space – dedicated time to study what's happening in our discipline. I continue to read scientific articles the same way I did at the beginning of my career. Without that, I honestly couldn't do my job.
Is there anything else that informs your development?
There's one more thing I believe I've learned throughout my career that's crucial: always try to look outside your own box. I worked in academia for many years and published numerous peer-reviewed articles, and I've observed that scientists tend to stay within their own field. But I think it's equally important to learn things outside your day job. It will make you a better professional if you sometimes change your angle or shift your perspective. That broader view enriches everything you do.
Can you give us an example of how looking at problems from a different perspective has shaped your work?
Industry has really enabled me to do this. I was always accustomed to looking at things from a purely scientific point of view. But when you work in a large organization like Thermo Fisher, you start building business cases, and you realize that things aren't necessarily and exclusively driven by numbers and data as we see them in science. There are other factors at play – for example, social responsibility. That's something we as scientists should all have, but sometimes we don't actively think about it.
How does that play out differently between academia and industry?
As a scientist working in academia, you're usually given public funding, and have an obligation to use those resources for the benefit of not just your own career, but the grant providers. In industry, there is a misconception that everything is driven exclusively by a business case. That's not true. There's a component that's sometimes intangible, which is social responsibility.
Oftentimes we do things not because they're the most remunerative, but because they're the right thing to do. That perspective has been transformative for how I approach problems and make decisions.
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
It's the idea of fulfilling my mission, which is completely aligned with that of Thermo Fisher. I won’t rest until we ensure that the solutions we've built are truly accessible for everyone. We already have incredible solutions that are changing and impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients all over the globe. But that's still just a tiny fraction of who could benefit. That's what keeps me going every single day.
What do you think would help us achieve globally accessible precision medicine?
I truly hope the future will be full of new technological advances that will unleash the full power of precision medicine. But to make it happen, we all need to do one thing – collaborate. It doesn't matter how large your company is or how high your h-index is, nobody is going to be able to make this happen alone. The only way forward is to come together.
I hope that in the future, the partnerships between academia and industry, medical societies, and the media – disseminating science and knowledge through journals like The Pathologist – will work together more effectively. First and foremost, patients need to go back to the center of what we do. If we can all adopt a genuinely patient-centric view, I think we can achieve that next quantum leap in pathology much faster.
That's what it will take – all of us, working together, with the patient at the heart of everything we do.
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