EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES Nick Saunders won the Hospital Representative Pf Award at the first Pf Awards in 2000. It directly impacted his career and he is now heading up the UK arm of Theramex, growing a new, sizeable pharmaceutical company specialising in women’s health. WORDS BY Emma Morriss
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hat’s your career background? I studied Genetics at university and was keen to go into an industry where genetic knowledge could have a strong impact. A university tutor introduced me to the pharmaceutical industry, and I started my career at Procter & Gamble. There I received some really good training, advice and since then I have developed my career through various pharma companies and roles. I moved from P&G to Warner Chilcott, then through acquisition to Actavis, a large generic company, and then onto Allergan where I ended up running the UK business for Medical Botox. From there, I took up a new challenge with Theramex. What does Theramex do? Theramex is a newly-created pharmaceutical company. I head up the UK business, where I am Commercial Director, my role spans multiple responsibilities, for example pricing and regulatory, which is a great new challenge. Theramex is creating a company that is focused on a woman’s health on their journey of life – so very unique. The key areas we work in are contraception, fertility, menopause and osteoporosis. We only came into existence last year, after acquiring
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a large part of business from Teva Pharmaceuticals and have been building it further since then – which is fantastic as you don’t get many opportunities to create something from scratch. Globally, we have over 350 employees, we operate in over 50 companies and have over 20 products. To create that in a very short space of time is a real achievement. Each day is interesting, motivating and exciting. How has your career led to you this point? I started my career in the field, which was great grounding. I had a territory manager role and then hospital representative before moving into key opinion leader (KOL) management. These were all very close to the customer. I spent the first seven or eight years doing customer facing roles before moving into marketing, marketing management and heading up business units in a variety of therapeutic areas working with colleagues across Europe. What was it like to be a Pf Awards Winner? I have my trophy in front of me. I won the Hospital Representative of the Year Pf Award at the first-ever Pf Awards. I remember the Pf Awards Assessment Day clearly, being interviewed by the panel of independet judges. We had to do some detailing, and planning – it was quite a fun day.