«We need to put the patient at the center of our environmental considerations»

Montse Montaner is uncompromising when it comes to quality. The experienced pharmaceutical leader, who can look back on a long and successful career in the industry, knows that in drug production one mistake is one too many and that prudence and caution reign supreme in a sector that aims to help millions of people live longer and healthier lives.

This mindset, which she sharpened during her time as Group Head of Quality at Novartis, is now also helping her in her new role as Chief Sustainability Officer in which she is leading the company’s environmental sustainability efforts, which span the globe and include a vast array of projects that need reorganizing under a unifying roof.

“Quality is a make-or-break factor for any pharmaceuticals company,” she said, as she talks about her previous job. “But above all, it’s an attitude you have in respect to work and a constant reminder that what you are doing is having a huge impact for a patient in need.”

While diligence and science have marked her career in the past, her new position will demand even more from her, including her family, which was one among several reasons she changed jobs. Montaner was not just on the lookout for a new challenge. It was, most of all, the conversations with her teenage kids that prompted her to reassess her career.

“For some time, the conversations at home with my children revolved a lot about climate change,” Montaner said. “Both teenagers, they are very conscious about the challenges we face, so naturally we had very serious conversations about the impact of human civilization on the planet.”

The debates with her children triggered a period of reflection, Montaner recalled, and also brought back memories of her youth when she studied in Brazil and worked for a local NGO to help people in need, many of whom were also affected by climate change.

“When I was around 16 years old, I lived in Brazil in the favelas to learn more about how people are living there in this situation,” she said. “I not only realized how fortunate and privileged I was, but also that people were often affected directly by a climate that is out of control. A tropical storm could completely devastate a house and rob a family of all its essentials.”

In some ways, by opting to switch positions and try out something new, she reconnected with her old self. “Taken together, my decision to change my job was a result of this particular constellation: my past experience as an NGO worker, the discussions at home with my children and my wish to take up a new challenge and do something impactful and relevant for patients,” she said.  

Working to help Novartis achieve its ambitious environmental targets, which include being fully carbon-, water- and plastic-neutral by 2030, was the right move. “As a company, we aim to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives. One aspect of this is taking care of the planet. If you don’t have a healthy planet, it’s much more challenging to be able to improve the health of people. This was what finally connected the dots in my case.”

Ms. Montaner, you just passed the first 100 days in your new job. How would you describe the journey so far?

I’m super happy. I’m learning a lot, so it’s great. I am continually pushing myself, asking many questions and reading a lot on climate change and leadership, as well as specialized literature to deepen my knowledge. Also, I am reaching out to colleagues at Novartis and people from other companies beyond the pharma sector to learn from their experiences because we, at Novartis and in the rest of the industry, need to do a lot – and fast.

Your background is in pharmaceutical technology. Do you think that you can successfully gear up Novartis to reach its ambitious environmental targets?

Most of my career I have been working as a pharmaceutical technician and in the area of quality, the last four years as Head of NTO Quality and Group Quality. My decision to switch roles was both professional and personal. While I have some catching up to do, two important aspects in this new role are to create credibility as well as mount an overarching structure that can help Novartis reach its goals.

How do you want to achieve this?

My background and experience can help here. Especially when it comes to credibility. What I learned as Head of Group Quality is that, while we can talk endlessly about our goals and visions, we have to deliver in order to be credible and win the trust of patients, clients, stakeholders and society at large. This means that if you want to be a healthcare leader, the quality of your product must be impeccable. The same holds true when it comes to living up to reaching our environmental targets.

What do you need to do in order to generate this credibility?

First and foremost, we need to be transparent internally and externally for people to understand what we are doing. We have given ourselves very ambitious targets on which we need to deliver. This means that we need to have a clear governance structure in place, which allows us to measure and monitor our performance and develop new avenues for progress. Also, we need to have the right priorities. There are a lot of good ideas that people want to pursue. But we really need a clear path and the discipline to turn it around.

Consistency helps strengthen credibility?

Absolutely. Take our efforts to reduce single-use plastics in our facilities, for example. We had the Green team in Basel that started the effort. But the real impact came only when we started to roll out a company-wide effort. This led to a sizable amount of raw material savings and – even more importantly – showed that Novartis is determined to make an impact. The effort was not just about using fewer plastics, it also had a cultural message, which will continue to have its impact in other parts of the organization.

Where do you see the biggest potential for impact?

One of our biggest breakthroughs was certainly the virtual power purchase agreement we negotiated in the United States a few years ago, which now serves as a blueprint for similar renewable energy deals in Europe and elsewhere.

Can you explain the potential?

These new collaborative green energy deals not only allow us to reduce our own carbon footprint. Given their size, they can also pave the way for our suppliers to participate and help them reduce their own CO2 output. As a leading healthcare company with thousands of suppliers, we can have a real impact on how business is executed today – not just for ourselves but for our partners too. I believe that in this respect we can gain a lot of credibility in our efforts if we can develop solutions that look at climate change in a more holistic way.

Are there other efforts you are pursuing that can help transform energy and raw material being used at Novartis?

Coming from the technical and scientific side of the business, my goal is to challenge the very basic assumptions we have had in respect to our environmental footprint until now. One way, of course, is to really put the patient at the center of our considerations and think about how we manage the lifecycle of a medicine in a sustainable manner. Of course, it’s a good idea to reduce plastic, water and carbon consumption. But we need to think about it from a patient’s point of view and challenge ourselves on how we can save energy and natural resources and at the same time generate more value for the patient.

What have you done in this respect so far?

We are now putting in place methodologies that allow us to calculate our environmental footprint across the lifecycle. While this is a technical approach, it will definitely have a cultural impact too, since it will prompt our teams to think early on about how to develop and produce therapies that have a minimal environmental impact. We are already working on chemical and biological processes today to introduce environmental sustainability criteria as part of the way we operate. While some of these efforts are done in isolation, our goal is now to make these processes available across the entire organization and use these technologies at scale.

Where do you get your inspirations to drive change?

I am reading a lot these days to be in the know as to what is going on in the environmental realm internationally. Of course, I’m following the efforts of Greta Thunberg and the World Wildlife Fund, but I am also a big admirer of Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010 to 2016, who is among the most important leaders in the climate change domain. And I’m also reaching out to peers in other industries to learn more.

Can you talk more about this external engagement?

Meeting people from other companies and sectors and learning from their experiences is inspirational and energizing. Through this openness we can assess our situation better and see where we are well advanced and where we need to catch up. Through my discussions with peers from companies such as Microsoft, I have been able to complete my picture of our own efforts and learn about where we can improve.

What have you learned in this respect?

I’m certainly impressed about what Novartis has achieved over the past years. Our ambitions in the environmental realm are high, and we already have strong structures in place. But, as I said – and this is partly what I’ve also seen at other companies – we need to pull our strategic priorities together and work on projects that have the highest impact and also really look at the lifecycle of our products in more detail. The journey to achieve our goals will be technical and cultural at the same time.

Can you expand on the culture aspect?

I believe it’s really important that our associates provide support for our efforts, since we need to mobilize everyone to make a difference. This is also a form of consistency, which is intrinsically linked to our endeavors to generate internal and external credibility. This is certainly what I learned in the quality assurance area: You have to deliver every day in order to live up to your own standards and to meet the expectations of patients. The tolerance for mistakes is zero. This is a mindset that we also need when it comes to our environmental efforts. This is not a nice-to-have. It is an essential element of how we execute our business.

Five years from now, where do you expect Novartis to be in terms of its environmental footprint?

Our goal is to be carbon-neutral in our own operations by 2025 and fully carbon-, water- and plastic-neutral by 2030. To achieve these targets, I see my role within the company as a connector, bringing leaders from different businesses together and working on the projects with the highest impact. Given the backing of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee to reach these goals, I am confident that we can not only achieve our targets, but set in motion a change in the mindset within our company and our supplier network that will trigger a positive ripple effect in society. For this, however, we need to work hard, constantly and with high quality.