I feel very privileged that I could grow up in a family home with loving and caring parents who always supported their daughter and their two sons in pursuing our goals, passions and purpose. I therefore believe that also as a woman I would have made my degree at Zurich University and had an exciting start into my professional career.
 
The challenge becomes real as a female leader when you aim for a leadership career and are faced with the traditional expectations of a “good” mother. I still observe various obstacles when it comes to societal acceptance of female leaders who also want to embrace their role as a mother. Therefore, my leadership journey would have been probably more challenging if I was a woman.

My parents both passionately pursued their ideas and dreams in their professional careers. So, I had great role models who taught me that anything is possible, and your gender should not influence your professional development. Along my career, I had the opportunity to collaborate with various leaders who inspired me in the way how they lead in an inclusive way and addressed stereotypes.

Today I lead the pharmaceutical unit of Johnson & Johnson in Switzerland, I have a 50/50 gender split in my management board and 2/3 of our work force are females.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core values of our culture and leadership behavior at Johnson & Johnson. We actively act against stereotypes by driving internal campaigns on unconscious bias to make our workforce aware and inspire a dialogue. By doing so we aim to create a culture where people belong and can be their best selves. We also apply very practical measures in our processes like having mandatory diverse slates when we recruit talent and always assign a diverse interview panel.