Name: Martin VanTrieste

Title: President Emeritus

Organisation: Civica Rx

The author of the book "Protecting Patients At All Costs: The Drug Watch Dogs" discusses the army dedicated to developing, producing and distributing safe drugs. The book also contains real-life leadership lessons. It has been my privilege to serve as Civica's chief executive officer, now President Emeritus and Board Director since 2016.

I have been there since the beginning, developing our culture, mission, values and business model. I serve on several boards, including the Redica board, and the Chair of the Board at SmartSkin Technologies. An accomplished entrepreneur, board governance expert, executive coach, and biopharmaceutical executive who used entrepreneurial expertise to create a successful non-profit Rx-360 consortium.

I have established board governance from scratch and moved boards to a more strategic operating culture. Skilled in changing quality cultures, leading large organizations, and large quality improvement and compliance initiatives in complex biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing environments. I have comprehensive knowledge and experience in pharmaceutical manufacturing, quality systems and domestic and international government regulations.

I have a reputation as a proactive leader in anticipating, troubleshooting and resolving issues. As a consistent contributor to corporate growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction by driving a quality culture throughout all elements of the organization.

I have received numerous awards and recognitions, such as "The 100 Most Influential People in Pharma" from Modern Healthcare and PharmaVoice's "Top 100 Most Inspiring People."

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Martin's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

For me, the most important thing for an executive leader to accomplish is to build and maintain a culture. As a leader in the biopharmaceutical space focusing on manufacturing. My job was to lead in an environment where we needed to focus on product quality, employee safety, product supply, and compliance with numerous global regulatory requirements.

Therefore, I needed to create, nurture and maintain a culture of doing the right thing. What makes this difficult is it can not be accomplished by me alone and needs complete alignment throughout the entire organization.

Many daily distractions or competing priorities could derail the desired behaviors. As a leader, you can not fall into the trap of losing focus on the desired culture or providing even the slightest signal that you don't believe in the culture you want to nurture.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I became a leader early in life, and I can't remember the exact moment when this happened, but my leadership journey started with playing sports as a child, which grew into student leadership. While in Pharmacy School, I joined Abbott Laboratories as a summer intern, where I impressed a manager at Abbott, and after graduation, he hired me as a supervisor, where I started my leadership journey in the biopharmaceutical industry. Over the course of many years, I had the opportunity to work for and with many leaders, organizations and companies, giving me a very diverse learning experience that I use every day.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

"Now that I have moved into retirement, my days are somewhat different from when I was actively leading Civica Rx, a midsize pharmaceutical company.

I would always come to the office an hour early and use this time to read the day's current events. These events could be about the biopharmaceutical industry, business or just current events. I felt that this provided a great deal of knowledge that allowed me to be a better problem solver and connect the dots to stay ahead of what was coming and to lead more effectively.

Then, I would make phone calls, usually followed by attending meetings. I tried to eat lunch in a public space such as the cafeteria or a courtyard with different and random individuals on a routine basis learning from others about what was happening within the organization. Then, my afternoon would include meetings, reading reports and responding to urgent needs of the organization.

I would typically leave to go home between 5 and 6 pm. Have dinner with the family, attend one of my kid's sporting events, help with homework, watch TV, take the family to the movies, etc. Then, when the kids would go to bed, I would spend one-on-one time with my wife or do chores. Then, if I need to do any work business, I would complete my work day, and go to sleep. However, traveling was a big part of my job or, as I used to say, one of my three jobs. 1. to lead a large organization; 2. to represent the company in front of regulators, policymakers and lawmakers; and 3. to be the face of the organization by presenting at conferences and doing press appearances.

When I traveled to lead the organization, I would visit one of our many sites. These visits had several purposes. 1. to promote and nurture the culture; 2. to ensure that the site was being maintained properly; and 3. to conduct skip-level meetings to understand what was happening at all company levels.

This reminds me of a funny story. When I was visiting a plant, I was touring a building with the site's leadership team, and as I turned a corner, I quickly and suddenly stopped, joking with the leadership team if I could proceed since the paint on the floor still looked wet.

No matter how much work I had to do or business trips I needed to attend. I made it a priority to be at my kids' sporting events, recitals, parent teacher conferences, etc. I missed only one event because my flight returning home from a plant visit was canceled."

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

I focused on two leadership lessons in the last phase of my career: succession planning and mentoring, along with servant leadership.

As I progressed in my career, I realized the significance of mentoring and developing the next generation of leaders. I understood the value of succession planning and nurturing talent within the organization. As I matured as a leader, I embraced the concept of servant leadership putting the needs of my team and the community first. I understand my role was to support and enable others to succeed.

I also understood my role was to help and protect the industry from bad actors and even criminal activity. This is why I founded Rx-360, a nonprofit international consortium that addresses pharmaceutical and medical device supply chain security concerning public health concerns and patient safety. These issues affect billions of individuals around the world daily. As a community of life-science and medical device thought leaders committed to driving positive change within the industry.

Servant leadership is why I came out of retirement to start Civica Rx, which is a nonprofit generic drug company founded in 2018. Dan Liljenquis, myself, several national philanthropic groups, and leading U.S. health systems created Civica Rx to reduce and prevent drug shortages in the United States and the price spikes that can accompany them. Civica's mission is to make quality generic medicines accessible and affordable to everyone.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Honestly, I can't remember any specific book that profoundly impacted my leadership. I was lucky to have great mentors throughout my career who shaped my leadership approach. This question also reminds me of an event in my career where my supervisor taught me a great leadership lesson.

Early in my career, management considered that I had potential. Then, one day, I made an error in judgment, acting on instinct without consulting experts. My decision was wrong and cost the department a million dollars.

My boss called me into the office and asked what happened. At that point, I was convinced I would lose my job. So, I began to explain what happened, what was discovered, and that I felt the defect was minor and insignificant.

Thinking I'm 23 years old, recently married and moved my young bride across the country, I would get fired. With a crackling voice, I then asked my manager if I would get fired. My boss leaned back in his chair and said, "Fire you? I just spent $1 Million training you." At that point, he gave me the first book on Quality that I had ever read. It is funny how often I have told this story or used that line with a junior employee during my career.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

If I could share just one piece of advice with a young leader, I'd say this: "Always keep learning and growing." Earlier, I spoke about trying to learn new things every day by spending the first hour of my day reading current events. I also attended conferences, benchmarked with others and took courses.

So, no matter where I was in my leadership journey, I never stopped learning and evolving. Leadership is about adapting to new situations, understanding different perspectives, and constantly improving yourself. Take the time to learn from experiences, seek out new knowledge, and be open to feedback.

By focusing on learning and personal growth, you will enhance your abilities, stay flexible and be better equipped to deal with the challenges of leading others. Committing to continual improvement will benefit you and inspire others, creating growth within your team or organization.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

I ran a large Quality Organization within a plant, including the Quality Control laboratories in Illinois. There were several supervisors in the Quality Control laboratories. One day 25 years later, while I was at Amgen in California, a young professional approached me and introduced himself. Although the name sounded familiar, I did not recognize him.

He proceeded to explain that his father was one of those lab supervisors and that he took the job at Amgen because his father convinced him that he could learn a lot from me.