Name: Stacy Hartung

Title: Vice President, Marketing

Organisation: Sy

Stacy has 20+ years of experience helping life science companies connect more meaningfully and engage more effectively with their customers.

She brings her depth of healthcare experience and breadth of customer engagement expertise to the Technology and Data Solutions (TDS) team at Syneos Health who leverage the latest technologies to address business-critical challenges across the asset lifecycle. As Vice President of Marketing, she leads brand, commercialization, campaign, and thought-leadership strategy for TDS and supports enterprise-wide sales enablement activities. Stacy also serves as a key Syneos Health subject-matter expert on omnichannel strategy in Medical Affairs and Commercial Delivery.

Prior to joining Syneos Health, she held several marketing and market research leadership positions with a focus on creating and establishing new lines of business at companies such as Real Chemistry, suAzio, Verilogue, and Elsevier.

Stacy holds a BS in Library and Information Science from the University of Maine and has multiple certifications across disciplines such as product marketing, Generative AI, and digital engagement.

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

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

Cheers,

Jonno White

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

One of my greatest challenges is also one of the most exciting aspects of being leader: staying abreast of the rapidly evolving technology landscape, particularly around advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, and then translating these concepts into the multiple and often times disparate audiences' languages.

The velocity and complexity of this space, especially when applied to the highly regulated life sciences industry I work in, can make it challenging at times to quickly react to the present and thoughtfully plan for the future in how we understand and respond to market forces and customer needs.

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

I cannot pinpoint a singular moment or event that christened me as a "leader;" it's been a constant accumulation of successes, failures, and learnings from other leaders that has coalesced into a leadership style that I'm still fine-tuning today. I know it's cliché, but leadership is truly a journey not a destination and more specifically, a journey of actions not words.

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

I do my best to approach every day with the goal of achieving purposeful balance: balance between professional and personal needs, between being an individual contributor and team leader, between thinking and doing, between innovating and reflecting, and so on.

I find structuring workdays in this non-linear way allows me the flexibility to prioritize my time and be the most productive across the usual list of unexpected urgencies we marketers field all the time, through the planned activities that require more strategic thinking and execution.

With that being said, I do have a few workday rituals, such as drinking approximately a bucket of coffee before my first meeting, getting in at least 30 minutes of exercise after work, and reading or listening to an album before bed (i.e., no screens). Another discipline I developed early in my career that is very important is spending at least 15 minutes a day consuming data- and perspective-driven content on micro and macro industry trends in my industry.

It does not do you any good to work in an echo-chamber and not see what is happening outside of the company's walls, or more importantly, what is coming.

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

I recently heard a colleague pull out the famous Theodore Roosevelt quote, "Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care" which reminded me that empathy is the engine of influential and inspiring leadership.

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?

Greg McKeown's "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" comes to mind as it helped crystalize the workday approach I described above and made me further consider the fact that saying "no" is an essential part of being an effective leader. A leader delivers meaningful results that move a team and an organization forward, and that cannot be done if you are constantly distracted by non-essential tasks and false urgencies.

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

Manage your team as if you want to report to them some day.

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

I have been lucky enough to be a part of many meaningful experiences over the course of my career in various roles and companies. Although the ones I remember the most (and are my favorites) are the experiences that involve bringing together disparate and diverse teams to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. As a leader, I thrive in collaborative environments where I can be exposed to, challenged on, and take in different points of view and other's expertise.