Podcast
The leader of the Pharmacist Organon in Portugal, Sofia Ferreira, is the guest of this episode of podcast “The CEO is the limit”. In it we talk about inequalities. Not salary, nor those of women’s access to top positions. But “inequalities in research, knowledge and what we know about women’s health”
He dreamed of a career as a doctor, but a worse provision in the chemistry exam (precisely his area of election), poured Sofia Ferreira, current CEO of the Pharmacist Organon Portugal, from her life project. “It was my first major disappointment,” he admits, underlining the importance of what he learned in the opposite: “It is It is very important to always have a plan B, even when we think we have all the driving to fulfill the plan A “because, widows,” we do not control everything and there are external variables that can change the course of things. “
Sofia eventually graduated in pharmaceutical sciences, attracted to a career in the investigation, looking for “medicines that could save lives.” A job as a laboratory assistant, in the third year of college, assured him the first salary, which was spared to fulfill the dream of traveling to Brazil. Experience has shown that laboratory work can be very lonely and made it develop other skills, which would eventually direct Sofia’s career to the pharmaceutical industry.
Started with Scheming-Plaough, as a clinical trial monitor, then moved to MSD and later joined Organon, a MSD spin-off dedicated to women’s health, where she entered 2021 as director of marketing and sales to take over in 2023 the management of the pharmacist in Portugal.
It admits that the way to the top leadership was not planned and that it needed to robbed its skills. In addition to the MBA he made and management and financial skills he has been developing, Sofia highlights the importance of his personal self -discovery path: “It is very important to become aware of our vulnerabilities as leaders” and make the way to solve them.
The current CEO of Organon Portugal looks at the route that has built so far as “a path of discovery”. He says he was building confidence in his potential and his abilities as a team leader. And the results that was achieved in the various functions he held gave him the awareness that “he could assume positions of high leadership.”
In this route, it highlights the determining role of the accompanying mentor network and ensures that “the The fact that I had a coach who helped me realize my vulnerabilities and a team of mentors made me a better leader. “
The CEO is the limit is the leadership podcast and career of Expresso. Every week journalist Cátia Mateus shows him who they are, how they started and what they did to reach the top the Portuguese managers who marked the past, those who drive the present, and those who promise to shape the future. Inspiring stories, told in the first person, who dare to make it happen. Listen to other episodes:
