The Reformer
Changing the system from inside it, principle turned into change.
Emma Walmsley is The Reformer by demonstration. Arriving at GSK as an outsider to pharmaceuticals, she set about redesigning the company from within, separating consumer health into Haleon, sharpening pipeline discipline, and overhauling R&D decision-making without dismantling the institution around her. That pairing of operational rigour with structural reinvention, progressive yet grounded, is the Reformer signature.
“In our factories, we had to keep 70 factories open every single day through the pandemic to make sure that we were able to provide our HIV medicines, our cancer medicines, our respiratory medicines, our everyday vaccines to the people that needed them. And that meant people working through every day.”
“The first thing I'd say is you should never take on these roles and the privilege of these responsibilities unless you are prepared for that kind of public inspection and you ready yourself and those around you for a level of resilience, it absolutely has to start with a real clarity of purpose, strategy and values that underpinned why yo…”
“To discover and develop you 90%. So only one in 10 words. That's important to understand when you think about the risk and the investment required for success. But technology is going to help us unlock more productivity. Just imagine if you could take it from a 10% success rate to a 20% success rate.”
“Physically be there, but for all of our office workers, we have performance with choice, which is about having the flexibility to, we haven't mandated X number of days in because we think people can work wherever they're able to be their most creative and productive if they don't need to physically be on a line.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Emma Walmsley”
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