In this episode of the Active Ingredients podcast, host Thomas Dove interviews Jeff Rope, a pharmaceutical operations executive with four decades of experience in technical operations, supply chain leadership, and acquisition integration.

Jeff's journey from aspiring veterinarian to leading global operations shows how failure and rural values shape strong leadership. His experience building teams, coaching systems, and working through the changing generics landscape offers insights for executives. The conversation explores authenticity, site management experience, and staying flexible during industry changes.

Key Takeaways

• Learn how being authentic makes you a better leader after years of trying to copy others, focusing on being yourself in pharmaceutical leadership.

• Discover why integrity stays important in life sciences operations, recognizing that practicing integrity consistently across complex manufacturing requires effort and courage.

• Understand how rural farming experiences carry over into operational leadership, including solving problems independently, supporting your community, and staying disciplined.

• Explore why the Site Manager role gives the best leadership training, sitting at the intersection of all functions and requiring mastery of compliance, medical, finance, and operations.

• Take away the principle of coaching systems rather than individuals, recognizing that long-term change requires fixing structural issues not personal development.

• Gain insights into balancing technical skills with people leadership, with Jeff noting few people move from shop floor to senior positions without developing people skills.

• Apply methods for staying flexible in pharmaceutical operations, as the generics industry faces patent cliffs, biosimilar complexity, and therapies like GLP-1 creating market changes.

• Uncover how continuous learning and effort stay required, with Jeff stressing that applying yourself fully builds the foundation for career success.

• Identify important leadership qualities needed during uncertainty, including making strategic choices with incomplete information while keeping flexibility to manage mistakes.

Snippets

• "Whenever you do something, you have to apply yourself. You have to learn. You have to put time and effort. And it's not enough to think things come naturally to you."

• "The Site Manager job was the best job I've ever had. Take two funnels at the pointy end and put them together. The site manager sits right in the joint."

• "Very few people make it from the shop floor to senior roles. You're on that journey because there's something about what you've done or accomplished to date that's working."

Timestamps & Topics

• 00:23:22 -- Introduction: Jeff Rope's journey from New Zealand to global pharmaceutical leadership

• 00:24:39 -- Three Active Ingredients: Being authentic, having integrity, treating people with respect

• 00:26:25 -- Early Formation: Rural farming values and path from veterinarian to pharmaceutical operations

• 00:30:18 -- The Chemistry Pivot: How a failed school exam started a lifetime of learning

• 00:45:30 -- Site Management Excellence: Why this role provides the best leadership development

• 01:02:15 -- Coaching Systems vs Individuals: Building long-term organizational change

• 01:15:36 -- Industry Evolution: Generics changes, GLP-1 impact, leading through industry shifts

Resources

• Follow Jeff Rope on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-rope-345b84197/

• Follow Thomas Dove on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lifesciencesexecutivesearch/

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In this episode of the Active Ingredients podcast, host Thomas Dove interviews Paul Janssen, Regional Vice President and General Manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland at Advanz Pharma.

Paul's career shows how principled leadership under pressure can reshape pharmaceutical organisations. From turnarounds to scaling challenges, his journey highlights the power of listening, building trust through presence, and creating entrepreneurial cultures that put patients first.

The conversation dives into how leaders stay clear in crisis, build teams with heart, and develop talent using frameworks that value learnability as much as experience. Paul shares stories from military leadership to million-euro mistakes, demonstrating how vulnerability and accountability fuel psychological safety and innovation.

Key Takeaways

• Learn how the three L's framework guides crisis leadership through listening to every level of the organisation, leading with clear direction, and letting teams execute with trust once alignment is achieved.
• Gain insights into building companies with heart by establishing patient-centric cultures where teams achieve exceptional market share through responsiveness and genuine commitment to improving lives.
• Discover why calm presence matters more than perfect solutions when leading through regulatory challenges or market disruptions that threaten patient access and team morale across multiple markets.
• Understand how patient immersion creates entrepreneurial fire by visiting patients in their homes and witnessing first hand the daily impact of therapies on quality of life and treatment burden.
• Explore the five-element hiring framework Paul uses to build high-performing teams by assessing winning attitude, impact, learnability, adaptability, and judgment rather than prioritising industry experience.
• Take away strategies for creating psychological safety where team members can make mistakes, admit errors early, and maintain entrepreneurial courage without fear of punishment when acting in good faith.

• Apply principles for talent development over experience hiring, understanding that learnability and adaptability predict long-term success more accurately than therapeutic area expertise or established relationships.

Snippets

• "Listening is a very important element to be a successful leader."
• "In the beginning, I wasn't selling because I didn't know that you have to listen and not talk. That was a big learning for me at the time."
• "You need to be very calm….You need to be pulling people together, and you need to tell them this is the situation."

Timestamps & Topics

• 00:37:12 - Three Active Ingredients: Listening, leading, and letting teams execute with trust
• 00:42:28 - Entry into Pharma: Consulting experience that revealed product safety issues and sparked industry passion
• 00:54:08 - Leading in the Fire: Military leadership lessons applied to pharmaceutical crisis management
• 01:04:02 - Building with Heart: Patient-centred startup philosophy that drove 50% market share growth
• 01:12:04 - Million Euro Mistakes: Creating cultures where teams report errors early without fear
• 01:15:30 - Hiring for Talent: Five-element framework prioritising learnability over industry experience
• 01:24:01 - Future of Life Sciences: AI integration, digital therapeutics, and human-centred leadership evolution

Resources

• Follow Paul Janssen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-janssen-ma-mba-msc/
• Follow Thomas Dove on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lifesciencesexecutivesearch/

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In this episode of the Active Ingredients podcast, host Thomas Dove interviews Alan Rankin, Chief Procurement Officer at Moderna.

Alan's career trajectory from organic chemist to transformational procurement leader spans some of pharma's biggest names, including Novartis, Sandoz, and Moderna. His journey reveals how technical expertise combined with people-centric leadership creates extraordinary value in life sciences. The conversation explores bold career transitions, the private equity mindset, and how AI-enabled procurement teams will reshape pharmaceutical operations in the coming decade.

Key Takeaways

• Discover how AI agents will sit alongside human teams in pharmaceutical procurement, with Alan explaining Moderna's approach to managing digital and human workforces together, positioning AI capabilities within HR rather than IT.
• Understand why experimentation with AI technology matters more than fear of job replacement, as Alan shares how Moderna's culture allows people to learn and build with AI tools, enabling workforce reinvention rather than displacement.
• Learn how curiosity, connection, and the ability to lower judgment form the foundation of impactful leadership, especially in procurement roles where stakeholder influence is crucial in driving organisational change.
• Discover why asking questions instead of providing answers fosters accountability in teams and strengthens ownership, as Alan explains how this shift transformed his leadership approach from content-driven to people-centred.
• Understand the private equity lens as a value multiplier rather than cost-cutting pressure, where delivering bottom-line impact translates to exponential enterprise value at exit.
• Explore the critical importance of data quality as the foundation for procurement value creation, with Alan's framework: data > insights > ideas > projects > savings.
• Take away strategies for successful transitions from big pharma to smaller organisations, recognising that moving from thousand-person teams to lean operations requires building systems from scratch without the corporate machine behind you.
• Gain insights into defining personal success internally rather than through external validation, as Alan shares how working with coaches helped him discover that self-defined success metrics around wellbeing and detachment matter more than titles.

Snippets

• "Your job as a leader is to make people who work for you successful. And the theory is if they're successful, then you'll be successful."

• "Data leads to insights. Insights leads to ideas. Ideas lead to projects. Projects, when executed well, lead to money in the bank. But at the end of the day, it all starts with the data."

• "The private equity lens is just a wonderful appreciation of what procurement can do and what procurement can bring to the table."

Timestamps & Topics

• 00:30:17 -- Three Active Ingredients: Curiosity, connection, and the ability to lower judgment
• 00:42:23 -- First Leadership Role: Managing a unionised workforce as the youngest production lead
• 00:52:13 -- Big Pharma to PE Transition: Building procurement systems from scratch at Stata
• 01:00:25 -- Moderna Mission: Joining to advance platform mRNA technology in oncology
• 01:16:46 -- Procurement of the Future: Integrating AI agents alongside human workforce

Resources

• Follow Alan Rankin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-rankin-a2733a6/
• Follow Thomas Dove on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lifesciencesexecutivesearch/

Don't Miss an Episode

Remember to tune in to our next episode for more inspiring insights. You can also subscribe to the Active Ingredients podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other leading podcast platforms.

Loved this episode?

Share it with your friends, family or your peers!