Crucial Success Skills Forged Through My Journey
I firmly believe the fundamental to my success is unwavering commitment and desire to bring meaningful benefit to patient’s lives. My journey began during medical school, where I developed my passion for bridging the gap between science and patient care. My fascination for new drug discovery and development fueled my interest into clinical trials and led me to specialize in pharmacology and clinical research after completing my graduation in Medicine. The first and foremost skill that helped me accomplish success was deep technical expertise. In the field of Clinical Research wherein we develop new drugs through clinical trials, having a thorough domain knowledge helped me in bringing success to the drug development.
Another skill is leadership, my leadership style had always been collaborative leadership. To the crux of this is empathy towards colleagues, thinking by being in their shoes, providing the teams training to develop their skills, develop their strategic thinking, encourage them for decision making and eventually give them ownership of projects. A sense of ownership is what motivates the team to go beyond and achieve the goals. Building strong and capable teams, and an atmosphere of positive team culture led to success in multiple crucial drug development projects.
Crafting Creative Opportunities from Every Challenge
Success didn’t come without challenges. A curious and problem-solving approach is what helped me in overcoming those challenges. The first step for me while facing a challenge is to do a root-cause analysis to clearly understand what is leading to the problem. Once a root-cause is identified, the next step is to build a robust strategy to mitigate the root cause itself. Having a curious mind has been a blessing for me during solving problems while facing challenges.
I use this to find creative ways of overcoming challenges by thinking different ways a problem can be solved and finding the best solution out of these. Another approach I implement to overcome difficult problems is to build an expert network to whom I can reach out to seek solutions that I am myself not expert in solving at, we call them as ‘Key External Experts’. I firmly believe that one should never be shy to seek advise when needed, knowledge is a never ending journey and one is never too old to gain new knowledge.
My Impact
‘Every new medicine is a step toward a healthier world.’ My contribution to developing new medicines in various disease areas including Diabetes, Asthma, COPD, COVID, Pain etc. have significantly contributed to patient-well being. During my days of medical college, I was keen to leave positive impact on society through reducing the suffering of patients, the core reason why I always wanted to be Medical Doctor.
I realized that I can use my knowledge in even a better way to develop new medicines and finding better cure of diseases, thus impacting positively lives of millions of patients. A notable example is during COVID, I led multiple COVID drug programs in pharmaceutical industry most significant of which was COVID vaccine. The clinical trials that I and my team designed and executed led to affordable access of one of the COVID vaccines in India playing a significant role in ending the pandemic.
Scaling New Heights in Personal and Professional Triumphs
I don’t measure success by name and fame. My benchmarks for success are as follows: -Meaningful contribution to humanity- I firmly believe I am fortunate to get a Human Life and I should make the best use of it. I always think about success as any action leading to ‘Meaningful impact to humanity’. With my contribution in bringing new treatment options, I find immense satisfaction in contributing towards this goal. -Bringing positive change in patients’ lives: Every day I find motivation in working towards innovations that can lead to improvement in patients’ well-being.
Bringing new treatment options to patients for better disease management through new drug discovery and development are parameters of ultimate success for me. -Build strong scientific community in the nation: By inspiring others through success and by mentoring young scientists in field of drug research, I constantly strive to build a scientific community for the future. Contributing to growth of science in the nation is a benchmark of success for me.
The Synergy Between My Path and Recognition Values
My journey is all about developing my skills through consistent hard work and determination to be able to contribute positively to humanity. I do this by leading clinical research programs in India and internationally to bring affordable new medicines and treatment options to patients. Through this, I feel satisfied in doing my part to reduce the human suffering, and bringing positive impact to everyday lives of millions of patients. This recognition is aligned with my goal of inspiring young scientists to make better use of their life in meaningful contribution to society.
This recognition will also be a step towards strengthening clinical research capabilities of nation by motivating the younger generation to choose scientific research as an option that gives them opportunity to leave a positive mark on humanity. Also, this recognition is well aligned in spreading the values of empathy in everything we do whether this is through collaborative leadership or to constantly strive to bring improvement in lives of others.