My name is Johanna, I grew up in a small town located in Germany between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and attended university in England, the Netherlands and the US. I started my career working for a Big 4 company in Accounting Advisory before joining Roche in January 2021.

The Finance Perspectives Programme has taken me on a journey across the globe, that started with a regional finance position in Switzerland and led me to the Middle East, Latin America and the UK, where I am currently completing a commercial assignment within Pharma Market Access. 

For my first rotation in the Pharmaceuticals Division I joined our affiliate in Dubai for six months. I hadn't ever thought about moving to that part of the world, but was intrigued by the ongoing projects there and decided to just go where life takes me. I was involved in setting up a model to calculate patient numbers and in reviewing our most recent transformation to assess if it actually helped us achieve one of our visions: better outcomes for more patients faster. For me this was the first time living in an environment that attaches so much importance to relationships. Because I came from a task-oriented working culture, it took me some time to find the most effective way of collaborating with my colleagues. 

From the moment I started on the programme I wanted to do an assignment in Latin America, and so I decided to join our Diagnostics affiliate in Mexico City for six months. What I truly enjoyed was being part of a squad along with colleagues from Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain and Professional Services. We shared responsibility for managing the operational work for a specific group of customers, but also for setting quarterly financial and non-financial goals and determining the strategies on how to achieve the goals in line with affiliate-wide objectives.