Meet Vanessa | Roche

Today I’m shining a spotlight on how differently I manage my projects since I moved to Roche.

Almost two years ago, I was in a different world, a very traditional project manager deploying and implementing projects in a very rigid manner. The most challenging circumstances in the satellite communications industry were oil & gas clients that I had for over 10 years. Tracking time closely was vital in every deployment as delays would cause a ripple effect of issues due to the criticality of the business nature.

Everything was normal as it could be until the Covid-19 pandemic hit us. In a blink of an eye, the organisation I worked for then was hit hard resulting in a lot of us losing our jobs in the process. These were challenging times, even for a “glass half-full” kind of gal like me. So I took it as an opportunity and decided to embark on my next adventure. If there’s one trait I realised I had during that time, it was that I was resilient! I used my time wisely in waiting for the next opportunity and in the meantime, I harnessed new skills and certificates as an agile certified practitioner. For those unsure, the Agile methodology is a project management approach that involves breaking the project into phases and emphasises continuous collaboration and
improvement. This was very timely and relevant to the new exciting opportunity I was about to embark on with Roche in Malaysia. I was particularly interested in understanding how agility in projects was being implemented through iterative nature while constantly accommodating feedback and changes with close collaborations among sponsors in the organisation.

Coming in new, it was a privilege to be surrounded by positive colleagues who breathed agility and were supportive of me to succeed in every project I was assigned to. I was eager to adapt to their ways of working because everyone was very open about it. Everyone was very helpful!

One of the many great experiences I had the opportunity to project manage was the Agile Way of Working (WoW) movement initiative at Roche Services & Solutions (RSS). The initiative was created to provide employees with seamless growth and an experiential journey to embrace and
embed the ways of working in the organisation. It is about creating a platform and a series of activities that help connect different employees to agile ways of working. It was so empowering to be a part of such a great initiative and I continued to learn while I was leading it.

Based on the positive experience with WoW, I’m now involved in the mothership of empowering initiatives with the Global People Enabling Squad (GPES) which included a wider spread of colleagues from Costa Rica and Budapest. This is the core team in the RSS organisation that focuses on enabling different functions, creating a great place to work and building capabilities and our workforces to equip the employees and be future-ready. I can’t be more excited to journey this road together with the enabling squad and continue towards the ultimate goal of fully implementing agility across all departments.

This is what makes Roche a great place to work at. It truly values its people and cultivates a culture of diversity and inclusivity regardless of what background they come from. It focuses on the employees and equips them to be the best versions of themselves, allowing each one to spread their wings and continuously empower through these many initiatives so that they are enabled to create impactful contributions on their own that put patients first in everything that they do.