Katerina Sakkoula stands at the intersection of healthcare innovation and effective implementation. As the Head of Affiliate Global Interface at Roche, she and her team are at the forefront of elevating patient safety globally. Katerina offers an important perspective on the transition from sick care to healthcare. Join hosts Thomas and Justin as they explore not only her professional journey, what drives her, where she finds joy, and her vision for the future of healthcare.
Katerina Sakkoula stands at the intersection of healthcare innovation and effective implementation. As the Head of Affiliate Global Interface at Roche, she and her team are at the forefront of elevating patient safety globally. Katerina offers an important perspective on the transition from sick care to healthcare. Join hosts Thomas and Justin as they explore not only her professional journey, what drives her, where she finds joy, and her vision for the future of healthcare.
Hey, great to have you with us, Katarina. Thanks for being on the Live with the intent podcast today.
Speaker 2:Nice to see you both again.
Speaker 3:Something I've been looking forward to, thomas to get the master application professor of our faculty online with us. For those in our audience who don't know, we've all been on the faculty together of a pretty exciting immersion experience and the role that you played, katarina, of our application expert. You have this gift of being able to take whatever content we're delivering and make it a very real application so that it's useful to people. I think that was such a critical role on the impact and the success we've had together.
Speaker 2:Thanks, justin. Thanks Thomas as well for having me here. I've been looking forward to it too. I really like how you described our journey together on the CAE. Yes, my new brand as a chief application officer for CAE has been really great. Nice to have a chat with you.
Speaker 1:Your unique talent is applying content, putting things into practice, putting stuff into real application. Next to you as a professional, we'd like the audience to have a chance to get to know you a little bit more on the personal level. Would you mind sharing with us where you grew up and how did you get into healthcare?
Speaker 2:Sure. Thanks for asking that question. I was born in New York to parents who were immigrants from Greece. I complete chance they actually lived from Greece at the same age. They didn't know each other then, and many people have asked me that, but they didn't. I stayed for about 10 years and then, after a very short stint, I would say, in Greece, I spent the rest of my elementary school, high school and university years in London, in the UK. That's where I grew up.
Speaker 2:How I grew up maybe is also an interesting one and probably links into the how did I get into healthcare? My family in the US? We were very I would say very connected on both sides of my parents' side. I am the oldest of three in our family, but the oldest of six, eight, nine, probably the oldest of nine plus cousins. Now I always had this role of being the I wouldn't say the one that people looked up to, but maybe the one that people turned to. I didn't have that person for myself.
Speaker 2:My mom has a sister who's closer to my age than to hers. She was studying pharmacy in New York and me as a little eight, nine-year-old she used to give me her big pharmacy books and tell me look, I have an exam. Can you sit and copy the molecules out and tell? Just, I basically did her university work for her, but I thought it was super cool. She was like a bigger sister to me Through the years. Now that I look back at it, that probably is the first thing that influenced me into anything related to healthcare. I became curious about what does this drug do? I remember I used to ask her things. There was one molecule that had to do with like was an antifungal and I was asking her why this and not that and why is this interesting? I became curious about medicine. That was the start of it, I guess.
Speaker 3:Katarina, do you consider yourself American, British or Greek?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I probably can count the numerous times growing up that people asked me that question. I think as a teenager I used to say I like the best of everything. I used to say that I like America for this and I like the UK for that and I like Greece for this. I think that probably shaped also my mindset. Now I'm in Switzerland, so I also like Switzerland for the great things that it gives me. If I ever go anywhere else, I'll probably do the same. I'm a child of the universe or the world, all of the above.
Speaker 3:So the only thing that I know about the Greek side is the closeness of the families. The feeling that I have from you is that you're very close with your family. I guess the question I have is how did your mom and dad shape you into the leader that you are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for me this goes down to values. My parents, as I said, they migrated from Greece to the US and they both had to find their way, not knowing even the language, figuring it out. My mom studied civil engineering in the 70s in New York and she was one of two females that were in engineering school in New York. So my mom taught me that whatever you do, you can do it. What put your mind to something and you can make it happen. So I always had that mindset. My dad taught me a lot about focus and discipline. He's one of those also people that if he puts his mind to something, he will get it done. So I think that discipline in doing what you feel is right and having the confidence that you can do it is something that's been instilled in me from both of them in a very, very different way, but it has been.
Speaker 3:Thomas, isn't it interesting how, just knowing that about Catarina and her parents, how much of that we see in her.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, I feel reminded of seeing you a few times in London and it feels like it's a living room for you. You're so assimilated into the culture there and you're so at home there. I think, catarina, you have this unique ability to be completely connected to different cultures. I've seen that a few times when I saw you in action.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, maybe Thomas, that's also. It's interesting how that links to what I've been doing at work. I think about that a lot of times because I left from London and moved to Greece. The only thing I knew about Greece at that moment in time was that that was the place, as I said before, the good stuff. That was the place they went on vacation. It was about sea, sun and I didn't know anything else much.
Speaker 2:I remember when I started looking for jobs because all of my friends from university started going back to Greece, I was like, okay, well, maybe I should too. I said I am not going back unless I find a good job in a multinational company. I opened on the internet, which made lots of noises at that time. I found a job at Rush and I applied to it. I thought, okay, well, good company, why not? I remember I went to the interview there and I got the job and I started like three months later in what was a very, very different environment for me from what I knew of only going to Greece on a summer vacation. It was different worlds, different words. It was like a totally different experience being at Rush now, having a job, and not only going to Greece for vacation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's interesting. Was that in Athens?
Speaker 2:That was in Athens, yeah.
Speaker 3:Great Nice place. I've been there a few times. You went from copying molecules from the textbook onto paper and helping your aunt do her studies to being fascinated enough by science, by biochemistry, molecular medicine to study that in the university. What is it about the university experience that made you stick with medicine and look at Rush rather than some other industry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I ended up going into biochemistry. Ultimately I wanted to do medicine. I think it's the story Probably have a lot of biochemists no offense to any biochemists. I did want to become a doctor. I applied to university in the UK the first time and I didn't get in the first time.
Speaker 2:I was so adamant that I said, okay, I'm going to try again. Then I thought, okay, well, let me go somewhere close enough to be close to the science, close to the human, because I was always fascinated by the human body and all the unknowns. There was a lot of curiosity and then unknowns. I think this is also why I never really like math. I didn't like the fact that I knew that 1 plus 1 equals 2. I found it quite boring. I like the curiosity of the unknown.
Speaker 2:In any case, I went to do biochemistry and then this master's degree of molecular medicine actually brought me into a hospital. I worked alongside doctors and did a lot of the analysis of the first things I did was around cerebral spinal fluid of newborns to see how asphyxia in their brains would impact any future neurodegenerative issues. I worked very closely in the hospital with. I couldn't see patients because I wasn't allowed to by based on profession, but I was close enough to feel like I was influencing or impacting that work. Then there was always a natural path to do a PhD, and I did start that. I got a fund for Great Allman Street Hospital, which is a children's hospital in London.
Speaker 2:I stayed for a year and it felt too far away. I was in a hospital, but it was too far away from the patients. Why am I doing this? That's when I started looking at pharma, because I started to think, okay, well, now what's the next step? I didn't really like the lab and that's where I started looking into different roles. I landed upon Rush, and getting into Rush in Athens was a huge step for me. I loved it and all of the experiences that it taught me. I got into clinical research there. I was going to hospitals and designing protocols and it was all very, very exciting and interesting. I found my energy again through moving to Rush and to Rush and Greece.
Speaker 1:So, before you know it, 17 years flew by you working within Roche If this would be described as a movie you at Roche in the last 17 years. Help us understand the title and what happened in the movie.
Speaker 2:Oh, the title of the movie. Well, let me describe the journey so far. It may sound like a little bit of a cliche, and the truth is that the reason why I've stayed at Roche is because of the people that I've worked with. There have been times where people friends of mine, acquaintances have said, ah, you know, if you go to there and there, you'll get paid more, or you'll be able to do this. Or, and every single time that they've told me this, I've said yeah, and I mean I think that for me that's kind of secondary to the value that I feel that I'm creating with people on an ongoing basis. That's a bigger you know, paycheck, if you will, to my values than the paycheck. I'm not saying that it's not important, but that's kind of how I operate.
Speaker 2:And I've also been very fortunate that over the years I've had amazing line managers every single one of them that have taught me so many things. I've taken a lot of things from them. I'm hoping that I gave things back, but one of the things that every single one of them has done is to believe in me more than I believed in myself and to allow me to grow and to push me into areas where I probably wouldn't have gone on my own. And I remember the first instance of that was when I was in Roche in Greece and I had I was in clinical trials then, as I said, I had just started, so I was like fresh out of university, I didn't even speak the language very well, and at that time the general manager was your group, who right now is in also Pharma International as well, and at some point my then line manager said you know, we don't have a quality management department and we really need one at Roche and the affiliate. And she said I'm going to go talk to the GM and I think that you should kind of head this up and make it happen.
Speaker 2:And you know, my reaction was me. I had I've been here for like I don't know 12, 18 months. I have no idea what we're talking about. She said, don't worry, we'll figure it out. And you know she, she went to him and then I got this role and we formed the new department and et cetera, et cetera. So I think this is where also the whole trust cycle comes into it. This is one of the examples of how people believing in me have kept me where I am for the past 17 years.
Speaker 3:Our experience with you, Katarina, is when you walk into the room, people are attracted to the energy that you have, to the joy that you bring. You have this, yeah, the knowledge of the science, but you have even a deeper knowledge of the people and the dynamics that are happening in the room, and you tend to elevate the room with just your presence and the joy that you carry with you. So where does that, the Katarina joy factor? Where does that come from?
Speaker 2:My joy factor. So I've my philosophy is and maybe it's very black and white there are two groups of people. There are groups of people that see you can call it problems, challenges, and see them and say, oh no, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing that and I'm going to look completely a different way and just slowly walk out of it. And then there are other types of people who see problems, challenges and say, hmm, I wonder how I'm going to turn that into an opportunity and I wonder how I'm going to turn that into a solution and I wonder how I'm going to get a lot of people to rally together to solve all of that in a productive and fun and open way. I fall into the second category of people and those are the types of things that give me joy, and thank you for the, for the insight into how I show up. That's also where I get my energy from, to kind of carry the energy with others and help others to to see that as well.
Speaker 3:So for me I don't know yet, katarina, if I understand, there's just something about the way you show up that people feel relaxed about. What is that? Because your home life is great? Is it because you feel your, your education is sufficient? I mean, where does that confidence in that that persona come from?
Speaker 2:I trust people and you know we, through the, the, live with intent content, the CAE. This whole concept of trust has been one that I know a lot of people struggle with, but for me is really a foundation of how I operate. By default, I walk into a room and I trust people there and I maybe my assumption is that that may come out into the energy that you're talking about makes total sense.
Speaker 3:I've seen that trust almost tangibly in the room that you're describing.
Speaker 2:It's not that, and this is the interesting part I feel that when I do that, it opens a vulnerability that usually brings people to their best self.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded whenever I work with you, katrina, of you being drama-free. I like it when I see you in team settings, when I saw you at the faculty. Even when things got more challenging or when the stress level rises, there is not all these complexities in the room it's about. It's about, hey, let's apply it, let's give our best. I trust you and even if things don't work out well, I find you very forgiving.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, thomas. I think in situations of downward spiral, either of individuals or of teams, I have to go a lot more effort into that space, because that's not a place where I naturally go. It has to be really, really, really, really crisis for me to get to a place like that. But the things that I've learned over the years and also through CAE finding the space between the not to react to it, really creating the space to listen and understand where people are coming from has allowed me to deal with that in this stress-free or drama-free way that you're describing.
Speaker 1:And the audience that can't be on video because this is an audio podcast missed Justin's smile and laughter as we were discussing that. So, hey, Justin, what was the smile all about?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's interesting because, katarina, you generate energy and joy and emotion. And some people, in order to bring that energy, use drama as the way to do it. But that for me, is the smile, because whenever I think about Greek, I think it's probably stupid, but I think of my big Greek act, wedding or whatever that title is that movie, and I just think it's hilarious movie and so you know, kind of that's what I imagine in my mind, but it's fun, it's joyful, it's as you said, katarina, it's solution-oriented, it's hey, we've got this. Just like you said about your parents, it's hey, whatever we put our mind to, we can do this. We don't need to go on a downward spiral journey, we can figure this out. And the art of being able to bring that amount of energy into the room without drama, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:And well, 17 years into Roche, katarina. Now you currently serve in the role of head of affiliate global interface, a role that has developed, morphed, unpacked over the past years. For you, help us understand what are you doing there for Roche, for Patience, and help us understand your motivations and your intent in that role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has morphed and evolved over the years. When I started in this role, the intention was for a team to be operating across two different functions within the company and really working across those traditional boundaries that we had at that time between quality and safety. And what I mean boundaries, it was just function right, like how we were set up or organized, and for me the mindset was well, let's find synergies here. I mean, does it really matter where you sit or who you are? And moving then from a role which was across those two functions in patient safety, I've always kept this mindset Because for me, patient safety is a foundation of not only pharma, healthcare, living.
Speaker 2:It's big, it's not a function. And I think more recently we had a discussion with a general manager and what he said to us was you know, patient safety is part of business, it's not an add on. And so if I don't have patient safety embedded into what we all do, then we're out of business. So that really stuck to me and I think, putting that context into my team, my team works to ensure that the entire patient safety community across the globe is meeting obligations towards patients as it relates to the processes that we need to be implementing and this is the foundation of what we need to do for patients and we need to make sure that we're doing it right. So that's what it is that we are doing, as I said, across the globe in various different healthcare systems and really making sure that our colleagues within the affiliates can do this in a simple and drama and stress free way.
Speaker 1:Thank you for outlining, and how is that changing currently? How do you see patient safety evolving over the next years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if I look at the importance of patient safety on an ecosystem level. We always talk about the product's efficacy and patient safety. I think what we're seeing more and more is that safety is potentially even more important in the future as efficacy of a product. I read an article yesterday or this morning from our own CEO that talks about the health technology assessments and new regulations within EU and how access, and not only efficacy, is going to be important for patients in the future. I think that that kind of mindset that safety is not something that we should shy away from talking about is changing. I'm going to use the ING because I don't think there were 100% where we would love to be, but we're getting there. That's more at an ecosystem level, if I relate it to how we focus on that around the globe, is how do we contribute to commercial value? How do we ensure that across the globe, we can facilitate and make that access even faster for patients, irrelevant of where they are all over the world?
Speaker 2:One of the things that I really appreciate from our new Pharma CEO, teresa Graham, is she recently wrote an article, which I saw unlinked in, where she speaks to a family and she really gets into the details of what it means to be a patient and a caregiver a family that had cancer in a young child in their family.
Speaker 2:One of the things that she actually talks about is to think more on the health technology assessment. She has this mindset of, yes, the efficacy of our products is important, but also the safety of our products is important. She says that trust must be bigger than fear. I love that sentence because traditionally, when somebody talks about patient safety, it instills fear. You open any package of any medication that you take and you read it and it instills fear in you. What I really love about what she says is that how do we switch that around? How do we build these trusted relationships so that, when it comes to friends, families, colleagues and their health, you have trust in a healthcare ecosystem, in a pharmaceutical company, in a healthcare professional, etc. That, for me, is where focus for the future is. I do see advances in making those changes. Granted, it's slower, or maybe slower than what I would like to see, but we're moving in that direction.
Speaker 3:Thomas, you and I have heard Katarina give a speech where she goes one step further and talks about from sick care to healthcare and this whole mindset around where the industry would love to go in some pockets of excellence is going in, moving more towards healthcare and not sick care. For me, that has stood out. You and I have talked about that many times. Maybe, katarina, you could share with our listeners a little bit more about this statement from sick care to healthcare for patients everywhere.
Speaker 2:Traditionally, healthcare has been very reactive. There's also research that states that in the past, and I think that I even have experiences before. The healthcare ecosystem is the healthcare professional and the patient separate entities. This varies across countries, but there are still countries across the world where the healthcare professionals are in a very patriarchal kind of state. It's like I will do whatever my healthcare professional states and I'm not going to ask questions and I don't really have a voice.
Speaker 2:I think that this is something that we're also seeing that changes, and for me, this is where the productivity comes from the patients, I won't say. They are having voices and they're having dialogues, which didn't happen 20 years ago. I think we'll see a lot more of those types of partnerships across boundaries, and not only institutions and regulators and patients, but also I would love to see that across pharmaceutical companies how we can work more together to solve a problem that, as I said at some point, is a universal. Healthcare is universal, it's a people thing, it's not a company thing. That is sick care to healthcare and how it can be proactive. The whole medical device and technology piece helps so much with this proactivity. Going back to my university times, I do remember that we would say, at some point you may be able to analyze somebody's genome while we're there. I think that's something that when my children or my age is probably going to be normal.
Speaker 1:Thanks for outlining your deeper cut from sick care to healthcare In your assignment as a faculty member in CAE and in your ongoing assignment as a leader and manager. Where was your key strike zone?
Speaker 2:Well, to a couple of things. We did mention it before as well. I had my application officer title and I think that's, for me, the one strike zone. I really like to see things and then immediately think, okay, how am I going to apply this? For me, that part came naturally and I do exercises on an ongoing basis. The other part that I really love is to operate with the strengths-based leadership that we did with Jake and with Gallup. For me, that probably is an area where, over the years and various roles that I've had, I have subconsciously been operating in this way. With the strengths finder and the content, I've become conscious that I'm operating in this way.
Speaker 2:One of my top five strengths is individualization. I think that also came through before to the question that Justin asked me about which country. It's the same concept. I see people for the strengths that they have and I've always operated like that. I love the idea of using the strengths to motivate and to form great teams. The more variety that you can have in a team, the better it is. If you can get people to operate in those strength zones, then everybody's happy and you basically have a high performance. What I would say is a strike zone with CAE. We've also seen that it's not just making people feel good, but in one of the statements that we had where it says I'm at my highest productivity before and after, we saw a 45% increase in that answer. That for me was almost evidence of saying, okay, I've learned something, I've applied it and I can see those results fast.
Speaker 3:Caterina, what are you most proud of when it comes to your contribution to the future of healthcare For the future? Yeah, if you just think of your contribution to where safety has come and, more importantly, where safety is going the future of safety.
Speaker 2:what are you most proud of and it doesn't have to be for you personally, but what your team has achieved- what I'm most proud of is the fact that, say, over the past two to five years, what was international pharmacovigilance or what became international patient safety? We as a collective community have evolved in ways that I could never even begin to imagine. I remember the first time where I heard some people from patient safety speak at a congress an internal one, and I wasn't in safety then and I said they don't know how amazing they are and I said I want to be part of that organization, and so I love the fact that I'm really proud of the fact that people see that they are amazing right now and I know by them seeing that that they're going to do amazing things and, guess what? They're going to grow and they're going to go exponential. So I'm confident that, with the community that we have around the world, we can get to that patient safety vision, not only for this company, but ecosystem-wise.
Speaker 1:Love it. Hey, what's your advice for young people just entering the industry? No, on major effectiveness, on leadership, on interpersonal skills. What would you give them on the way to watch out for?
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you asked me that and I've had various conversations with friends and colleagues who are not only in pharma, who are in academia, et cetera, on similar topics. One of the things that I would advise people coming into industry right now is to be human first. There is so much knowledge and information and technology and things flying our way to younger generations right now that sometimes people just forget to stop and be human and to really know what it means to collaborate, what it means to understand the other person that you're working with, and it's not all about taking all the boxes. So that's what I would advise them, because I'm sure that people will go and have a great education. They will learn new things.
Speaker 2:For me, it's maybe not focusing more on not focusing so much on the content. I'm not saying it's not important. I had, you know, I did two degrees of my own. I was super focused at school and university. Some would even call me like a nerd. That's what my kids say, to me at least. But what really helped is to slow down sometimes and look around. You know, justin, you taught us also, with the horizon right, look up and out from the gravel on the ground or the hamster wheel, or whatever it is that you want to call it, and look around and you may find things that are super interesting.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Katharina. And looking at 2024, that's just about a start. What's the most exciting thing for you in 2024?
Speaker 2:The most exciting thing in 2024 is new horizons. We're all going to have them. The world is at a place where I wouldn't say there's a lot of challenges, but there's a lot of opportunities out there. So my energy is going to be back on trust. I sent this message to my team this morning and I said look, if there's one thing that I want you to take into 2024, it's trust, and one way or another, we're going to need it. So that's something for me for this year, and applying that, whether that's at home, whether that's in your job, in any company that you are.
Speaker 3:Well, katharina, we know that a lot of people look to you for your advice, and we've seen firsthand that the advice you give is solid, so lucky for those people that you get to work with this year.
Speaker 1:What a delightful dialogue and podcast session with you today. Thanks for your time and thanks for sharing more of your life, more of you as a person. We look forward to our audience enjoying that.
Speaker 2:Thanks, thomas Thanks.
Speaker 3:Justin. Thank you, Katharina, for sharing this faculty experience with Thomas and I and letting us behind the curtain into your life and to get to know you as a human being more. You are absolutely delightful.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Say hi to Jenny as well. I'm hoping we will see you all soon.
Speaker 3:Me too, thomas. This morning, when I came down to record this podcast, my wife asked me who was on the podcast and I told her Katharina. She's like, are Katharina the one that I met, and Jenny's met many of our clients? But to see her eyes light up when I told her it was Katharina, that to me is a good indicator of how strong Katharina's presence is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people need to watch out for her. She's going to continue to go places. She has this casual, natural way to be productive, to be clear, but also to be reflective, and in that she really adds value. And I love the way she brings it together and sums it up in sick care to healthcare Shappell.