From the frying pan of finance to the fire of leading a pharma team through a pandemic, global exec at West Aileen Kinsella has had a varied career to date.
“It was a challenge that tested us all,” says Aileen Kinsella diplomatically when we ask her about working for a pharma company during the pandemic. Kinsella is VP and GM of global pharma at West, a multinational with sites in Waterford and Dublin.
The pandemic experience was “incredibly rewarding and very relevant” Kinsella says, following up, “But I’d be lying if I didn’t also say it was an immensely challenging time for most in our organisation.”
West is far from the only big pharma player in Ireland involved in manufacturing treatments responding to the pandemic, so Kinsella’s words are probably quite familiar to a lot of people from the likes of Pfizer, Medtronic, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and more.
West made a lot of the packaging that Covid-19 vaccines came in, so naturally its services were in huge demand. This surge in demand was on top of the company’s regular duties in maintaining the supply of injectable drugs it supports. Life was very, very busy for a while.
“However, it was also incredibly rewarding knowing that most of the vaccines would not have come to market as quickly as they did without West’s support,” says Kinsella. “Team members rose to the demands early on to support treatments and pivoted quickly to expand manufacturing to support the roll-out of the vaccine.”
An alternative path and a different perspective
While she has years under her belt in senior pharma exec roles, Kinsella didn’t always work in the sector. But she believes her circuitous route to where she is now helped rather than hindered her; for one thing, it gives her a lot of different perspectives.
Kinsella’s professional story began in finance; she graduated from Dublin City University (DCU) with a degree in business studies. She majored in finance and initially went into the banking world, working in both Ireland and Australia.
“After a few years, it became apparent to me that banking wasn’t the industry for me,” she says. “I transitioned into the software industry, working first for a Russian software company selling into the aerospace and defence sectors (until 9/11 happened) and then into a start-up Irish software company for a few years.”
These experiences were followed by a six-year stint in the wholesale electronics industry, where she led the European sales function for US company Sanmina distributing electronics through wholesale channels into the retail market.
Go West
She joined West in 2008 as EMEA business development manager and worked her way up through several different positions before taking on her current VP job in 2020. As she puts it herself: “[I] haven’t looked back since.”
“I have been very fortunate to work in multiple divisions and functional areas of the business, which has kept me challenged and broadened my perspective on the business and the external market we operate in.”
During her first eight years at West, she worked in the contract manufacturing business, overseeing European sales. “During that time, we changed the strategic direction of the business, resulting in some significant business wins” including increases in revenue, employees and operation scale.
“I also spent time as site director for our state-of-the-art facility in Waterford, which was a tremendous experience.” Kinsella was able to bring the sales and marketing experience she amassed from her previous roles to ramp up the business’ customer focus.
Having experiences in multiple industries – even within West – stood to Kinsella when the pandemic hit. Still, it would have been daunting to take on a big global exec role in pharma in 2020. How did she deal with that?
‘Fortunate’
Kinsella got through the pandemic by listening to her team. Now that she is here on the other side of it all, she says listening skills will always be something she rates highly in a colleague. And she also says it’s important to challenge yourself and your team.
“Almost everybody suffers to some degree with imposter syndrome, but as the saying goes, you should never go into a job that you are fully capable and comfortable doing, as there will be no challenge,” she says. “Just go for it and believe in yourself.”
Overall, Kinsella feels her varied experience has enabled her to keep growing as a professional. She describes herself as “fortunate” in benefitting from “experiences and learnings” from the diverse industries she has worked in.
“My time in banking was supportive of my background in finance which is still very relevant to the role I have today, having commercial responsibility for a global business unit.
“Selling into the software industry, particularly to the target audience we had, taught me the importance of solution selling and building a clear value proposition. My time in the software sector was also in companies in very embryonic stages of their lifecycle, so it was a source of motivation building something from the ground up.”
Ultimately, Kinsella is happy with where she is and how she got there. “All these roles and experiences have developed different skillsets and ambitions that have shaped the person I am today.”
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