Women in Pharma Procurement: Interview with Gabriele Naujalyte

Gabriele Naujalyte is Head of Indirect Procurement at Abcam. In this interview Gabriele discusses her career so far, and how the strengths women bring to the role can lead to collaborative, high-performing organisations.

Q. Can you share a brief overview of your journey in procurement and how you reached your current position? What motivated you to pursue a career in this field?

My procurement career started as a university internship in procurement, at which point I didn’t know much at all about procurement as a discipline and what it involved. This brief taster persuaded me to follow this path into my professional career, where I started in indirect procurement in retail.

About four years ago I decided I wanted a change. I switched industries and joined Abcam, a global life science company. I now lead an Indirect procurement team at Abcam, and love not only the variety of work that indirect procurement offers but also being part of an industry that has such an impact on human lives. It aligns with my personal values, and continues to motivate me through a corporate career. 

Whilst procurement in general is a fairly new corporate field, I believe it is highly under-marketed, especially when it comes to indirect purchasing. I fell into this career by a complete accident, however it absolutely matched my skillset, and I think it should be promoted more across business and education centres.

Q. Women are often under-represented in leadership roles within procurement. What can organizations do to address and overcome these challenges?

Procurement developed as a sub-discipline within supply chain/manufacturing and finance organisations which historically have been dominated by male leaders. There still seems to be some legacy of this remaining to this day.

Also, certain key skills in procurement and leadership are often falsely associated with male characteristics – such as assertiveness or an aggressive approach to negotiation. However, I see this myth continually broken by a growing number of female leaders in the field.

Companies play a vital role in addressing the existing gap, and one of the key areas to focus on is an unbiased recruitment and selection process. Whilst within businesses, it is key to promote female solidarity and mentorship, as well as education of male colleagues, through training and organisations such as women’s networks.

Q. In your experience, what strengths and qualities do women bring to the procurement profession?

Research tells us that women are generally more collaborative leaders, which is a key skill not only to be able to manage and inspire effective procurement teams, but also essential in supplier relationship and performance management. Successful partnerships within supply chains contribute directly to an increased competitive advantage for organisations, and collaboration is at the heart of this process.

Having said that, I think we need to be careful stereotyping men and women as leaders and professionals – we are all unique and bring our own strengths and perspectives. It’s how we play to those strengths and how we learn and grow that matters.

The most important thing is to have a diverse range of ideas and viewpoints present and the only way to achieve this is by building diversity across all levels. That includes gender diversity, ethnic diversity, neurodiversity and a range of socio-economic backgrounds.

Q. How can organisations ensure equal opportunities for women in procurement, particularly in terms of career progression?

Organisations should use a multipronged approach to overcoming gender biases, including a transparent and inclusive recruitment and selection process, regular gender pay gap reporting (and targeted plans to close this gap), targeted D&I metrics for teams and leadership roles, mentorship programmes and unconscious bias training.

Women’s networks within organisations but also at an industry level are another way to support greater inclusion and better awareness of the issues women face in the workplace.

Organisations should also make sure to assess procurement professionals on both hard and soft skills, the latter of which are often overlooked in many roles – not just procurement.

Q. How can organizations foster diverse supplier networks and ensure fair representation for women-owned businesses?

As a starting point, organisations need to increase visibility of diversity (or lack of it) within their supply chains. There are more formal tools in the industry to help measure D&I, and various sustainability reporting platforms that include D&I in their scoring matrices. However all of those require buy-in from both the organisation and the supplier base, investment and resources to provide and review the data.

Smaller steps can be taken in the meantime to begin the journey of increasing supplier diversity and collaboration. One of the more straightforward options could be adding D&I as a measure in the business’ SRM activity and tender/contract documentation. Organisations can also promote diverse and women-owned vendors via supplier conferences, portals and websites to send a positive message to the industry.

Q. What more could the PharmaSource community do to champion and support women in procurement?

It would be great to see PharmaSource provide both face-to-face and online networking opportunities for all procurement leaders, allowing best practices and experiences to be shared.

Successful female careers could be promoted via the network, potentially leading to an industry-specific mentorship programme or a women’s network!

Members can connect with Gabriela here on PharmaSource and make sure you take part in our first Women in Pharma Procurement Meetup, 16th November 2023.

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