Meet our employees

Meet Maruxa Diaz, a pharmacist by training who also holds an MBA from the IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, and a Master’s in Health Economics & Pharmacoeconomics. Today she is Global Patient Access Associate Director at Sobi.
Her story portrays an internal mobility experience, beginning in August 2018 when she joined Sobi.

Maruxa, can you please tell us how it all started?
- It all started when I moved from Spain to Sweden for personal reasons. I got a temporary position at Sobi in the business development team, and after a six month adventure, I became a permanent employee. During this time, I got to know the company and the culture and values really resonated with me. I also had the opportunity to work on interesting projects.

What did your previous job involve? 
- As a member of the Searching and Evaluation function in Sobi, I was responsible for seeking new business opportunities for the company, making initial evaluations, and coordinating the pre-Due Diligence processes. 

What is your new role?
- When I returned from my parental leave, I was given the opportunity to take up my dream position, in the global patient access team as the Global Patient Access Associate Director for one of our medicines. In addition, I could do it working from Spain. I look forward to further developing my professional career at Sobi.

What qualities are most important for a person who wants to work at Sobi?
- Being a very professional person, a team worker, and passionate about the role our company is playing for people with rare diseases. 

What does your job involve?
- I ensure our products are available, supplied on time, and in good condition to our customers.  

What is the best thing about a workday for you at Sobi?
- You learn something new every day. We are growing as a company, and with growth comes new challenges that need to be understood and resolved. I also enjoy interacting with colleagues all over the world.

What is the most challenging part of your role?
- Unexpected developments which have not been communicated in a timely fashion. This could be a new launch, a successful tender result, or a market with unforeseen growth.

What qualities are most important for a person who wants to work at Sobi?
- Interpersonal skills – the ability to work in close-knit teams, to be confident enough to ask questions, and to learn from one’s mistakes. To think big and outside the box!

Job description
As a Supply Planning Manager at Sobi, you have responsibility for balancing supply and demand for assigned products, assuring customer service while optimising site capacity and inventory. You are working in close collaboration with a product team to improve pre-defined KPIs such as Forecast Accuracy, Service Level, and Inventory. End-to-end (E2E) Supply Planning is accountable for the planning of externally manufactured products through the whole pharmaceutical supply chain, from a substance, via the manufacturing of the medicine, to the delivery of the medicine to customers.

Mariam Murad has recently started a new position as Senior Manager, R&D Planning & Analytics, as part of a one-year job rotation assignment.

We asked her to tell us more about her new role and working life at Sobi.

- It’s a 12-month job rotation from Finance to Research & Development, I will oversee planning and analytics to ensure that portfolio programmes and in-line product support are efficient and appropriately resourced, that there is a sufficient foundation for decisions on resource allocation and budget, that R&D performance is comparable to benchmarks, and that planning and reporting are consistent across programmes. The key areas of responsibility are to lead the Time Reporting Improvement Project and be the R&D subject-matter expert working with Global Project and Portfolio Strategy for the Smartsheet based CAPRI tool (Consolidated Asset Planning and Reporting Initiative), including clinical study updates and dashboard development and maintenance.

Can you describe a usual workday?
- I am not sure I can since I just started this role, I will be working with the Time Reporting Improvement Project and a lot of interactions with R&D members and other functions regarding our planning and analytics systems and software such as Smartsheets and IFS time reporting.

What do you usually work with at Sobi, and how long have you been with the company?
- I am the R&D business controller in Finance and have been with the company since September 2015. I have worked as a business controller since 2011 and in Finance since 2006. I wanted to do something new and more challenging.

- Don’t get me wrong! There is a lot of excitement and tough challenges all the time in controlling, but I needed a new area that I was not familiar with, so I could develop further outside my comfort zone (I like challenges). I have been the R&D business controller since 2015, so I know the -business, but I have not been working in detail and at the depth that I will do now with the Project & Portfolio Management team. I am very excited to try this, and hopefully, I will deliver at an excellent level so I can be proud of my achievement and make my manager and team proud. 

- Last year I took a year off for study leave; two courses I took at university were Project Management and Project Organisation. When this opportunity came, and I was offered this job rotation, I couldn’t say no. To be able to practice in real life some of the theories I learned during the courses will be exciting and developing.

What qualities are most important in this role?
- There are several qualities. You need to have strong analytical and financial skills, and be fluent in English (both written and verbal). Also, it’s important to be a collaborative team player with strong interpersonal and communication skills, able to engage with stakeholders with different backgrounds, flexible, structured, able to organise, prioritise and follow up, and be self-motivated and accountable with a proactive approach.

What does your job involve?
- I work with installing, upgrading, and maintaining IT systems, focusing on GxP environments.

What is the best thing about a workday for you at Sobi?
- In the IT team, we have a very open workplace climate, so you never have to be afraid to talk about the elephant in the room.

What is the most challenging part of your role?   
- I like new things, and testing them until they either stand on the edge of failing or fail to understand the functionality. This doesn’t always play well with GxP – you have to be precise and structured in how you do things. Documentation is key.

What qualities are most important for a person who wants to work at Sobi?
- From my point of view, from the way I see my work, it’s flexibility. I can’t see myself working 8-5 every day. That’s boring and would probably be a limitation regarding efficiency.

Job description
Sobi IT has a large team of people supporting around 1,600 users in 32 countries. Almost all IT support is conducted from our global head office in Stockholm, Sweden. We have several technicians on the service desk, who are responsible for first-line and second-line support, and infrastructure specialists with primary responsibility for IT operations and third-line support.