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In an industry driven by scientific breakthroughs and new drug discoveries, Anne-Cécile Potmans and her Fast Trak team are helping Cytiva customers who manufacture life-saving drugs make their processes better and faster. Below, Anne-Cécile reflects on what brought her to Danaher, explains some of the exciting projects Fast Trak is tackling, and shares what she does to encourage creativity on the team.
What do you do at Cytiva?
I’m the general manager for the Fast Trak organization within Cytiva, an operating company that’s part of Danaher’s Life Sciences platform. Cytiva supports customers who research and manufacture pharmaceuticals, and Fast Trak’s role in that work is threefold. We offer training and education to help our customers upgrade their bioprocessing skills and processes, we optimize their processes to address any challenges they’re facing with drug process development, and we handle what’s called “bridge manufacturing,” producing materials for use in clinical trials. The therapies our customers are creating will save lives, so our goal is to help get them to the market as quickly and safely as possible.
Tell us about your background and what brought you to this role.
I’m an engineer by training, and I started my career as a management consultant in France, working for companies in the biopharma and biotech space. After six years there, my husband and I decided to move to Sweden—my husband is half-Swedish—thinking we’d just try it out. But we’ve been here for 10 years now.
My work is definitely a reason we’ve stayed; so is Scandinavian culture, which I really respect for equally valuing men and women—both at home and at work. When we moved, I joined GE’s Life Sciences division, which is now Cytiva, and I’ve had many opportunities over the years to take on more responsibility and build new skills. Most recently, I was part of a four-year leadership accelerator at GE similar to Danaher’s General Management Development Program, which taught me a lot not just about leading a team, but about the companies we work with.
I took the Fast Trak GM role after my last rotation in that program, about a year ago now, and then continued in the role once we officially joined Danaher and became Cytiva.
I think we were all excited leading up to the acquisition, but it’s still been incredible to see everything this team has accomplished in just a few months—especially in the midst of a global pandemic. We’re simultaneously launching new products, supporting COVID-19 research, and completely rebranding the company. I don’t know of many companies that could produce such results under these circumstances, but we are fortunate to have some really amazing people at Cytiva.
Innovation is a big part of your work. What enables it?
Two things: collaboration and culture. Sharing ideas between teams is critical to what we do, because even getting to the same outcome will take much longer if we’re working in silos. Fast Trak is a global organization—we have locations in China, the US, EMEA, India, and Korea—so we hold regular technical meetings with associates from each site to make sure we’re learning from each other by sharing what’s working and the challenges we’re facing. We also collaborate across functions, so commercial, product management and R&D are all working together to improve our customers’ products and processes.
Fibro chromatography, a new technology Cytiva is developing, is a recent example. It combines high capacity with high flow rates, which substantially reduces purification times in research and product development, and provides a single-use solution for manufacturers. Our EMEA organization took the lead, driving the analytical work and coordinating efforts, while our team in Korea made new monoclonal antibodies for each center to test. And while R&D developed the new technology, Fast Trak is developing a service to help our customers evaluate and implement this powerful tool.
These advancements are possible thanks to the synergy between teams, as well as the constant support of Research and Development and Product Management.
They’re also due to the culture of innovation we’re creating. To me, that’s about making sure team members feel comfortable taking risks. Of course, there are situations where we want to minimize risk entirely—but if you want to do something new, accepting the possibility of failure is part of the job. It’s when we take risks that we make the most important discoveries.
What do you do to encourage a culture where people feel safe to take risks?
Part of it is the nature of our work. When customers come to us, it’s because they have a problem they haven’t been able to solve on their own—so we know we aren’t going to make much progress if we don’t use our expertise and get creative. And everyone on the team likes a challenge; that’s why we’re here in the first place.
I think it’s also about communication and making sure we celebrate risk-taking. Fast Trak has quarterly awards for team spirit and for execution, but also for innovation. We recognize lessons learned as valuable in and of themselves because they all contribute to the eventual solution.
The company culture supports that mindset, too. For example, there’s a Cytiva program called Innovation Accelerator where employees can pitch creative ideas around a specific theme—the first one was sustainability. And it’s not a theoretical exercise; you have to explain what you’d need in terms of funding and people as part of your pitch, and the ideas that are selected get support. There are six projects in progress so far, and I’m excited to see not only what they accomplish, but how their example encourages even more innovation. It’s a great way to ensure that good ideas get heard and that everyone knows they can make a difference.
What else are you excited about in the months and years ahead?
I’m excited about learning more tools and processes in the Danaher Business System; I think the continuous improvement approach will be helpful in building efficiency both internally and for our customers. DBS can be daunting, but Danaher’s team has taken a smart approach, introducing us to it gradually so we can build our muscles and focus on the areas that are the highest priority.
Our work on innovative process development never ends, so I’m also looking forward to seeing what advanced technologies such as AI might mean for our work. Of course, most exciting of all is seeing the impact we’re having every day. Fast Trak’s work is a piece of the much larger puzzle. When we improve customers’ processes, they can make and distribute therapeutics that much sooner, and run their clinical trials that much more effectively. And that really does save lives.
Interested in joining Anne-Cécile and the rest of the Cytiva team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.
After spending most of his career on the bench leading R&D projects, Gerardo Gutierrez initially wasn’t sure about switching to sales. But at Cytiva, he’s realized R&D and sales have more in common than he imagined—and it all comes back to helping patients. Gerardo reflects on joining the company during COVID-19, shares his experience in Danaher’s LatinX + Friends Associate Resource Group (ARG), and explains what he’s working on going forward.
First, what do you do at Cytiva?
I’m a sales specialist for our Biacore instruments, which means I support our customers—researchers at universities and biotech and pharmaceutical companies—who use our technology to develop new therapies. Biacore machines allow them to study the interactions between molecules in real time. If they want to test a new drug, for example, they can see exactly where, and for how long, antibodies stay bonded to a specific protein. A group of scientists that helped develop one of the COVID-19 vaccines last year used our instruments to verify parts of the virus and characterize its binding territories.
It’s my job to talk with customers about the experiments they want to do, then use my knowledge on Biacore and the science behind it to advise them on which option will give them the best results. Essentially, I get to help scientists solve problems so they can help their patients. That’s my passion, and I’m so thankful I get to be part of work that matters.
So I knew it was a great company and a great product. But when the opportunity to join came up, I was still a little worried at first; I’d spent 12 years on the bench, and I wasn’t sure if sales was the right move for me. Then I started having informational interviews with some of the managers, and I realized how similar the work was to what I’d done at UGA, when I was designing experiments. You talk with researchers to understand their needs and their short- and long-term plans, and then you partner with them to help them succeed.
What’s challenging about your job?
Right now, because of COVID-19, we can’t meet face-to-face with our customers. But I think that’s a challenge we’ve been able to turn into some great opportunities. For one thing, I cover a lot of territory, and I can reach more customers remotely than I can in person. And when I schedule calls, I try to get the whole team together—the account manager, the application scientists, the field engineer, and me. That way we can all meet the customer at the same time and answer any questions they have right away. We call it “showing Cytiva muscle”! I think it’s helped customers be confident in our team and the products we offer.
What’s the culture like on your team?
I first joined in August 2020, so I’ve been working from home so far—and I’d always wondered how that would work in terms of getting to know your colleagues. But we have so many tools we can use to communicate, I actually feel very close to my team. Once a week, we get on a call and go outside—you can walk, garden, whatever you want to do—and just chat about anything except work. One of my teammates was growing chili peppers, so I gave him a recipe. Little things like that really bring us together, even though we’re all remote.
Tell us about getting involved in Danaher’s LatinX + Friends Associate Resource Group.
I’d never had the chance to join a group like this before, so when I first heard about it I thought, “Well, let’s see what I can learn.” And it’s been great. We’ve had events like salsa lessons, which I never expected at work. But the ARG is also a place to share our struggles and successes—and our ideas. We help each other with our personal growth plans, which is something everyone at Danaher updates with their manager every six months. Being new to the team, it’s been so helpful seeing how others develop and present their plans.
The ARG has also given us an opportunity to share our culture, costumes, and language with other associates—and to know that’s appreciated here. A lot of companies have mission statements around inclusion, but at Danaher and Cytiva it’s not just words. You see it in action. English isn’t my first language and I have an accent, so I’ve sometimes felt shy. But I’ve realized that people on my team are truly interested. They want to hear about how to prepare a certain dish or pronounce a certain word. That gives me more confidence and makes me feel like I belong.
Additionally, with everything becoming increasingly global, it’s more important than ever for all of us to learn about different backgrounds. Inclusion is something we should be proud of and discuss on a daily basis. It helps everybody.
What’s next for you?
There are so many opportunities to grow. It’s hard to keep up! Not only within Cytiva, but throughout Danaher. One thing I appreciate about working here, though, is that it’s not just the classes you can take and the tools you can learn. It’s the guidance you get. It’s kind of the best of both worlds—I feel a little like an entrepreneur in my job, because I’m in charge of my own business and territory. And I’m in charge of how I want to develop my career, too. But I also have so many people who are there to help.
I’ve been interested in marketing, for example; I like the idea of reaching people who aren’t yet aware of our technology but could really be helped by it. So I shared that with my manager, and within a couple of days she suggested a class I could take and put me in touch with some people I could learn from. I feel like whatever I decide to do, I’ll have people supporting me and pointing me in the right direction.
Interested in joining Gerardo and the rest of the Danaher team? Check out open roles or join our talent community today.
