Bayer’s chief marketing & information officer on creativity, collaboration, and making it work

In this podcast, Heidrick & Struggles’ Silvia Eggenweiler speaks to Patricia Corsi, Bayer Consumer Health’s chief marketing and information technology officer. Corsi discusses the initiative she launched on creativity and consumer health, how she combines a marketing role with a digital and information technology role, how she helps to build a diverse organization, and the importance of personal branding. She also shares the value of working in different countries and across sectors, and talks about how she balances her career, motherhood, and health. 

Some key questions answered in this podcast include:

• (3:40) What are the core leadership skills needed nowadays to be a successful chief marketing officer, and how do you manage to combine this role with another big role like the chief information officer? 
• (6:57) You've managed to build a very diverse organization since you've been with Bayer. How did you do it? How did you manage to attract, retain, and develop the diverse talent in your organization? 
• (9:46) Could you tell me a little bit about the lessons that you've learned in your career about the importance of personal branding? 
• (11:50) You have been working in different sectors and different countries, throughout your career. Can you share a few of your learnings from different cultures, including company cultures, and your perspective on which leadership capabilities matter across regions and how to create inclusion in those different environments? 
• (14:20) You are a very successful executive and you juggle work, covering multiple roles internally and externally, being a mother, and so many other things. What's your secret to making it work?

Below is a full transcript of the episode, which has been edited for clarity.

Welcome to the Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of senior-level executive search and leadership consulting services. Diversity and inclusion, leading through tumultuous times, and building thriving teams and organizations are among the core issues we talk with leaders about every day, including in our podcasts. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Silvia Eggenweiler: Hello, I'm Silvia Eggenweiler, a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Frankfurt office, and a member of the global Healthcare & Life Sciences Practice. In today's podcast, I'm talking to Patricia Corsi, the chief marketing and information technology officer at Bayer Consumer Health. Patricia started her international career at Craft Foods and then moved to Unilever, where she worked for over 10 years. She joined Bayer in 2019. Currently, she also sits on the board of Tate & Lyle. Patricia, welcome, and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

Patricia Corsi: Hello, Silvia. Great to be here with you and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Silvia Eggenweiler: Patricia, in 2022, you launched the initiative with Bayer on creativity and consumer health. Could you tell us a little bit more about it?

Patricia Corsi: One of the things we uncovered in the past four years is that—and this was coming before Covid—health is an area that matters, and it's important for everyone on this planet. No matter your age, your gender, or your financial situation, if you do not have your health, it's very difficult for you to have a fulfilling life. With that said, the behaviors toward health are quite weak, mostly reactive, and mostly not as a priority. Everyone knows, or believes they know, what they should do, but very few people do it until they have a problem. And we noticed that the creativity behind this industry, the health and self-care industry, had something to do with, that because it had been very much driven by very technical discussions. So, it doesn't relate, it doesn't engage with the consumers, and we know one of the biggest forces in the world to change habits, especially for good, is marketing and communication.

So this was really something that we decided we wanted to change. That’s all how it started, and then last year, at the Cannes Lions Festival, launched this initiative and really called our competitors to join us, because this is for the better good of society at large. We even invited our competitors for panels to discuss how we are going to propel and progress the industry forward. And, so far, we have really seen a fantastic response. We are seeing much better creativity coming. Even for us, last year was the best year in terms of delivering communication that engages, that matters, and that makes a difference in consumers’ lives. And, after Covid, there was never a better time for this, because consumers are more interested in health, they really want to know about it, and shame on us if we don't seize this opportunity to do better.

Silvia Eggenweiler: From your perspective, what are the core leadership skills needed nowadays to be a successful chief marketing officer, and how do you manage to combine this role with another big role like the chief information officer?

Patricia Corsi: Collaboration is a critical skill. In the past, most companies and commercial leaders were looking to see how they could be self-sufficient end-to-end. If you are in foods, it's the farm-to-fork process. How do you self-sustain within the boundaries of your building or your office? These times are long gone. We can move much faster, much better, and deliver better value for shareholders, communities, and consumers if we collaborate. So collaboration is key.

The second thing, I would say, is openness. If you have the collaboration, if you have the initiative to invite people to collaborate, but then you are not open to listening, learning, and connecting, then that's a wasted opportunity. So openness also allows you, as the leader of the commercial area, the brands that are the most valuable assets in any branded business, to really understand the people that you're serving. So I find openness extremely important.

Then, I'm going to say agility. Especially with some of the situations we have been living in and that have been accelerated in the past year, the agility to pivot, to act, to experiment, to know what is not working, and to move fast, I think, is critical. So is the agility of learning as well. And courage, for me, is quite important, especially when you're thinking about your career. You need to have the courage to try something different, to make a move that is not within your lane—to move to a different country, to live in a place where you don't speak the language, or even to make a proposal where you see many people in the room that are not in favor of it.

And the last one is something that I think changes as you grow more senior and more mature. You start your career mostly doing leading by doing. So, you lead the actions that you have accountability for. But you can be the most effective and powerful in terms of bringing value and delivering results to the business when you combine leading by doing with leading by influence. Your impact can be multiplied exponentially. And these are very different skills from leading by doing. You need to understand how to compromise, or when or if to compromise, to have this openness, to have this agility. All these things come to play in leading by influencing.

Silvia Eggenweiler: You've managed to build a very diverse organization since you've been with Bayer. How did you do it? How did you manage to attract, retain, and develop the diverse talent in your organization?

Patricia Corsi: This is an area, Silvia, that I take a lot of pride in. I'm four years at Bayer now, and since the end of the first year, we've been the most diverse function in our division, consumer health. And the best way to do it—of course, each leader will have their way, their format to do it—but what I saw that helps and worked for us is to really create and develop this environment of growth, learning, and transparency. This doesn't mean it's going to be the most comfortable environment, because, with openness, courage, and with transparency, there will be moments that will be uncomfortable because we are going to push people outside of their comfort zone. And there is a lot of learning to be done around that.

So, I would say that we have two main things that are really creating this environment in which people are excited about growing and learning and are also prepared to have a transparent environment with feedback and to possibly be uncomfortable. But inclusion is the most important part because it's easier to bring in diverse talent than to keep, to retain diverse talent—that’s the inclusion part. Creating an environment where everyone feels like their voice counts and in which there is a performance metric that is fair and valid for everyone is extremely important.

And the last thing that I would say is, at least in marketing and technology, if you do not like to be uncomfortable, I wouldn't recommend these functions to anyone, because with the pace of the change in marketing and in IT, if the change is something that makes you uncomfortable and it doesn't get you to be at your best, it's going to be very difficult for you to be fulfilled and happy. So these would be the things that we look at when we are attracting talent. If there are people who can be super skilled and are super capable but are averse to change, that would be someone that we would not bring in, for example, because that would be diversity for the sake of diversity that is not going to stay. So we would avoid that person.

Silvia Eggenweiler: Could you tell me a little bit about the lessons that you've learned in your career about the importance of personal branding? 

Patricia Corsi: I love one thing that I've heard about it, that personal branding is what people say about you when you're not in the room, or it’s having your name mentioned by others spontaneously when someone is asked about a strong leader, a great talent, best in class. Those are great metrics to see how your personal brand is doing. And I would say that the people I think do it best are the people that are not forcing it. If you feel like you're forcing it, then probably there is something that is not that great.

In my case, I talk about aspects and topics that I feel extremely passionate about. I think it's important that you walk the talk on your technical expertise. So if you want to be attracting the best talent to your partners, to your agency partners as well as within your business, you need to make sure that you deliver what's best in class for that function. So it’s about more than talking, going out there, and talking about what a great marketer I am. I should be talking about the work we do, and I should talk about that work without shame. Just saying, “I do hard work and the work will speak for itself,” is a missed opportunity, because sometimes we have this platform but don’t use it. It's a missed opportunity to attract great talent, even great agencies, and partners to work with you, and to really share your vision.

Silvia Eggenweiler: You have been working in different sectors and different countries, throughout your career. Can you share a few of your learnings from different cultures, including company cultures, and your perspective on which leadership capabilities matter across regions and how to create inclusion in those different environments? 

Patricia Corsi: I think context and perspective are extremely relevant on this point, Silvia. So, as an example, once in my career, I moved from a company highly developed in diversity and inclusion to one that was in the starting phases of that development. And it was a shock. Why it was a shock? Because I was coming from the perspective that what I had was the new norm, and of course, my expectations were related and linked to that. If I looked at this through different eyes, meaning that I had learned all of it and this company is at the starting point of this journey, I would have been able to help a lot more because I lived that journey somewhere else. And it would have been probably a much better experience than it was because it was really a mismatch of expectations. 

Now, the mismatch of expectations shouldn't allow for not expecting some basic things to be true, such as an environment where diversity and inclusion are important and that has fairness and equity for people from different backgrounds. But it all starts with how you are building your expectations, your plan toward that. For me, this was the biggest lesson in terms of different companies, different cultures, and this is linked to the capabilities and the leaderships that are important in this area. And I come back to the openness that I mentioned at the beginning—the openness to sit, listen, and learn, the agility to pivot, the agility to go from a place where it was highly developed to one with little development, very fast, and see the value added that I could bring.

Silvia Eggenweiler: Yeah. You are a very successful executive and you juggle work, covering multiple roles internally and externally, being a mother, and so many other things. What's your secret to making it work? 

Patricia Corsi: Look, I think one of the best decisions I made in my life was my husband. I have a husband that is extremely supportive of my career, and I cannot imagine how it would have been without his support, without him cheering for me and being there for me along the way. And it's the same thing with my son. So, I think this having an environment at home where they don't play to the Latin guilt is amazing. It’s fantastic.

I have currently three roles. I have two executive roles as the head of commercial and the head of IT for Bayer Consumer Health, and I also have a non-executive role in Tate & Lyle in the UK. And I have to say that the number one learning is own your agenda—you have to be ruthless about your agenda. If I look between the people that I would like to talk to and connect with versus the ones that I have, I have to prioritize the list. I've learned to make time for myself, because the best I am physically and mentally, the best I deliver for the people that are counting on me. So I save time, I wake up a bit earlier.

I'm not going to say I'm lucky because I don't need to sleep. I need to sleep. I find this very unhelpful when some people say, “Oh, I'm lucky, I just need to sleep four hours.” Sleep is one of the most important things we need to do in life and it should not be a shame to need to sleep. I think if we had more people taking care of their sleep and sleeping better, we would have less mental health issues, avoidable mental health issues. So I do my best to sleep well. I did some really great work with an Olympic coach to improve my sleep. I also exercise and I am a full-time mom, so I've never missed one of my son's events. And this is how you juggle a little bit. And people can say, “Oh no, but don’t you have anyone that can take care of this?” I do, but I don't want anyone to be taking care of my son. I just have one son and I don't want to delegate. This is one of the things that, for sure, it's not delegated, is the responsibility, the responsibility shared between my husband and I, which is what we be both believe in, but it's never delegated. And there are things that I delegate extremely well.

So, I think having this sense of priority, that your time is valuable. And I would say mostly this to women because I was very ashamed for many years to say that I needed time for myself. I'm not ashamed anymore. And I think we must, if you feel like this is your truth, if this works for you, talk about it. Putting the oxygen mask on yourself first, like they say on airplanes, helps everyone around you. And I'm committed to that, at home, with my friends, and in the office, to be the best that I can be, to add the biggest value. I'm very clear that some moments I need time to think, I need time to be healthy, and that's it. So, sometimes, I do walking meetings with my team, Silvia, because I don't want to be sitting down for the whole day. And they look at me and they find it odd, but everyone goes on the journey because they know I'm at my best. If I do the meeting sitting, I'm not going to be at my best.

So these are the things that I'm doing at the moment that I'm finding it very helpful. And also, not to create this image of a superwoman that can do it all. You need people around you. I have a wonderful set of best friends that are there for me whenever I need them, I have a wonderful husband, I have a wonderful son. I have a team around me that I know is there for me when I need it, and this makes the burden lighter. And as a response, they get the best version of me.

Silvia Eggenweiler: Thank you very much for your time and for your really inspirational insights.

Patricia Corsi: Thank you, Silvia. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for having me. I hope the listeners enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

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About the interviewer

Silvia Eggenweiler (seggenweiler@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Frankfurt office and a member of the global Healthcare & Life Sciences Practice.