82: Philippe Auvaro, President of OrphanPacific Inc. of CMIC Holdings

Philippe Auvaro is the former President of OrphanPacific Inc. of
CMIC Holdings. Being born in the 60s, Mr. Auvaro grew up in a
generation when Japan was experiencing the economic boom. He
developed an appreciation of Japanese culture including classic
movies, leading him to apply to an internship at a French
pharmaceutical company called Roussel. Mr. Auvaro was eventually
hired as a full-time staff at Roussel based in France, then
worked for Aventis, which had gone through a merger with Sanofi
in France. As Mr. Auvaro wanted to return to Japan, he then
joined Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) Japan where he eventually became
Executive Director. Most recently, Mr. Auvaro was the Managing
Director, Senior Executive Officer of CMIC Holdings and President
& Representative Director at OrphanPacific, Inc.


 


At GSK, Mr. Auvaro started as a Deputy Director in the Sales
Division. He calls these years the “most amazing 11 years” of his
life as he calls the organization “a school of empowerment.”
Prior to his leadership role at GSK, Mr. Auvaro has experience in
moving through the traditional Japanese management style ranks as
well as working in a multicultural environment in both Europe and
Japan. Mr. Auvaro explains his true “cross-cultural leadership
experience” came when he was promoted to lead Roussel (which at
that point had merged into Hoechst Marion Roussel) in Taiwan
where he created the local office from scratch


 


Mr. Aurvaro’s first major leadership role at GSK was leading a
mega product for an antiasthma inhaler. There, Mr. Auvaro says he
gained “field leadership” experience by working with people from
various cultural background at the ground level, being in contact
with every single part of the organization including
manufacturing, R&D, and digital technology. Mr. Auvaro helped
set up business units and create a shared service structure for
the commercial operations such as helping start market research
and call centres. Mr. Auvaro then got a secondment from GSK to
work for Aspen PharmaCare, headquartered in South Africa, and was
asked to help start Aspen in Japan.


 


After GSK, Mr. Auvaro was offered his most recent position at
CMIC Group as OrphanPacitic Company’s leader through a personal
connection. At CMIC, Mr. Auvaro had been working on providing
pharmaceutical solutions for rare disease challenges.


 


Mr. Auvaro describes his leadership as more “hardware than
software” as he leans more towards directive leadership than
being the recently popular “servant leader” type. Mr. Auvaro
loves to be involved in the technical side of any product or
service development and calls himself a fact-driven, field
person. Mr. Auvaro defines leadership as a transaction between
the leader and the employees. He says: “there is a fair amount of
trust and delegation that people put in you. So you need to
measure and scope and accept it, or redefine the scope.”