Episode #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.”