Germany
I am the co-founder of the Angels Initiative, born out of personal experience with the devastating consequences of acute stroke not being treated appropriately. What began as a mission to improve stroke care in my home country, South Africa, has grown into the largest stroke community in the world. Today, the Angels Initiative is embedded within Boehringer Ingelheim’s Sustainable Development framework, with a clear ambition: to ensure at least 43 million stroke patients receive evidence-based care in Angels hospitals by 2030. Built on more than a decade of experience across multiple roles in the pharmaceutical industry, the Initiative has helped save countless lives since 2015—delivering a three-year goal in just two years. The work has been recognised with multiple international awards, including: * World Stroke Organization Stroke Services Award * EFPIA Health Collaboration Award for Improving Stroke Care (2018) * PMEA Award for Excellence in Healthcare Professional Education and Support * Beyond R&D Innovation Award from the Boehringer Ingelheim Board of Directors I am also the founder of FAST Heroes, an education campaign designed to solve one of healthcare’s toughest challenges: changing behavior. Based on a clear insight into the target audience, FAST Heroes empowers children to recognise the signs of stroke and act fast—turning them into life-saving messengers within their families. FAST Heroes is now a multi–award-winning global campaign, including a Guinness World Record, but its greatest achievement is far more personal: real stories from around the world of children saving their grandparents’ lives. To date, more than 1,000,000 families in over 30 countries have been empowered. Our goal is bold and simple—to build a community of two million children with one shared mission: saving their grandparents. Throughout my career, I have been recognised for creativity, impact, and consistently exceeding ambitious targets. My leadership philosophy is rooted in servant leadership, continuous learning, and a belief that meaningful change happens fastest when performance, purpose, and a sense of fun come together.
Every 30 minutes a stroke patient; who could have been saved, dies or is left permanently disabled not because of the stroke, but because he/she was treated in the WRONG HOSPITAL. Together with my colleague Thomas Fischer, we developed the Angels Initiative to change this. Our strategy is simple, we need MORE and BETTER stroke ready hospitals. What started a couple of years ago as a crazy idea to improve stroke care in my home country South Africa; after a personal experience with the devastating effects of stroke when its not treated appropriately, has now expanded to an international project that is impacting millions of lives. At Angels hospitals, the number of patients receiving treatment for acute stroke had almost doubled. Stroke patients in these hospitals were being treated 37,7 percent faster, and there was a 32,8 percent improvement in guideline adherence in post-acute care. The Angels Initiative had formed partnerships with national and international stroke societies, governments, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation and in 2021 became the first industry intervention to receive the World Stroke Organisation (WSO) Stroke Service Award. The Angels Initiative is not a product strategy, a physician strategy, or a digital strategy. It is a disease strategy, founded on a set of change management principles, with the best possible outcomes for all stroke patients as its goal. These principles are implemented across five platforms that work together as a unit, and the entire model is powered by a brand that drives shared ambition and a sense of belonging, as well as a carefully considered internal culture that loops back to the founding principles.
As the Founder of FAST Heroes, I lead the vision and execution of an initiative dedicated to improving stroke awareness and response through education and innovation. The award-winning FAST Heroes program celebrates the unique bond between children and their Grandheroes, empowering kids to help protect their loved ones through fun and engaging activities. Together, we are addressing one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide—stroke. By raising awareness in an accessible and meaningful way, we equip families to recognize stroke symptoms early and act quickly. Since its launch we have empowered >1 million kids to educate their families about the signs and symptoms of stroke and how to act in this life threatening emergency. Our research shows significant improvements in knowledge that lasts but more importantly we have had several real life examples of kids saving their grandparents. What more can you ask for in terms of job satisfaction.
Here's the challenge. Develop a global strategy for a mature drug that is expected to grow in the next 5 years while loosing on average 10% of its field force to new launch products per year. Keeping in mind that this in a market that is mainly driven by share of voice. The answer is easy right, Multichannel Marketing! Well I would agree if this was an interesting new product that clients want to hear about in order to learn how to prescribe it, but this was a 15 year old brand. Who wants to receive an email or attend a webex to hear about 5 year old trials or 20 year old pharmacokinetic data. Our solution started with an insight I got from a book called Epic Content Marketing and the insight was this "Your customer doesnt care about you, your product or your company. He cares about himself". So step 1 of our strategy was to stop talking about our brand. To sell Nike's you don't talk about the shoes right. Step 2 was to show brand managers that they can increase share of voice by using a research based tool to plan resource allocation across multiple channels. In one case the tool helped a brand manager increase his multichannel contacts by the equivalent of 30 new reps for the same money he would have spent. Who wouldn't say yes to the equivalent contact of 30 more reps without spending an additional sent. Step 3 was to change our messaging in order to make it more Sticky. We relied heavily on the SUCCESS framework from the book Made To Stick. The result was simpler messaging focused on solutions rather than our products communicated much more efficiently across various channels. Solving this challenge taught me more about Marketing than anything I learned in a 4 year Marketing degree.
Responsibilities: Responsible for Cardiovascular division with ~50% of the company prescription sales budget. Responsible for launch of Pradaxa in Atrial Fibrillation indication. Responsible for launch of Twynsta. Line management over 3 product managers. Key account management Market access management Logistics management Patient support group interactions & advocacy Product responsibilities: Pradaxa - Atrial Fibrillation indication launch Twynsta - launch Telmisartan portfolio Pradaxa (DVT prevention) Lysis Doctor specialities: Cardiologists, Physicians, Neurologists, Orthopaedic surgeons, GP's. Accomplishments: As Group product manager responsible for amongst other products the Telmisartan portfolio, Telmisartan grew its market share by double the rate of the ARB class. As Group Product manager of the cardiovascular portfolio, achieved the portfolio sales budgets in both 2011 and 2012. I won R3,000,000 for the South African operating unit in the international “Dragons den” competition for a marketing strategy to launch Pradaxa in Atrial Fibrillation. I won R500,000 on behalf of PACE (a local patient support group) in an international competition called “One Mission One Million”, for a patient disease awareness campaign. I was identified and validated as a “Talent” with potential locally and internationally by the executive team of Boehringer Ingelheim. Awarded an international marketing prize called the “CAMP Value through Innovation award” in 2012 for the most innovative launch strategy of Twynsta world wide. Awarded the Boehringer Ingelheim South Africa “Value Through Innovation” award for creativity for fourth and fifth times.