Post by Rob Scott

This week my paternity leave started - with huge thanks to the incredible support of Novartis and the kindness of an amazing leadership, team and community. It has also been one of the hardest and toughest parts of my career - to take my foot off the (EV powered) pedal for the first time and focus on family. As communities around the world celebrate the holidays with family and friends, it gives us all time to refocus and reenergize. To be thankful, to be grateful, and to think of how we can help others. I’m incredibly thankful to Novartis and grateful for the leadership and culture that has provided this amazing opportunity to spend this time with my family. Giving me the chance to help support my hero of a partner, Lucy, after their surgery, be there for our little leader, Sophie, to help them through the tough transition of change to being a big sister, and to help look after our new baby boy, Charlie, who eats non-stop (high octane energy is definitely genetic!). It’s been a full circle as family is what first brought me to Novartis. In 2013 after my father got sick and nearly died, it was the incredible people in the healthcare system that gave me a tremendous purpose to leave the buzz of the media and technology industries, and find a way to help patients like my father and all the HCPs, providers, payers, governments and healthcare systems that make helping patients possible. There was only one company I wanted to work at to make that happen, more than anywhere in the world - Novartis. It was a company that shared so many of the values that gave me that purpose and, at first, without a background in Pharma, it wasn’t easy to break into the industry. It took seven years to land a dream job and be lucky enough to help shape an incredible community of innovators who share the same purpose, passion and perseverance for helping patients. It’s a mission that is so close to many of our hearts - to co-create innovative solutions and services with the healthcare system to help get patients better and faster access to care. That community and our partners across the global healthcare ecosystem make this such an exciting journey, with impact being scaled to lay the foundations for generations to come…including Sophie and Charlie… Special thanks to all the support from Thorsten Alexander Rall Christian Hein Jacob LaPorte Robin Roberts and all the Global #NovartisBiome team, the extended #NovartisBiome community (both internal and across the extended external ecosystem) and so many others… Thank you 🙏