What's your job about?
At CSL Behring, we are driven by our promise to deliver innovative, effective, and safe plasma-derived and recombinant therapies to improve the quality of life for patients who use our products. Within the Global Sourcing team, our role is to manage the very front end of the supply chain and undertake the strategic activities that ensure we have consistent supply available to manufacture the products critical to our patients’ lives.
This includes activities such as supplier management, new supplier identification, contract implementation, and other activities to ensure that CSL secure long-term material supply.
I began as a graduate in the Primary & Secondary Packaging team, who are responsible for all suppliers of materials such as cartons, vials, syringes, medical devices, etc.
Since then, I’ve transitioned to the Risk & Vulnerability team who are responsible for identifying & coordinating mitigation efforts designed to de-risk our supply chain, such as dual sourcing, quality improvement, capacity expansion, etc. across all CSL’s direct material supply. In this role, my team constantly analyse the material supply chain to identify the key risks that CSL are faced with, and drive initiatives with the category teams to mitigate these risks.
What's your background?
I grew up in QLD and moved down to VIC when I was 16, which at the time seemed like the end of the world, but after moving down I quickly realised how much I loved Melbourne. After high school I certainly had no idea what I wanted to do but got stuck into a Bachelor of Commerce at Monash, to try and see what sparked my interest.
I’d always wanted to study abroad, so I took up some German units throughout my degree to try and improve my language skills and completed my last semester in Munich, which was certainly the most rewarding thing I did at Uni. As it turns out, after Uni finished, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so I travelled for a bit before returning home.
Throughout my degree, I had worked part-time at CBA as a teller, which while it was great experience, had shown me that I didn’t want to work in a customer facing role, so I applied for a job in a supply chain company who imported goods into Australia. The experience in this role was invaluable in preparing me for the workforce and solidified my desire to be on the supply chain side of operations, rather than the commercial side. While in that role, I applied for the graduate program at CSL Behring as I noticed they had an opening for a Supply Chain graduate, and the rest is history.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
The Global Sourcing team at CSL have diverse and wide-ranging backgrounds, and people of all different skillsets could work in this area. The role requires interaction with all different areas of the business, from Manufacturing and Quality to Commercial and R&D, so it’s important to have good people skills and the ability to adapt to a changing environment. In terms of your technical background though, it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from as there will be a segment of the team where you can excel.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I’ve always enjoyed the nuances of cross-cultural communication and enjoyed getting to interact and work with people of different backgrounds. My global role allows me to work with new people from all around the business and the world every day on a wide range of different activities, keeping the job interesting. Getting to travel abroad with work is pretty exciting, too!
What are the limitations of your job?
While it’s exciting to work for a global company and interact with colleagues across the world, this unfortunately means you are expected to work early in the morning or late at night some days to allow for the time-zone differences. While this allows for a flexible workday so you aren’t just working a 9-5, it can also mean that some weeks you have a call at 10pm each night. Additionally, in the Biotechnology & Life Sciences space, things move slower than most other industries, meaning some projects can take years to complete and you need to be patient in your work.
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