With an extensive career—spanning more than two decades—in the field of biotechnology, Joydeep Ganguly has played a crucial role in advancing sustainability and showcasing exceptional leadership skills. Attending the 10th Annual American Biomanufacturing Summit this April as an Opening Keynote speaker, this will be the ninth time that Joydeep has contributed his extensive knowledge to our Summit, something that we are very honored to mention!

Having worked at some of the most notable biotech companies in the industry, including Bayer, Biogen, and now Gilead Sciences, Joydeep’s professional journey showcases noteworthy inspiration for anyone aspiring to take on a leadership role within the dynamic landscape of the biotechnology industry.

In our recent conversation with Joydeep, we dove into his innovative approach to spearheading Gilead’s sustainability practices, where he serves as their Senior Vice President of Corporate Operations and Chief Sustainability Officer. The insights he provided are truly invaluable for any organization looking to further integrate sustainability into their everyday practices, something that Joydeep prioritizes as one of his key agents in Gilead’s implementation processes.

As he spoke about his approach to achieving Gilead's sustainability goals, Joydeep shared a profound insight: "You want to try and make sustainability a habit." A simple, but very impactful statement that we can all implement in all areas of our lives, as we embark on a collective journey toward sustainability.

So, without further ado, join us in this enlightening interview featuring Joydeep Ganguly, a visionary leader shaping the future of biotechnology and sustainability.

Thank you, Joydeep, for meeting with us. Could you begin with a brief introduction about yourself and your responsibilities in your current position? 

My name is Joydeep Ganguly. I am the Senior Vice President of Corporate Operations at Gilead Sciences, where I also serve as the company’s Chief Sustainability Officer.

In my current role, I have several major functions reporting to me, including: Corporate Real Estate, Corporate Engineering and Facilities, Risk Management, and Corporate Security and Resilience. I also have the Head of Sustainability and Chief Procurement Officer reporting to me. I have a group that focuses on Operations Strategy and Portfolio Management, which leads the development of the company’s master plan. Finally, I have a Transformation and Program Management Office that oversees large-scale transformation efforts within Operations.

Part of my role is also looking after Gilead’s worldwide footprint, which is approximately 10 million square feet. We’re in 36 countries, and we’re a group that focuses on conceiving, designing, and eventually engineering the fundamental new infrastructure that supports our scientific ambitions. A key part of these ambitions is our ability to engineer them thoughtfully and sustainably, which is why we have groups like Risk Management Sustainability.

My organization straddles a wonderful intersection between operational excellence, corporate social responsibility, and employee experience, which creates so much value not only for Gilead, but the industry as a whole.

I often describe it as the best job anyone could have, because you’re able to work through the entire infrastructure plan, in a form and fashion that maximizes social responsibility imperatives.

Can you give us a brief overview of Gilead's approach to sustainability? 

The way I describe Gilead’s approach to environmental sustainability is that it’s a very impact-first ethos. We have pledges that are ambitious, including achieving net zero emissions on the carbon side by 2030. We also have water goals, waste goals, and product goals. Much like some of the leading sustainability thought leaders, we have also set some very ambitious targets.

We tend to focus very heavily on projects that not only have a disproportionate impact on the overall sustainability footprint, but we also balance that with trying to make it a team sport and incentivize good, eco-friendly behaviors into day-to-day business practices. Every aspect of our day-to-day work has sustainability embedded into it—from the way we come into our office, to how we use the cafeteria, to the way we try to be paperless in our lab operations.

Here are three macro-level signature Gilead initiatives that I’m super proud of:

1. Firstly, we have over-indexed very heavily on the use of digital transformation technologies to accelerate our ambitions. The way we build and run our infrastructure, and the way we operate day-to-day, is designed to focus on a lower GHG footprint, thanks to investments we’ve made in digital operations.  This is also how we can simultaneously achieve both our operational excellence and our sustainability imperatives.

2. Secondly, we have not made this an overly bureaucratic effort that is overly governed, as we have a very small team that leads and champions through executive leadership. Our approach has been to incentivize everyone at Gilead to be their sustainable best. You cannot leave a conference room or go to any part of our facilities without being reminded of your eco-friendly obligations, and I think this is how we have been able to set a culture of sustainability. In that way, we’ve complimented our digital transformation and engineering efforts, with commensurate investments in culture.

3. Thirdly—and I hope I do a good job of nuancing this—is instead of making sustainability an add-on project, we have also converted everything that we do, in terms of our specifications and standards, to have a sustainable analog. For example, when we construct a building; we could do it the classic way, which would be much faster. But now, our engineers cannot build a lab without it being lead-certified, because that’s built into our fundamental default specification.

Think of it in the sense of raising children. You teach them to be kind when they are young, and they will hopefully be kind for life – because they won’t know any other way of being. You can’t get away with telling them to do whatever they want until they’re 21 and then expect that magically they will become mature through programmatic investments late in life. Similarly, our approach is to embed sustainability into everything we do from the get-go, and in doing so, you make sustainability a habit.

That was a long answer to a relatively short question, but I hope I have done justice to the energy I have for digital transformations, the cultural tenants that govern how we make sustainability a team sport, and eventually how we try to build sustainability into everything we do in such a way that it doesn’t seem like an add-on.

Where do you see the biotechnology industry heading?

I think this is the most exciting time to be in the industry, and anyone could tell you that because there is so much opportunity.

I also believe that the best is yet to come, because there are things that we are working on today that hadn’t even been conceived 10 years ago. Platforms we are working on right now were non-existent, common job descriptions that we see today were non-existent 10 years ago. No one has a crystal ball that can tell you where the industry is heading, but we can take educated guesses in terms of what we must do today to get ready for what is to come.

My take is that we will need to have tremendous agility and flexibility. When you think of manufacturing and operations, two decades ago we had developed a false sense of excellence in the way we developed large, fixed facilities because in our minds fixed facilities tended to be ones that were most compliant. The call of today is to have agility. Facilities will get turned around quickly; today it’s biologics, tomorrow it's cell therapy; in the future it might be small point-of-application incubators. The ability for us to pivot hasn’t been our strong suit within operations in the biopharmaceutical industry. We have been known for compliance, quality, and standards, which are all table stakes today – the future will be defined in terms of our ability in operations to execute with speed and deploy innovation. 

While the technologies of tomorrow will be different, I feel the only certainty is that the future will require us to execute more rapidly, at a lower cost footprint, with greater regard to imperatives like sustainability,  Things that used to be done in five years will be asked of us to be done in a year, and things that used to be done in a year will be asked to be turned around in hours. This is where our ability to be careful in our master plan, thoughtful in our footprint development, and in general more agile will be super important.

“You want to try and make sustainability a habit.”

As a 9th time-returning speaker, we are (as always!) very excited to welcome you back. Can you share a little bit about what inspires you to return to the American Biomanufacturing Summit year after year?

I have always really enjoyed the American Biomanufacturing Summit, and I think what I enjoy the most is listening to the keynote speakers. I really appreciate the way Generis curates its programs to get some of the best speakers to share what is most topical and relevant to the current state of the industry. I always leave this conference more educated than I came in, and that’s the highest compliment I can pay. When I come here, I am always able to meet people who are shaping the industry today.

I also really enjoy meeting the next generation of leaders that I may have not been acquainted with yet, and every year provides me with more inspiration from these new leaders. If you're able to get even one more person to appreciate why being in this industry makes a difference, you know, it's a job well done.

I think conferences like the American Biomanufacturing Summit provide an opportunity for people to truly understand why many of us in the industry find so much meaning and purpose in what we do.

What is something you are excited about sharing during your session at the Summit?

Much of what I’ll be sharing right now are some real proof points about what we have been doing in the facility of the future and sustainability roadmap. What I’m hoping people get out of my talk is not just a case-study-based approach of what has worked for us. What I want is for people to see the emergent results we are gaining from our investments and digital transformation, and the huge impact it is having on our productivity, our ability to scale, and our sustainability ambitions. I think as people leave, hopefully, they’ll get an appreciation for how we can be both efficient and sustainable. I want people to see that we don’t need to have trade-offs that require us to make difficult decisions between the two of them.

What excites you most about Gilead’s operations in the future?

I, of course, am excited about everything regarding Gilead’s future. Our next master plan is calling for the boldest level of capital investments in the creation of new, agile infrastructure that will enable next-generation science. 

Finally, I think all the digital toolboxes have evolved to where they are ready for prime time. I am super excited about delivering a new scale of infrastructure that’s more technically advanced and more flexible but is built at a far more efficient cost. We have now finally been able to harness the power of technologies in that space, and I’m genuinely excited about that.

Hopefully in three to five years from now, when we are done with that master plan, I can come back and present why this plan was the most cost-effective, most productive, and most science-enabled as anything has ever been.

"I think conferences like the American Biomanufacturing Summit provide an opportunity for people to truly understand why many of us in the industry find so much meaning and purpose in what we do."

We want to thank Joydeep not only for his time with this amazing interview, but also for his commitment to returning to speak at our Summit year after year. We truly appreciate hearing his insights and the incredible work he is doing at Gilead.

If you want to hear more from Joydeep, be sure to attend the American Biomanufacturing Summit, where he will present his opening Keynote titled "Sustainability Transformation: A Practitioner Playbook."

So, are you ready to elevate your sustainability transformation?

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