Who is Florian?

Starting on an empty pharmaceutical site

My first assignment was Reference Standard Owner at one of the largest pharmaceutical sites in Belgium. Two really good conversations, we clicked straight away, and an immediate match with the manager there.

What that role involves sounds more abstract than it is. I managed a number of medicines that were already in the portfolio. For each of them I looked after the reference standards: the benchmark that labs measure their own analyses against. That is what the finished product should look like in analytical results, and it is what they compare a new production batch or a sample against to confirm that it is sound.

I owned that, in every respect. Every delivery of a reference standard has to be certified within a set timeframe and according to a fixed procedure. In a regulated environment that also means following up deviations, investigating them and explaining them, and that was part of our responsibility. Compliance, quality and purely analytical work all came together there. Reference standards are a well defined domain in themselves, but they touch a great many departments, and even other companies. A lot coming at you, from a lot of directions. For someone straight out of university, it was the best possible first job.

I started at the height of covid, so a site with thousands of people was practically empty. I was trained in a building that was standing empty at the time, which is a strange way to start somewhere. I was shown the ropes by a colleague who was already on assignment there with us. There was a real cluster of us on site. I also started on the same day as someone else from Pauwels, with a very different character, and that is exactly what made us complementary. I thought that was a smart bit of pairing. He came straight out of a pharmaceutical programme and already knew that world, I came from biomedical sciences and had some ground to make up on the subject matter. But nothing is impossible if you put the work in.

Three months in, and already running my own investigation

The first moment I felt I was genuinely contributing was a small one: finishing my first certificate, in my first month. For the first time I had finished something that actually gets used out there, something that allowed an analysis to be closed off so that a new product could be released to the market.

The second moment came after three months. A deviation turned up in one of my projects and it had to be investigated. In a regulated environment something like that never simply goes away: you have to be able to reconstruct everything and rule out every scenario, including the ones that turn out to be unlikely. My manager trusted me straight away to run that investigation from beginning to end. In dialogue with her, of course, but the process was mine. Talking to the people involved, rebuilding the timeline and writing up the investigation according to the applicable procedures. A lot of people from quality look over your shoulder on something like that, so the pressure is high. Certainly for someone who has been there three months. But that is exactly what works for me: I perform better under pressure.

It ended well. But you did not know that in advance, and that is precisely why an investigation like that has to be thorough. It was the first moment where I thought: this I am proud of. You do not get an investigation like that handed to you when you have only just started.

A second site, a different kind of work

After a good two years I noticed I was learning more slowly than at the start. I was still learning, but the curve was flattening, and I could feel it. I am convinced that early in your career you have to learn broadly first. That way you see a lot of different things and you find out what you do and do not want. It makes you better at choosing later. So rather than wait for someone else to notice it for me, I said it myself.

I raised it, and Pauwels got to work on it immediately. Very much geared to the person: what exactly are you looking for, what are you not looking for? I was honest about it too, because at that point I had not been there all that long. Someone from HR helped me with it, and I still work with several of those people today. We have grown alongside each other, each in our own direction. So I changed jobs without changing employer, and that is exactly what made the step small enough that I dared to take it.

That is how I ended up at a second large pharmaceutical site, in clinical manufacturing. Production itself, for clinical campaigns, under real time pressure and with hard deadlines. In the timeline of a medicine it was a neat next step: during my studies I worked preclinically, with cell cultures and lab models, then on the development of the product itself with the reference standards, and now at the point where the product exists and actually has to be made.

I also wanted to do something hands on for once, and in manufacturing you are on the factory floor with everyone else. I checked whether the steps we had written out as a team were actually being carried out that way, and whether problems came up that needed solving. On my first assignment that had been more in the background. And it was genuine project management: a great many steps and a great many departments, R&D, production and supply chain, all of it to be brought to a deadline, knowing a bit of everything and then pulling it together.

Back again, with a wider view

In November 2024 I returned to my first site, in a broader role. Why go back rather than do something completely new? Because I had genuinely enjoyed myself there. My first role was deliberately deep and narrow, and that is exactly what you need when you are starting out. But the analytical development of a medicine is enormously broad and runs across many departments. After a while I wanted to see the whole of it, and this position was the chance to get that higher vantage point. I saw that as a next step myself, and Pauwels makes sure those next steps are actually offered to you, building on what you did before.

Today I look after the external side of analytical development: the collaboration with a series of external contract labs and manufacturing partners that carry out analytical testing for us. That is the part of the job I personally enjoy most. I am the point of contact between our departments and those external partners. Every company works differently, so you have to read each one on its own terms. We have our interests and expectations, the external partners have theirs, and it is up to us to align them so that the collaboration can run smoothly. From lab technique and instrumentation to software and quality: a great many different subjects come together. I love that variety.

The hardest part? Many roles come with a manual. This one does not, at all. You are responsible for the relationship with all those partners, on every front at once, and that cannot be pinned down in black and white. And that was exactly my reason for taking it. A role where everything is already written down stops teaching you much after a while. A role where nobody can tell you exactly how it should go forces you to think for yourself, ask questions and try things out. That is uncomfortable at first. It is also the fastest I have ever learned.

What being an ambassador means here

An ambassador at Pauwels Consulting is a consultant who acts as the point of contact for their Pauwels Consulting colleagues at the client site. I welcome new people, I stay close to what is going on and I try to close the distance between the client and our own office. I have been doing that since June 2025, alongside my own job.

Before the role came my way, I was already doing something very close to it: getting someone from my network interested in Pauwels, simply because I like working here. When the role opened up, I talked it over with Debbie, my talent manager. What I am trying to do is close some of the distance between the people on site, the client and our own office, so that all of it feels more familiar. There are already bridges between the back office and the consultants, because the talent managers, the key account managers and HR are all involved in that. I am simply adding one more step, from the shop floor.

I started with the new people. When someone new starts, we have lunch together: about the new position, about the company, about Pauwels. After that they know who to turn to, and I know what is going on at the site. It works both ways. By now that is ten people or more, and I also organise lunches with small groups at once, because then you see the dynamic of a group straight away. The next step is deliberately the colleagues who have been there longer. With new people there is a natural moment to make contact, with someone who has been on site for years there is much less of one. So I am about to start lunches specifically for that group. That will be a different conversation: deeper, more about culture and about experiences on both sides. That is what I am really after: that someone simply drops me a message saying "hey, I have got this, what do you think?"

The collaboration with the back office has changed because of it too. I now have a meeting every three weeks, and a relationship like that builds itself. With my talent manager it is mostly about the connection with the team and about what people need. With our key account manager it is more about how the organisation fits together, so that we understand better where we genuinely move our client forward. With one of them I close the gap between the back office and the consultants, with the other the gap between the client and the back office.

Keeping on learning, and who helps with that

I am constantly thinking about how I can learn more, and about what Pauwels can offer me in that. Because a lot is possible here, on a great many different levels and in a great many ways. It just does not come to you by itself.

Debbie has been my talent manager for almost five years, from the very beginning. I once put together an entire plan for her: where I wanted to grow, which direction exactly, what I needed for it and which of those things exist at Pauwels. A conversation like that is not about a course that happens to be available, but about where I want to be in three years and which step brings me closer to it. I explain why, and she takes it into the business and argues for it there. That she takes that time for one consultant, I think that deserves real credit.

For me that is the difference between an employer who says you are allowed to grow and an employer where it actually happens. I have never felt that I had to convince anyone here that ambition was a good idea. I only had to be able to explain where I wanted to go. And there were also periods when I did not know for a while. That is normal, I have had that several times over those years. Not every month is a leap forward. At a moment like that what I mainly need is clarity, and then I can simply knock on a door and sit down with someone from the back office until it is clear again. A lot is possible here. You just have to ask.

"I am always thinking about how I can learn more, and about what Pauwels can offer me in that."

Why this works

If someone has just graduated and is hesitating about consultancy, I understand that. I came out of the academic world and I was curious about industry, and consultancy helped me enormously to satisfy that curiosity. And if you feel you are stuck somewhere, do not be afraid to say that you want to switch. You can only grow from it, because it is your own profile that you are training for the future. For me that is the big advantage: the freedom to switch, to grow, and to say what you want to grow in, and the guidance that comes with it.

The strange thing is that I am not a switcher at all myself.

I would be far more loyal to a single project. I also think it matters to carry a company's DNA with you, and you do not have a grip on that DNA after a year. That is exactly why this suits me. I have been with the same employer for almost five years, I have come to know Pauwels, and at the same time I have done three completely different roles at two sites without ever having to apply again or give anything up. Moving cost me nothing here.

What I would pass on to a younger version of myself is this. Enjoy the stress. Stress means you are walking into a moment where you are not sure you can do it, and that is exactly where you learn something. Everything I have learned here, I learned just outside the zone where I felt comfortable. I used to be more afraid of failing. But I always tried anyway, and now I am much calmer about things I do not know yet. I have made mistakes too. You learn from those, and what matters most is how you deal with a mistake. That is what people judge you on.

And be curious. Dare to ask questions, including the ones you yourself think are stupid. Of my twenty questions there are always two I think that about, and probably the people across from me do too. I ask them anyway, because without those two I do not ask the other eighteen either. If you do not ask, you will not get it.

Florian is one of the ambassadors of Pauwels Consulting at our clients. Ambassadors bring the spirit of Pauwels Consulting to its clients explains what that role involves more generally. And Talent Manager Debbie Croonen, who helped shape the role in the pharma cluster of the Kempen, describes what support from Pauwels Consulting actually looks like.