When she turned 43 years old, Priscille Pin­gault was appoint­ed Head of the Brus­sels sec­tor for Akte­hom, a con­sul­tan­cy agency for the bio-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. She joined this com­pa­ny in 2005 and now her new posi­tion con­firms her con­vic­tion that the world of sci­ence and inno­va­tion is every bit as much a human adven­ture as a field for achiev­ing tech­no­log­i­cal feats. 

Occa­sion­al­ly, human rela­tion­ships prove more impor­tant than tech­ni­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. This dis­tinc­tion became very clear in Pri­cil­la Pin­gault’s mind when she was appoint­ed in 2014 to head the new Brus­sels sub­sidiary of the con­sul­tan­cy agency Akte­hom. The con­trast was that in 1995, after com­plet­ing her engi­neer­ing diplo­ma at UTC (elec­tive major: biotech­nolo­gies), she observed dur­ing a place­ment in Colum­bia that the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal aspects of the mis­sion were not the most impor­tant. “Indeed, the lab. work seemed rather monot­o­nous”, says Priscil­la in ret­ro­spect. “Life and the con­text of an inter­na­tion­al research lab in a coun­try like Colum­bia con­sti­tute a source of some amaz­ing discoveries.” 

Very rapid­ly, it became obvi­ous to her that the world of inno­va­tion extend­ed far beyond a pure­ly sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal view­point and called for inte­gra­tion of inescapable human, cul­tur­al and social dimen­sions. After a few years at Pharma­plan as a process engi­neer, Priscil­la moved to a posi­tion of con­sul­tant with Assys­tem Agency. 

Diversity of actors and considerations

Con­stan­cy is a job where you pro­fes­sion­al­ly meet lots of peo­ple, dis­cov­er dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal con­texts and where you are con­stant­ly con­front­ed with new prob­lems and issues”, explains Priscil­la Pin­gault. Not only are human rela­tion­ships pri­mor­dial but the job itself, as it is seen at Akte­hom, requires that you be inter­est­ed in the vari­able aspects of any ques­tion and try to come up with orig­i­nal answers that inte­grate a sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal and human vision. 

“An indus­tri­al­ist is often a pinned down to the way he or she usu­al­ly tack­les ques­tions and the poten­tial actions envis­aged often reflect the cor­po­rate cul­ture”, adds Priscille Pin­gault.” The role of the con­sul­tant is to offer an exter­nal assess­ment that takes into con­sid­er­a­tion a wide-rang­ing set of con­sid­er­a­tions (reg­u­la­to­ry, sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, human and soci­etal … ), pro­vid­ing at the same time an expert opin­ion that opens new paths for devel­op­ment adapt­ed to the sit­u­a­tion. “Con­sul­tants can bring a glob­al knowl­edge about the domain, and bench­mark­ing of oth­er prac­tices in the same sec­tor by draw­ing on their expe­ri­ence and skills”, explains Priscille Pingault. 

Rising to meet the challenges

The new head of oper­a­tions for Akte­hom Bel­gium agrees that her new con­sul­tant role suites her per­fect­ly but admits that her ear­ly moves in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor were due more to chance than to delib­er­ate deci­sions. As the say­ing goes, Lady Luck can do won­ders, and so she decid­ed to spe­cial­ize in this pro­fes­sion 20 years ago. “Impor­tant tech­no-sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tions and rapid changes in this field make it a par­tic­u­lar­ly attrac­tive sec­tor which offers numer­ous chal­lenges”, she adds. 

Did you say ‘chal­lenges’? As a qual­i­fied engi­neer, then con­sul­tant and now

and adapting to new cultures

Now aged 44, the new Oper­a­tions Head for Akte­hom Bel­gium is ful­ly aware that her new Brus­sels chal­lenge can not only make heads turn but it also serve to assuage a high degree of curios­i­ty, always on the look­out for nov­el­ties. If Bel­gium some­time seems close to France, the way peo­ple work in Bel­gium dif­fers to quite a large extent. Con­sul­tants must be ready and capa­ble of rapid­ly tak­ing into their stride the spe­cif­ic cul­tur­al fea­tures of inter­na­tion­al corporations. 

Bio Express

• 1995: Grad­u­at­ed from UTC with the elec­tive spe­cial­ty Bio-Industries
• 1996: Hired as Process Engi­neer at Pharmaplan
• 2000: Con­sul­tant at Assystem
• 2005: Senior Con­sul­tant at Aktehom
• 2015: Appoint­ed Head of the Brus­sels sec­tor for Aktehom