The perfect balance

perfect balance

Sara,

Life Sciences Consultant

«There is a good balance of employees, men and women, working in Life Sciences’ area».

Sara graduated in Biomedical Sciences, initially intending to enter medicine when she finished her degree. However, sometimes life takes you down other paths and, “after the first year of my degree, I changed my focus to pharmaceutical biomedicine. As she was very interested in clinical research, she chose a master’s degree in Pharmacoepidemiology. However, once again she realised that she did not identify ‘with the typical career of a researcher’.

At ALTEN, Sara started working on a project for the pharmaceutical company Hovione, taking charge of updating the training in “Quality and GMP”, to be implemented through a new learning management system. Her mission was to supervise and restructure the existing training modules and their learning tools (courses, tutorials, workshops, tests, etc.).

While working on the Hovione project, Sara found a mostly female team. She believes that her work is not associated with male figures, “in fact, there is a good balance”, she tells us. However, Sara also acknowledges that “in areas where almost all the consultants are Engineers (such as IT and automotive), it is noticeable that most of them are men”. Despite this situation, Sara has never noticed any difference in treatment between her and her colleagues. On the contrary, “I have always felt very welcome”, she says. Thanks to the progress made on equality policies, she believes that society is evolving positively in the field of employment, although “there is still a long way to go”.

The last project in which Sara participated in the pharmaceutical company allowed her to work with people from different departments. Also, to work with very different profiles and from several countries: “it was very gratifying for me”, she says. Her team has always been very autonomous when it comes to decisions about the project. Sara says that “she has always felt very safe and respected”.

Finally, Sara wants to highlight that campaigns such as “Women@ALTEN” are very important. Even more, considering that ALTEN is known as an Engineering company and this work has the prejudice of having more men than women. However, “in ALTEN Portugal there is an excellent gender balance and an atmosphere of mutual respect between men and women”.

Thank you, Sara, for giving us your vision and sharing your experiences with us. Read more stories like hers, on our section of Women at ALTEN.