A Winning Formula

John McGrath talks to Dr Claire O’Connell about his journey from DCU to a key management role with global pharmaceutical giant GSK

‘How did you get to where you are today?’ It’s a question often asked of leaders and John McGrath gives a simple and honest answer.

“There was never a plan,” says the Senior VP of Global Industrial Operations at GSK Vaccines. “If jobs really interested me and if they were a progression and I could learn from them, then I would go for them. There were twists and turns along the way, but no, there was never a specific plan.”

It’s a journey that began when he was a teenager living in Clonmel and struggling to decide what to study in college.

“I was struggling to know what to do and I was looking at economics and computer science,” recalls McGrath. “The career guidance said you are doing well in biology and other subject why don’t you try Biotechnology at DCU [then NIHE], it involves food science and medical science.”

Arriving at Glasnevin, McGrath wasn’t entirely sure what he was getting into, but he was relieved to find that his classmates were also stepping into the unknown. What they found was a degree that blended biology and engineering with hands-on practical and technical skills. “It was a pretty tough four years,” he recalls.  “But that meant that when I got into the workforce, I was able to move up the learning curve quickly with that foundation to build on.”

 After graduating, he worked for several companies, including Millipore, Lonza and Genzyme, gaining international experience and building up his technical and management skills.

Along the way, McGrath found himself at a fork in the road. “I was working as a validation manager and I came to the conclusion that I could either go into the leadership track or into the technical track,” he says. “If I was going into the technical track I would have to go and get my PhD and if I was going into the leadership track MBA.”

Around this time an opportunity arose that involved managing people. “I realised I needed to learn something about this very quickly so I went to do an MBA at Babson College near Boston, which I could do part-time and combine with my work,” he says.

Learning how to manage people turned out to be a rewarding decision: “I could see people grow and develop and I was growing and developing myself.”

He still struggled with the seemingly endless rounds of meetings, and he hankered after the more hands-on technical tasks, but a frank discussion with a colleague settled that.

“I said to her that I would rather be out in the plant doing something rather than sitting in meetings and she looked at me and said: ‘You need to understand that your job is to sit in meetings and make decisions’,” he says. “It was like a lightbulb moment, I saw she was right and I made peace with it.”

Vaccines

Today, those meetings enable the production of vaccines at GSK that can protect against potentially fatal diseases, and McGrath finds that his technical background gives him a rounded and nuanced overview of the challenges and issues involved.

“My objective is to provide leadership or make decisions and the technical training gives me a great background,” he says. “I’m not an expert but the technical background allows me to understand the issues, and sometimes not being an expert can help you make a better decision.”

“If you take the case of the ‘flu, the virus changes every year, so every year you have a different vaccine product, but the good thing is that you have a platform to work with. You have agencies like the World Health Organisation to say which ‘flu strains are we going to target to get the most effective vaccine.”

Then there are the ones that come out of left field, such as the Ebola virus, which flared up suddenly in West Africa, spreading and killing rapidly. “In these kinds of cases, we need to collectively work together to move a lot faster,” says McGrath. “This is where you can really see the benefit of Government, industry, health agencies and non-governmental organisations collaborating and ensuring that things happen quickly.”

For current students and recent graduates in biotechnology, McGrath sees teamwork as being one of the most important skills for the workforce. He commends DCU for its continued focus on practical experience when preparing students. “They come out with technical abilities and theoretical knowledge that are world class, and with a level of hands-on skills that a lot of degrees don’t provide. My advice to them would be to do things that interest you. There is a lot of pressure when you graduate to be immediately successful, but I think it is better in the long term if you find what it is you like doing.”  

‘The journey of the Meningitis B vaccine has been incredible’

 One of GSK’s recent successes is a vaccine against Meningitis B - a fast, devastating, and potentially deadly infection. “Meningitis B has a very low incidence, but within 24 hours, a child can go from feeling healthy to being severely sick, with a serious risk of amputations, nerve damage, and other serious symptoms,” explains John McGrath.

 GSK took on the Meningitis B vaccine when they acquired Novartis and ramped up its production. The vaccine is now part of our national vaccination programme for infants.

“Seeing the journey of that vaccine has been incredible,” says McGrath. “And I have been honoured to work with world-renowned experts on this, including our ex-Novartis and GSK colleagues.”

GSK is currently launching another vaccine around the world too, this time to help prevent shingles, a painful and often debilitating condition that arises when the ‘chickenpox’ virus Varicella affects nerves.

 The vaccine has already been launched for older people in the US, and is being introduced into other countries such as Canada and Germany. McGrath is focused on ensuring that there will be enough vaccine doses to meet the demand in these countries. “The uptake so far has been very good, we need to make sure we can maintain that supply,” he says.