Company: AstraZeneca
Title: Executive Director & Global Chief Financial Officer
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Hometown:Â Cambridge, England
Notable in 2023: Led deals to expand AstraZeneca's drug pipeline, transformed finance function to improve employee retention and productivity.
Artificial intelligence is shaping our world, including the pharmaceutical industry. For leaders like AstraZeneca CFO Aradhana Sarin, this means it's time to embrace technology to advance modern medicine.
In November 2023, AstraZeneca launched its health-tech division Evinova. The business uses digital technology to develop clinical trials and medicine delivery. As a result, the process of bringing new treatments to market can become cheaper and quicker. It can also make sure people can access medicine when they need it, including through digital remote patient monitoring and other digital therapies.
AstraZeneca also acquired preclinical gene therapy programs and technologies from Pfizer in July 2023, specifically focused on rare diseases. About 80% of the 7,000 rare diseases — meaning affecting 200,000 or fewer people — are based on genetics. Gene therapy could cure some of these illnesses.
"We think gene therapy, cell therapy, and several other such technologies will be technologies of the future," Sarin told Yahoo Finance. "And that's why we're investing in it."
I have received some very valuable pieces of advice from mentors along the way and adopting those has transformed my outlook and way of working. One is 'think of not just the finance function, but the entire company as your team,' and that I have really implemented in the way that I work across the business.Aradhana SarinExecutive Director & Global Chief Financial Officer, AstraZeneca
Sarin took on the CFO role in 2022, joining from biopharma Alexion, and worked on Wall Street in investment banking for two decades before moving into the pharmaceutical industry. She trained as a medical doctor and treated patients in Tanzania and India earlier in her career, and has an MBA from Stanford.
"Understanding the business gives you a whole different perspective, which allows you to be a better thought partner and a strategic partner to better help allocate resources and drive strategies," she told StrategicCFO360.
Changemakers is an annual list spotlighting women whose accomplishments have left an indelible mark on the business world. Click here to view the full list and continuing coverage.
