We Not Me

James joined Gilead in October 2021 having spent the last nearly 4 years at Novartis leading the Leadership Development Work and for some of that time living in Switerland. Prior to Novartis he was at Dentsu Media. James’s career started in Somerfield on their management development scheme and worked as a field audit manager where he learnt a lot about leadership at a very early age. After a year the appeal of a company car and company credit card became too much and he joined SmithKline Beecham as a sales representative selling drugs on the right side of the law, he quickly moved into training, managing a training team who had responsibility for the launch of a new product. James stayed for the merger of SB and GW to form GSK, working as a National project manager supporting the integration of Sales, Market and Training. During my time at GSK he completed a BSc through the Open University which specialised in Neurophysiology.
James left GSK in 2003 to join AstraZeneca and held various roles within the L&D and Marketing at AstraZeneca, these included heading up leadership development, Brand Management and running various sales training teams. James’s last role was Head of Learning & Organisational Development at AstraZeneca UK where he was responsible for the Development and Delivery of the Academy strategy with in the UK Sales & Marketing Business. This included sales training as well as functional training. James left the organisation in 2009 to join the world of finance, spending 4.5 years in Barclaycard and Barclay’s where he held various roles, ending up as Global Head of Executive Development and leadership for the retail side of the business. James moved to Unilever in 2012 as Global Director of Learning specialising in Leadership development for the talent population and then to Dentsu in 2013. James is a Visiting Lecturer at Cranfield Military Academy alongside Aston Business School LSE.