At UCB, patients are at the heart of everything we do, and from the very beginning of the pandemic, we were committed to helping those impacted by COVID-19 through impactful, unified, and strategic communications.

2020 and the global pandemic brought many lessons about our industry, our people, the patients we serve, and the communicator’s role in responding. It drove reflection on how we are evolving and must continue to change in a volatile external market and how we must articulate that change for the audiences we address. Never has an event made it so clear that keeping our employees and patients at the center of what we do not just a mission, but a purpose and driver of all our actions. Teams can accomplish what they may have thought impossible when they rally together against a global challenge.

In the unpredictable years of disruption and challenge, I learned how we at UCB can be agile innovators, better leaders, and better colleagues. Like many, our communications team was tested as never before. The lessons I have learned – the power of collaboration, the value of resilience, the need to take time to recharge, the relevance of articulating our shared human experiences, and the importance of serving the patients and employees in all that we do – are invaluable and ones I will hopefully never forget.

• Amidst world-altering events, I learned that we must do more than what we have done in the past with a lens of transparency and trust over all we do.
• I learned we could be more effective, together, but not necessarily physically together.
• We must take breaks to be strong enough to achieve our big goals and give space to others to do the same.
• Informing, engaging with, and taking care of our people, including their loved ones, enable our success in our strategic growth path.
• We have to be more innovative, adaptable, and efficient than we were before.
• How we carry these lessons forward to make the future brighter will continue to impact us for decades.

We will never forget our trials and tribulations during COVID but instead are now strengthened by the learnings and lessons we can carry forward. We are well positioned to meet our next challenge and the next one, as a community of bold and adaptable innovative communicators. I know the saying was cheesy, but we honestly did learn; we are stronger together.