I am Thierry Brûlé, a senior executive with more than 20 years of experience along 3 years with McKinsey & Company, 7 years with Novartis and 11 years with AbbVie.

I decided to start my own company, stepback.work, as I felt a strong need to support executives facing constantly evolving priorities around strategy, execution and human dimensions. This purpose is aligned with the belief that those dimensions are intrinsically complex and intertwined and therefore should be apprehended together. This is also aligned with the portfolio of skills I can bring, which a few times got me the nickname of “Swiss knife”.

I combine experiences in consulting at McKinsey (with missions touching strategy and operation) with diverse executive roles in large pharmaceutical companies, namely Novartis and AbbVie (including leading globally the integration of ImmunoGen and Celsius Therapeutics). During my journey I have also gained General Management experience at Urgo and AbbVie. I have accumulated awards in sales, marketing, strategy, and HR. I developed numerous expertise in healthcare in all layers (Country, Region, Global) across a large number of therapeutic areas.

Talking about managing change and culture understanding, I have lived and worked around the globe: from Europe (France, Belgium and UK) to Asia (China and Singapore), Middle East and Africa (South Africa and UAE), and USA.

I have a Master Degree in Engineering from Telecom ParisTech earned in 2001, and an MBA from INSEAD achieved in 2004, completed by a Certificate in Coaching from INSEAD completed in 2023 and a Certificate in AI in Healthcare from MIT completed in 2024.

I embrace a strong belief in the importance of some critical values: authenticity, humility, openness, focus, pragmatism, empowerment.

Aside from stepback.work, in which I practice as Adviser | Executive Coach | CEO, I am also a member of Angels Santé, Europe leading network of Business Angels dedicated to healthcare, and sit on Winnove Medical Advisory Board.

You can find my LinkedIn profile here: www.linkedin.com/in/thierry-brule