Please tell us a little about yourself and your role as Director Global Supply Chain in Boston Scientific?
I am married to Jody and have three children Sadhbh 22, Fionn 20 and Clodagh 16. I am originally a Cork woman and studied Biochemistry in UCC. I just celebrated my 25-year work anniversary with Boston Scientific this year! I lead a highly talented and committed team who are responsible for the end-to-end supply chain in Boston Scientifics manufacturing facility in Clonmel.
Outside or work I have a love hate relationship with circuit training! I love to walk my dog Milo in the woods near my home and enjoy spending time with my family and friends.
What does International Women’s Day mean to you?
International Women’s Day is hugely important to me. It’s a day where we celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of woman but also a day where we need to acknowledge despite some significant change in the past few decades, we have a long road ahead to truly achieve a gender equal world.
Is inclusion a priority for you?
Absolutely! If everyone feels included diversity will follow.
The people and the culture are what make Boston Scientific what it is today. To attract top talent, it is essential to create an inclusive environment where all employees are comfortable to be themselves at work. Our inclusion and diversity agenda are strongly support by our employee resource group.
EmpowHER is a group whose vision is to be the voice for women and promote gender equality at all levels in the company. The Pride group created an environment where the LGBTQ+ community and allies are confident to bring their best self to work, LEAD (Leadership, Education and Allies for Disabilities) was established with the purpose of promoting the inclusion and celebration of people with any disability to be empowered to bring their “whole selves” to work.
And finally, we have the young professional network whose aim to provide support to new and existing employees.
Why did Boston Scientific become a core partner for Grit?
Innovation is in our DNA at Boston Scientific. We transform lives through innovative medical technologies that improve the health of patients around the world. As a global medical technology leader for more than 40 years, we advance science for life by providing a broad range of high-performance solutions that address unmet patient needs.
Grit and Boston Scientific core values of innovation, diversity and inclusion are of key importance to both groups making us ideal partners as we strive towards a common goal of transforming and improving lives around the world.
How important is female leadership & diversity within Boston Scientific?
We all know the statistics. Companies with more diversity including gender diversity perform better from a financial perspective. Having female and diverse leaders is key so younger talent can see that regardless of gender race etc they too can be a leader in Boston Scientific: as they say “you cannot be what you cannot see”.
As a younger professional in Boston Scientific female role models in manufacturing were few and far between. Females with children were ever rarer. This inspired me and some of my female colleagues to set up EmpowHer back in 2014.
Our vision was to have at least 30% of female leaders sitting on the senior leadership team within 5 years. At the time women were very much unrepresented in management roles! We received great support from senior male leaders at the time and in tandem with each other we worked on several strategies to achieve our goal.
For the last number of years our female representation at manager and director level is at 30% and our journey won’t be complete until we hit parity!
Any final thoughts?
I have 2 daughters and one son. Are their opportunities equal? They are more equal than they were in past generations however there are still significant barriers and obstacles to overcome. I am also conscious we live in a privileged society.
Women in developing countries suffer from social and cultural biases like nothing we experience here. The road to gender parity is long and complex but as a woman I feel a duty and obligation to play my part.
As Madeline Albright famously once said “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
LinkedIn Page: Bríd Hallinan
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