- 4 years ago
14 December 2022
For a former New Zealand barrister who started his working life in politics, it is perhaps not surprising that Todd Stephenson has worn a number of hats throughout his high-profile career in Australian pharma, but when it comes to what this man-about-town is best known for, it is connecting people.
“Todd is one of the most creative, impactful and strategic colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with,” says Rachel Peterson of Roche, Stephenson’s first pharma employer. “He is a connector by nature and seems to constantly have a million things on the go.”
Indeed, many have pondered how Stephenson managed to achieve so much and meet so many, particularly given he has only been in the Australian industry for 13 years after spending the first decade of his career in his New Zealand homeland, initially working in law.
A move to a government relations firm run by a political party president gave Stephenson his first taste of politics and while he hasn’t ever run for Parliament himself, he is certainly well acquainted with the corridors of power. Recognising this as a core skill, former Roche Head of Corporate Affairs Libby Day can lay claim to tempting Stephenson over to the pharma industry, wooing him in 2009 to take on an in-house role.
“Libby was very keen to get me into Roche, which is how I ended up full-time in pharma,” says Stephenson. “Roche didn’t have a developed government affairs function, so that’s one of the things I helped set up.
“Fred Najarian was MD and it was a really interesting first role because I was doing product communications, government relations, issues management and policy. It was an exciting time and a great job.”
Over the next four years, Stephenson became a regular fixture of the local industry, helping to establish the Medicines Australia Oncology Industry Taskforce (OIT) in 2012 with fellow leaders Sara Pantzer and Ian Black.
It was the beginning of a new era of stakeholder collaboration with Rare Cancers Australia and the Cancer Drugs Alliance also founded in 2012, Stephenson saying the change was driven by new cancer therapies that had either just arrived in Australia or were on their way.
“People could see the cancer treatments that were coming and realised how they were going to be approved and funded would be an issue,” he said. “The Cancer Drugs Alliance was a multi-stakeholder attempt to discuss some of the issues.
“For Roche, we had the first melanoma treatment in a BRAF inhibitor, while there were a number of other targeted treatments also coming. Immuno-oncology therapies were still a way off, but they were in the pipeline, and we also had combination therapies which looked like they would challenge the health technology assessment (HTA) system.
“The great thing about the OIT was that we didn’t start by saying what we thought should be done, but by interviewing stakeholders – cancer groups, clinicians, people in the Department, even members of the PBAC, about what they saw the issues as being in emerging cancer treatments.
“It was all about collaboration and in the past 10 years the great thing we have seen is the patient community working far more closely with industry and having a very frank, open and productive relationship.”
It was undoubtedly this leadership in raising the patient voice that prompted Janssen to approach Stephenson in late 2013 with an offer to manage its government affairs and policy function – a role he took on in early 2014, quickly rising to the position of Corporate and Government Affairs Director.
“It was really about building a team there, which is one of the things I’m most proud of in my career,” Stephenson says. “Mairead Langbien, Stuart Englund, Jonathon Moore, Rita Corrente, Maeve Eikli and Alison Fennell – they are all fantastic people who have gone on to have their own fantastic careers.
“At the same time, we were all working collaboratively with stakeholders to try and achieve outcomes. No longer was it about just putting in a submission. It was about building a shared understanding, which was a significant change from the past.”
In 2015, Stephenson helped found the Patient Voice Initiative and remains on the steering committee for the HTAi Patient and Citizen Involvement Interest Group.
His contribution to patient engagement saw him appointed to a newly created role of Janssen ANZ Patient Engagement and Experience Director in 2021 and while the role was recently made redundant, Stephenson’s contribution is described by patient advocate Krystal Barter as “industry best-practice in Australia”.
“We developed an entirely new capability around patient experience, taking the discipline of customer experience and applying that to patient experience, which was quite exciting,” he says. “We looked at the end-to-end journey of a patient living with a disease.”
“Todd is the pioneer for industry patient engagement in ANZ and has taught me a lot about what true engagement looks like,” says former Janssen ANZ managing director Bruce Goodwin, who worked closely with Stephenson.
“Todd has proven himself to be adept at predicting issues of importance to industry and ideating for solutions to stakeholders, particularly government. He is an excellent collaborator within the Medicines Australia community and has been of great counsel to me.”
“Todd is driven and passionate about important causes,” added Medicines Australia CEO Liz de Somer. “Mostly he cares about patients getting access to innovative and life changing treatments. Todd is absolutely my go-to person when we need action.”
A local leader in LGBTQI
Stephenson has also carved out a niche as one of the first pharma leaders to be openly gay, founding the J&J Open & Out Employee Resource Network in Australia.
“J&J had groups like the LGBTQI and Women in Leadership established in the US and wanted to have people here who could lead these groups, and I was lucky enough to be asked along with Ed Murphy. It was really about visibility and modernising the language in company policies to reflect a diverse workforce,” he says.
“We also built an alliance across the industry before PAIG even existed by working with Pfizer and Novartis to start a cross-company dialogue, and we joined Pride in Diversity so we could benchmark ourselves against other organisations.”
After recently leaving Janssen, Stephenson is taking a well-earned break with his partner Alex in their New Zealand holiday home while considering what to do next. Whatever that is, it is sure to involve what Stephenson does best – connecting the people who share a desire to bring effective therapies through to patients, and who put patients at the heart of everything they do.
Perhaps his story and industry’s wishes for Stephenson are best summed up by another industry legend in AstraZeneca Special Counsel Kieran Schneemann, who says, “Todd is one of a kind; he is a pillar of our industry, and he is not replaceable. I wish Todd well as he takes the next step in what has been an illustrious career in our industry”.