Sartorius AG (USA) - Press Release: Welcome back, Maurice Phelan.

New year, new roles at Sartorius: With the beginning of 2023, Maurice Phelan is taking over the position as President of Sartorius North America from Mary Lavin, who had decided to retire after 35 years of exceptional service. Maurice had already been with Sartorius before and rejoined the company in November to ensure a smooth transition. 

In his new role, Maurice will be closely involved in the customer-facing activities of both Sartorius divisions - Lab Products and Services and Bioprocess Solutions - facilitating cross-functional alignment and business development in North America.

"Many innovations in the biopharmaceutical industry come from North America, which is also home to many of our customers. Therefore, the region has been and will continue to be one of Sartorius’ most important markets. With his broad industry experience, Maurice will help us to further expand activities of our lab and bioprocessing divisions, facilitating cross-functional divisional alignment and business development in the region.", René Fáber, member of the Executive Board of Sartorius.

In this interview, Maurice shares his views on the company, the North American market and the future development of Sartorius.

Maurice, previously, you served as Head of Operations of the Sartorius site in Marlborough, Massachusetts. What’s your history with the company?

Sartorius has always been considered one of the major players in the industry as a provider of technology and innovation for bioprocessing, drug discovery and laboratory solutions. I’ve known Sartorius my entire career and competed against them and collaborated with them. Over the years, I’ve closely worked on industry committees with Sartorians who are responsible for driving and defining best practices. I have an enormous amount of respect for the company’s scientific, product development and innovation capabilities. At the end of the day, our success is rooted in our people, our talent and our understanding and connection to our customer.

What attracted you to the role as President for North America?

I’ve always tried to identify areas where I can deliver a major impact, but only by moving significantly outside of my comfort zone. When this opportunity was put in front of me, it just felt like a very exciting and challenging opportunity. The management setup in North America will be different going forward. Support functions which Mary Lavin has taken care of will be led by local and global functional managers with me acting as a supervisor. So, a key focus of mine will be to ensure a high-functioning, collaborative leadership team in North America. This will be critical to our continued success.

Tell us about your leadership style.

I’m an Irishman who values others and enjoys having a face-to-face conversation. I consider myself open and approachable. I’m not afraid of constructive feedback, nor am I afraid to give constructive feedback. It’s critically important to communicate honestly in both directions.

Leadership for me is not about doing the greatest things, it’s about creating a vision and enabling a process that moves talented people and teams to do the greatest things.

How would you describe Sartorius in North America?

We are a highly trusted and engaged partner for our customers who have a wave of new processes, therapies and modalities coming to the forefront. Sartorius has that same innovative entrepreneurship, and we won’t stop until we deliver. This attitude needs to get turned into the next generation of therapies and we’re already engaging in this endeavor. We are tapping the potential energy of our organization, our people, products and technologies to best support our customers.

In addition, we will become an even stronger player in two broad areas: First, enabling researchers at the bench to do their discovery faster and better, gaining improved insights from the technology and expertise Sartorius provides them. Second, being the company that enables scale up of these actions. The focus is on next-generation therapies and our role in the development and production of these therapies.

What would be the focus of your work and why?

With every Sartorius employee I have met, I’ve asked them to think about two things: What are the issues that are preventing them from getting even better on behalf of our customers? And how can I support them in overcoming potential obstacles?

A big piece of it is innovating through our products, investments, partnerships and expansion projects. All of it comes under the innovation umbrella and it’s part of everything we’re exploring and talking about through the various levels of leadership. Ultimately, my role is to make sure we are ready and well positioned to deliver across the businesses and functions. We will get there by constantly focusing on the customer and this developing market and by making sure we have the right people and resources working on the right things.

Any final remarks?

The North America team and I now have the opportunity and enormous responsibility of preparing for the next level of growth. Mary Lavin is an extraordinary leader. Her body of work at Sartorius is known and admired by customers and competitors alike. I have learned a lot from Mary over the last few years. These are big shoes to fill, and I can’t wait to get started.

I am excited to lead Sartorius North America and work with the talented people here to build upon the company’s success.

About Maurice Phelan:

Maurice has spent many years in the industry and recently rejoined Sartorius from Repligen, where he was Vice President, Head of Fluid Management. Before that, he served as Head of Operations of the Sartorius site in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Previously, he held leadership roles at GE Healthcare and Merck Millipore. Maurice holds degrees in chemistry and experimental physics from the National University of Ireland.