Voices of Leadership: Women Leading the Way in Pharma Outsourcing

Celebrating the 2025 CPHI Womenof the Year Nominees: Christiane Bardroff, Jonina Gudmundsdottir & Jenny Gattari

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The pharmaceutical outsourcing sector, spanningCDMOs, CROs and global manufacturing networks, has never been more critical tohow medicines reach patients. Yet despite women making up the majority of thelife sciences workforce, leadership representation is still lagging.

Recent 2024–2025 studies show:

• Women are 56% of the life sciences workforce, but hold only ~37% of executive roles.
• In healthcare organisations broadly, women dominate entry-level roles (~75%) but hold only about a third of C-suite positions, with progress largely stagnant over the past four years.
• Across industries, companies with more gender-balanced leadership teams are 25–47% more likely to outperform financially and innovate faster.

This year’s CPHI Women of the Year 2025 nominees stand out not only because they have reached senior roles, but because they are actively reshaping what effective leadership looks like in one of the most complex and fast-moving sectors of healthcare.

We are proud to spotlight three of them:

• Christiane Bardroff (Rentschler Biopharma)
• Jonina Gudmundsdottir (Coripharma)
• Jenny Gattari (Pfizer CentreOne)

Each of these leaders brings a different lens, biologics,generics, and global manufacturing, but their impact reaches across the entire pharma outsourcing ecosystem.

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CHRISTIANE BARDROFF – COO, RENTSCHLER BIOPHARMA

People-first leadership in a highly technical world

Christiane Bardroff is redefining leadership in the CDMO space, combining biotechnology admirability  with a people-first approach that drives innovation and operational excellence. Today, as COO of Rentschler Biopharma, a global biologics CDMO with sites in Germany and theU.S., her leadership is defined by empowerment and visibility.

Her pathway into leadership started somewhere unusual: the manufacturing floor. Born and raised on a farm in Northern Germany, she studied biotechnology and chemical engineering before beginning her career working hands-on at Roche’s GMP facilities, often alone on night shifts, responsible for decisions with million-dollar consequences.

Those early years shaped her into a leader who understands the technical, emotional, and operational realities of the shop floor. At Roche and later Teva Biotech, she bridged a long-standing divide between operations and automation teams, eventually becoming a key leader behind Teva’s $800 million fully automated biologics facility.

Throughout her career, she mastered the complexity of highly regulated environments, cutting-edge technologies, and global stakeholder expectations turning challenges into structured, scalable solutions. The combination of her technical, operational and people expertise prepared her for her current role as COO of Rentschler Biopharma.

She’s known to show up in full cleanroom gear, on her inspection rounds, side-by-side with operators and QA teams. She recognises the importance of empathy and understanding as one of the key drivers of success for leaders.

“You need to have empathy and really listen. People have incredible ideas. They just need to feel psychologically safe and empowered.” - Christiane Bardroff

As COO, Christiane is spearheading digitalisation and AI-driven process optimisation to future-proof biopharma manufacturing..

“AI is changing the way we work and we need to make sure that we’re staying current with AI, automation and how the industry is implementing it. If you’re not thinking about it now, you’re already behind.” - Christiane Bardroff

She’s also candid about her responsibility as a visible woman at the top of a CDMO:

“I wouldn’t be here without mentors and supporters. I try to be that person for others early in their career and young women coming up in the industry.” - Christiane Bardroff

Her nomination for CPHI Women of the Year 2025 recognises exactly the combination:

Deep engineering and automation expertise, paired with psychological safety, empowerment and genuine care for people.

JONINA GUDMUNDSDOTTIR: CEO, CORIPHARMA

Championing courage, clarity, and representation in generics

In the competitive world of generics, where margins are tight, timelines compressed, and patient populations increasingly segmented, few leaders have shaped the landscape as directly as Jonina Gudmundsdottir.

After rising through Medis from business development to Deputy CEO, she played an instrumental role in scaling the company to nearly €500 million in revenue. She is currently the CEO of Coripharma, an Iceland-based developer and manufacturer of solid oral generics across oncology, CNS and complex small molecule categories as. Her leadership story mirrors a pattern emerging in the latest pharma-focused gender data: women who do get into senior roles often arrive via a series of stretch assignments and sponsorship moments rather than a straight-line promotion track.

Jonina’s leadership is marked by transparency, team mobilisation, and an unwavering belief in fairness.

“A leader doesn’t do anything by himself. You must mobilise people. Not through wages, but through energy and excitement.” — Jonina Gudmundsdottir

Jonina is also outspoken about the structural barriers women still face, particularly in fundraising and investment, which she describes as “male-dominated, with bias still affecting outcomes.” That experience echoes broader findings from life sciences surveys, where a majority of respondents say men have an advantage in landing top roles and investment decisions.

Yet she’s equally candid about the internal barriers many women hold:

“Women are held back more by themselves than by men. Be brave. Speak out sooner. Don’t wait until you feel 120% ready.”— Jonina Gudmundsdottir

She’s a strong advocate for inclusive, blended leadership teams and is passionate about using AI and digitalisation to help generics manufacturers operate more efficiently, especially as oncology products become increasingly precise, with smaller patient populations and more complex regulatory submissions.

Her CPHI nomination reflects both her business impact and her cultural advocacy within an industry that still lacks strong female representation at the top.

JENNY GATTARI – GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT LEAD, PFIZER CENTREONE

Lifting others, building confidence and strengthening global partnerships

Jenny Gattari represents the voice of women leading from within the world’s largest pharma networks. As Global BusinessDevelopment Lead at Pfizer CentreOne, Pfizer’s global CDMO business spanning more than 30 manufacturing sites worldwide, she works at the crossroads of patient need, commercial urgency and large-scale drug manufacturing.

Jenny didn’t initially seek out the CDMO world. In fact, she almost turned down the role. A bit of research, and some curiosity, changed that. Once she stepped into it, she found a space that perfectly matched her drive to solve problems, support clients and help people grow.

“I love everything about the CDMO space. It combines everything I’ve done in my career: technologies, patients, problem-solving under pressure.” - Jenny Gattari

Her leadership is rooted in coaching. She takes pride in helping others identify their strengths and stretch into new opportunities, especially women unsure of their transferrable skills.

“A great leader is a coach and a cheerleader, youdon’t take over. You lift others up and let them shine.”-Jenny Gattari

She’s particularly passionate about helping women recognise their transferable skills and career options, a gap that many recent leadership studies identify as a barrier to women moving into P&L and technical leadership roles.

Outside Pfizer, Jenny is active in the Healthcare Women’s Association and other professional networks, mentoring students and early-career professionals. She’s open about wishing she’d tapped these communities earlier herself, and she pushes younger women not to repeat that delay.

Her nomination recognises both her impact inside Pfizer CentreOne’s global network and her broader contribution to building amore connected, confident pipeline of women in pharma outsourcing.

WHY THEIR LEADERSHIP MATTERS NOW

Across their different vantage points, Christiane, Jonina and Jenny model the behaviours that the latest research says companies need most:

• Empowerment over authority: They lift, encourage, and trust their teams, driving engagement and innovation.‍
• Inclusive, collaborative decision-making: Diverse teams make better decisions, and all three leaders build cultures rooted intrust, transparency and psychological safety.‍
• Digital confidence: Each embraces technology, from automation to AI, not as a threat, but as a tool to elevate talent and improve operations.‍
• Active sponsorship of other women: They mentor. They advocate. They open doors. Research shows that sponsorship, not just mentorship, is the number one factor that accelerates women into executive roles.

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A BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE OF PHARMA OUTSOURCING

The 2025 CPHI Women of the Year shortlist showcases what happens when women are entrusted with the roles that shape how medicines are made, scaled and delivered.

• Christiane Bardroff demonstrates how people-first leadership transforms high-tech operations.
• Jonina Gudmundsdottir shows that courage, clarity and fairness can scale organisations and cultures.
• Jenny Gattari proves that coaching and connection are as critical to global success as operational excellence.

Together, they reflect the future our industry needs: creative, collaborative, empowered and deeply human leadership.

And if the recent data is any indicator, scaling this kind of leadership isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s a competitive advantage.

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