Why and how to invest in your leadership skills – Interview with of Gemma Hodgson and Margaret Jones

Leadership skills for statisticians represents a common theme across many episodes of this podcast. As leadership consists of many different aspects, it is important to learn from other statisticians, that exhibit these skills.

In this episode, we talk with Gemma and Margaret, who have run successful leadership courses within PSI. We cover the following topics:

• What are the core leadership skills that statistician need to be fluent in?
• What are common mindset issues, that block statisticians from being more influential?
• How can statisticians overcome these blocks?
• Why it’s beneficial for statisticians to have a tailored course for them?
• What courses are available from PSI?

About Gemma Hodgson

Qi Statistics

Gemma has worked as a statistician, project manager, trainer and consultant for over 20 years across a wide variety of projects within large and small multidisciplinary teams and in several industries. Gemma has an MSc in Medical Statistics and began her career in the pharmaceutical industry. After working as a statistician at Pfizer for over 10 years Gemma joined the Takeda Global R&D as a principal statistician in 2006. Since 2012 Gemma has worked for Qi Statistics and now jointly owns and runs the business with Anne Hasted. Gemma now works both as a consultant and trainer across many other disciplines as well including manufacturing, sensory & consumer and business statistics. As a consultant in these industries, the interface between client and statistician is one of key importance to securing new business and so Gemma has done a lot of work understanding how statisticians can be perceived negatively, where they have recognised strengths and the key differences between different types of thinkers.

About Margaret Jones

UCB

Margaret is currently head of Early Development Statistics at UCB but has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for nearly 20 years and led a wide variety of projects ranging from pre-clinical through to phase 3. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry Margaret worked in Oncology clinical research, engineering and finance. Working in several pharmaceutical companies Margaret has worked with a wide variety of statisticians and project teams and witnessed both good and bad partnerships. There is currently work being undertaken at UCB to improve and develop the interactions between disciplines and teams in order to maximise knowledge and partnering. Margaret has been a key driver in this work and so is keen to share some of these skills and findings wider with statisticians outside UCB.