Charles River Laboratories

With over two decades of hands-on experience in the information technology industry, Mark Mintz currently holds the position of chief information officer at Charles River Laboratories. His key responsibilities focus on reducing the time it takes for drug development and improving customer health outcomes through aligning technology and business strategies.

Please tell our readers about your key roles and responsibilities at the organization.

My key roles and responsibilities first and foremost involve translating the company’s strategy and the fluctuations in the business environment into opportunities for impact that we as a technology organization can drive and influence to achieve our mission of taking time off of the drug development timeline and in the process help our customers create healthier lives. As those opportunities take shape, to achieve the necessary outcomes I focus my time on what I call the three "E's": enabling, empowering, and engaging. The first "E", enabling, is about ensuring we have great talent and creating a supportive environment for them, providing them with the necessary tools, and removing any obstacles. The second "E", empowering, is about setting aspirational, yet achievable goals and empowering the team to solve the problem to achieve the desired outcome. The third "E" is about engaging with colleagues, asking questions, providing feedback. Being engaged with what our teams and colleagues are working on shows that it is important to our leaders which creates engagement, which ultimately helps create high quality outcomes.

What is your opinion on the impact of recent technological advancements in the pharmaceutical industry?

Technology is critical for creating efficient operations and high-impact customer experiences, but it's also important to have great people working in an enabling and empowering culture using design thinking to maximize technology's value. This involves reimagining work processes, putting customer needs first, understanding them, and applying the best technology to meet them. This is what Charles River Labs aspires to do.

“Technology is critical for creating efficient operations and high-impact customer experiences, but it's also important to have great people working in an enabling and empowering culture using design thinking to maximize technology's value.”

We must work agilely to quickly get new tools and work processes to our customers and employees, validate their effectiveness and optimize outcomes. This requires diverse thinking, a focus on customer perspectives, and empowering all contributors to drive impact. Combining people, techniques, and technology and a willingness to think differently is key to achieving our mission of reducing the drug development process and improving patients’ health. An example of this at Charles River Labs is the launch of our digital customer platform.

We regularly engage with customers to understand how to continuously innovate our digital platform and support their drug development efforts. Our team of designers, technologists, and colleagues from various departments bring their expertise to develop impactful solutions and leverage technology to create world-class experiences.

Pharma companies are turning to technology to modernize crucial processes, potentially enhancing patient care, drug production, and development. Charles River Labs assists with this by providing innovative solutions to customers to achieve their goals. We can do this by bringing the best scientific and technical people to solve the most pressing problems and enabling and empowering them to create future solutions for our customers.

What would you advise your peers and colleagues in the industry?

I advise anyone in the same boat to follow three basic principles. Firstly, leaders need to be bold, continuously test new ideas and technologies, and not back down from taking apart and reassembling them to ascertain what works best for them to uncover better ways to create higher magnitudes of impact.

Secondly, leaders must continuously push towards reimagining business operations and assessing products through a design thinking lens. This will ensure that products going into the market can fully benefit customers.

And finally, leaders must create cultures that attract, excite and retain world-class talent. And to do this, they need to follow the three E's creative enabling environments where people are empowered and engaged in the work that they're doing.