1. Healthtech leader Maryline Marquet on innovation in healthcare, supporting women in the workplace, and building personal connections across virtual teams

Hello, bonjour, ni hao and salut. Welcome back to the Impact around the World podcast. I'm Cassandra Pittman, Edech's country manager for the UK and Ireland and host of the show. In this episode, I'm pleased to be joined by Marilyn Marque, an absolute powerhouse of an EDHEC alumna who graduated in 2002 with a master's in European Business Strategy. Marilyn is French but grew up in Saudi Arabia. Since leaving edx, she worked on three continents across Europe, America and Asia and had one child in each one too. Her early career was in investment banking and startups in the US and consulting in Europe and Japan. For the past nine years she has designed customer centric healthcare solutions in diabetes, oncology, neuroscience and infectious diseases. So I can't wait to hear what she thinks about how the health tech industry has responded during the pandemic. Welcome Marilyn. Thank you so much for being here.

Hi.

Hi Marilyn, you are joining us from Singapore. Let's just start by giving the audience just a little a brief overview. More than I did in the intro of your career and what's currently taking your time work wise now.

Yeah, I shifted to Healthcare about 12 years ago and I'm still in healthcare and like you said in the intro, passionate about health tech and obviously COVID 19 has put health tech, medtech, healthcare system at the forefront of everyone's life. So it's an interesting time to be in a place where everyone is asking you questions and trying to get advice, where you're not a doctor, I'm not in a hospital. But yeah, interesting times. So what I could say is that the past five years I've worked in digital health startups mostly in the past. I actually did a shift early this year and I worked for a trade association representing the medical device industry in Asia when I joined. Little did I know that COVID 19 was going to hit the world and I was in the middle of that storm of challenges and I guess experiences meeting people and trying to solve some of the problems that everyone was reading in the news. And it's been a very interesting eight last month for me in terms of professional, professional learnings, I'll say. And what did I work on in the past few months? We've worked on so many topics, I guess, you know, the medical device industry needs trade associations to have one voice when we speak to governments or regulators and try to have a unified voice. Not one company telling a regulator I want this or that. And then this year the governments, the regulators and the industry had to Speak almost daily. And that comes from the fact that we heard the ICU were filling. And when we talk about an icu, that means an intensive care unit. The first thing that hits the world, it was like, oh, we don't have enough. And why didn't we have enough? It's not only a matter of supply chain or production. It was a matter of borders were closing. People had to respond in a different way. So that was the first things that I learned this year. And then since then, I mean, I'm sure we'll discuss this, but why are we talking today and on a podcast and not face to face or I'm not with you anyway. And we've all learned that the virtual world took over. So this is what we've learned. The second part of my job was to virtualize every communication that we could and to really gather the community around some key topics and try to solve problems remotely. The first time you meet someone usually is face to face, but this time it's like an online dating. I have to meet people virtually first and I'll meet them one day. But in the meantime, trying to convince someone and bond and build a bridge or some sort of relationship virtually is the first things we had to accelerate and learn, all of us. So it took more time, I guess, or it didn't take more time, actually. It just took more efforts and more focus for all of us to have meaningful relationship. Bridge. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It takes. It feels like none of us have really been trained apart from those of us who did spend many, many years on the online dating scene. I think maybe we have an edge now, finally.

But I do think they do have an edge, to be honest. And I keep talking about speed dating. I've been married for 15 years, so I'm definitely not the right. But yeah, I think, yeah, I think those app users have an edge. So let me think now I'll just try to think about the people that I met in Bandin faster if they were speed dating before they spoke to me.

Well, the thing that concerns me about this whole analogy that we're using is that anybody, I mean, I'm also partnered up now and have a baby, very happy, but did spend years on the dating apps for my sins. And the thing that concerns me is everybody who's done that knows how easy it is to actually kind of fall in infatuation over a text message. And then you meet somebody and it kind of falls flat and you think, oh, now I'm wondering, are we making the wrong hires? Because we've fallen in love with the resume, but haven't had a chance to meet the person. I don't know.

Yeah, but then I was speaking to. And I still. And no one will know, but I still. From a journalist yesterday, we were talking about this, and I think he says, no, I'll say democratized. The right to say, the right to see. And the size of our face on the computer. So you, whatever the position you have, whatever age you have, I have the same size as you on that screen. My voice and your voice, you know, the both of us, in a sort of way, sort of democratize or. Yeah, we're like, more equal. And if I look at the people that I'm reaching out to these days, I wouldn't have had the chance to do that before. It would have had so much protocol. So probably the older generation versus the new generation is finding this as a bigger gap. I feel I'm in the middle of it. I've been used to protocols and respect, you know, those very senior executives. And that respect needs to translate on that screen, need to translate into my voice. I think that's what's harder. But it's really a huge opportunity for us to reach beyond the borders, beyond what we're used to, and collaborate, but not in the word that, you know, it's not just a word, collaboration. It's that we need to make it happen together because we're all stuck at home. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm reluctant to spend too much time on the silver linings of COVID because it's been so devastating and continues to be so devastating for individual families and sometimes entire economies. But if there is one I'm seeing, it's really forced us into lots of different ways of having to rethink and innovate on just about every level. Like you said, how do I translate my show of respect or what I'm trying to communicate over screen? You and I were talking before we hit record about. It's forced us at EDEC and in the EDEC alumni department to think, how do we nurture a sense of community amongst our alumni when they can't meet in person? And that's part of what this podcast is about. But this is just one idea that we had. And, you know, these innovations, it's not like they weren't happening, but they were happening much more slowly. So if there's a silver lining, maybe that's one of them.

I mean, I actually, when we spoke, I was writing what you were saying, because it's true to My world to your world, to everyone's world. We were, I think, very dependent on physical events. And that relates to the fact that we're humans. We need to touch each other, we need to see each other, that's for sure. And we will remain. Yeah, we tend to want to meet the other person that we met online or spoke to. So this will not go away. I think a lot of people are talking about hybrid events, hybrid ways, working home, working there. But there are two aspects of it. For me, it's that what was our objective and often not. It was not clearly defined. So if your objective is not clearly defined, your tendency was to do what you were always used to do. Let's meet. And this is hopefully will bond. But if now you're clearly defining your objective, you want the ADEC alumni, you want a community to bond. How will we achieve that means we're becoming more strategic and leveraging all the tools. And when we will decide that meeting is necessary, we will, because we are humans and we want to meet and we want to party and we want to have a drink with someone else. But in a lot of cases, do I, and I feel for some of the Parisians that I left behind that had to drive two hours to go, and suddenly they could do it from home. So there's also this aspect. Can we, in 24 hours, spend the most time with our family, not spend time on that train or that traffic? Yeah, okay. There is the. Obviously, then we go into the reverse of that. Being stuck in a tiny home is not very fun. I'll say I have been stuck with my three kids, homeschooling and working, but I've been in a nice environment, so I will not complain. So I think, yeah, there's some good and some bad, but I think in the future we will have to take into account this moment as part of our new world. We will not go back and we should not go back to before.

Yeah, that's true. Do you feel that the healthcare industry, both private and public, has also been forced into innovation Completely?

Completely. I think if you look at the medical device industry, which I'm closer to, in the last year they were really focused on product innovation. I mean, there are amazing things. I mean, you can cut a knee thanks to a robot, you can operate, a surgeon can operate remotely thanks to AR VR and whatever you would say, yeah. So product innovation has always been on the forefront, like research. But today their innovation is in terms of collaborations among each other with the tech. And I say the tech, not only the big Tech, every tech aspects of their world has shifted. A hospital has to work with a telehealth provider, with a home monitoring device because all of us, again, we're locked. So this acceleration in healthcare is amazing. And yesterday again I'm stealing because I'm meeting a lot of people. Currently has told me that there is a company that raised 100 million or so to build an ICU at home. That means an intensive care unit at home. We speak about care at home, care in the community. I think not to say that the doctors will not be God forever, but the doctors are also finding their job that are evolving so much faster. One question I'm asking myself is what will be the relationship between a doctor and a machine? How is it going to evolve? Because they will need those machines, they will need those tools. So that's one aspect. But yeah, I think we've seen so much changes in also the leadership of those companies in healthcare, in the hospitals, everywhere you see digital transformation, innovation, word. But they had to grasp it and they had to go really fast. People were expecting them to save lives immediately. Please do an X ray. Please test me. You heard, I'm sure all of us have heard that the kids were not there. The kid took 2 hours, 24 hours. Whatever they were hearing, they had to go faster than they could because we wanted to have the answers. So yeah, I think they innovated. They will continue, but they will innovate differently. Product innovation will still be here, but it will be beyond. And the tech, look at the tech. Now let's talk big tech. Amazon, Google, Apple. How many of them are doing health practices? All hundred percent. Because the data, because the connection, because the hospital. So let's see the world. And I'm sure It's different in 10 years from now. Different, Completely different.

Yeah. What you've just said about the company that raised 100 million for an at home ICU. My first thoughts went to. Anyone who's lost a loved one.

In.

A hospital knows that in spite of having really caring nurses and doctors, there's just something really sterile about that experience. And I think most people, not everybody, but most people given a choice, knowing that they're gonna be facing potentially the end of their lives, would prefer to be in a warm and loving, a more warm and loving place like their home. And it's, it kind of makes, I mean I'm kind of getting emotional about the way that could transform, you know, not just keeping the care of keeping people alive, but also, you know, the care we provide people at the end of their lives.

So. Well, the audience, if anyone listens to our podcast, I'll try not to cry. And you're touching on something very important to me. So let me change my voice tone.

My eyes are watering here too.

Yeah. So I lost my dad last year. So that was. So one of the good things of last year is that I saw him and I can tell you how much I felt bad for everyone this year. I've heard those stories that you couldn't go. I don't know how you pass through this moment without seeing your loved one. So that's one. So if any impact, we're talking about home at work. Yeah. Okay. But you know, losing someone and not being able to say goodbye, no way we can survive. In my head. So I lost him last year and he went through every stage. He had a cancer and he ended up in palliative care. And what his wish was in between some of the hospital stay, it was to die at home. And let's put it this way, this is what he told me. My father was a military. He was in the army, commando, you know, very strong voice. I want to die at home. Okay, okay, okay. We're taking you back. We took him back home. What I can tell you is that I left my stepmother with him and I had the doctors and the nurses that were helping her at home that all called me and actually begged me to give her that authorization, which was only moral to take him back to the hospital for palliative care. And I had then to take another flight back. So I would fly back and help. But I had these kids, you know, and I was not living close to them. And I found my stepmother in the worst state ever. And we're not the biggest friends, but she was there until the last minute. She did everything she could. So if the ICU at home or the healthcare that can be provided is going to evolve to that level of supporting us to bear that moment. Yes. But at some point we need to realize that it was impossible to take care of him. And the last four days he stayed in palliative care because we couldn't. We just couldn't help him. However, having said that, this is the worst part. We would have stayed at home. It was too hard. Probably would have died in two days. Then he died in six days. Yeah. So whatever this moment, I cannot tell you what I would like, what I would have preferred. What I know is that the healthcare system was very human and at the same time, like you said, very sterile. And let's think about it. You transfer that death moment, the most horrible moment, to a not so horrible moment. Let's take the best. Now you give birth. Yeah, I wanted to give birth. One of them at home. Then no insurance would accept it because I felt that the experience I had with Juan was not as friendly and warm. So I wanted to be at home and I couldn't. So again, I think we will have to battle with our human wishes and the world we live in in terms of support and financing. I guess I would put it this way. So look, the best and the worst.

But it's inspiring, right, that the innovations are now happening, like you said, not just in the product, but also in the delivery of the service.

Yes, exactly, exactly. This is what we were expecting for so long. You know, they called me from my dad's home and put his phone. We didn't have this a few years back. I could see him speak to him, but all these things, this is just the tiny things through that phone. We could monitor him, you can speak to him and anyone that has a chronic condition, anyone that. Anyway, the innovation needs to happen in healthcare. The good thing, I would say the silver lining thing, that not a good thing. COVID 19 has said that health care is for everyone. It's not only for those that will have an accident or die, it's for everyone. We need to take care of our healthcare system. We as everyone. It's not about the insurance or the governments. All of us have something to do and something to say. We cannot only applaud those nurses and doctors. We have to make it work.

Yeah, I think it has really ushered in this urgent need to rethink some of our basic assumptions. And I think that it's done that at every sphere. So I think people who think deeply about these issues, economists and people all the way right down to the grocer or your local restaurant, I think everybody's sort of rethinking the value chain and utopia Society and edec. I'm not sure if you know, but we have a new strategic mission at edec, which is EDHEC for future generations. And it's really given me a huge amount of pride actually to be. I mean, I am not an academic, I'm not researching these issues, but I'm really proud to be associated with, with an organization that says we are here to use the force of business for long term good. And maybe we don't have all the answers how to do that, but that's what we're going to work on. And I know that you not only on your macro level, working in such a high utility space for humanity, but also on a. On a more micro level, have taken a role in mentoring particularly young women who come back from maternity leave. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah. And look, I didn't know about this future generation, but edhec as I think being one of the most innovative business schools that I've heard in France, I mean, look, when I joined I was 19 or 20 and I knew nothing. So I chose because it was a good ranking, let's say admit. And then I've always followed, I mean, this. Yeah, very innovative. Why do I do what I'm doing about this? So there's one big feeling of me being a woman. I think most women need to support each other and there are different women supporting different ways. I found that I came back, so I was in startups for two out of my three children and I didn't take a leave. And I realized when I had my second, I was lucky to be in a large corporate and having that midwife that was amazing and told me who made people think, or women think that they had to take no maternity leave and go back to work in three weeks. Who said that? Politicians who said that she was challenging me. She was 63 when she gave birth to my second child. And she made me realize that I needed to take this, you know, the time and the pace. And I had, you know, it was difficult for that second one or more difficult, I guess. And then I went back to school. I was going to say no, I went back to work and of course I took four months, you know, one month before or three weeks, I can't remember. Then three months after. And then suddenly I was not entitled to the full year of, you know, whatever benefits and support I say, I'm thinking, this is really warm. I got into fights, not necessarily with my management, with some men friends that were like, well, you left. I'm like, yeah, because you can't have it. So we can have that weird conversation and just recognize that I didn't make a baby to be on holidays, you know, I am actually.

It's definitely not a holiday. Yeah, holidays, yeah.

That's when I realized and I was young and I was stubborn as a woman, proud, thinking that I made the best thing in the world having babies and realizing that I love my job. But I was considered as someone that took some time off, like at the beach. And then I went to see women struggling to go back and saying, well, I can't get another job. Are they putting me back and negotiating. I said, no, no, you have to be stronger than that. You are better than you were before because you know better. You know how hard it is. You know how to fight. Focus, although you haven't slept, you know so much more. And those women, you just put the power back in their heads. I mean, all of us have it and we should deserve that recognition. So I only mentor in that way. I look at the resume and I say, why don't you talk about all the things that you can do that you know, that you didn't realize you knew how to do? It's not only your school or your job, it's beyond. And some of our friends, the men, cannot put that. But you need to be a little bit stubborn like I am. I think you need to take some hit. So I did. I was told that my bonus was the price of my stroller. And then that one made me laugh a little bit, but not so much. So, yeah, those things, you know, you just take notes and think, okay, we'll have our revenge. However, having said that, we're not equals, men and women. We are not. We're just so different in that world. We need difference. So, yeah, just women after babies are weak physically and mentally, we need to get their power back on. And when it's on, God, they do. Greatness. That's what I realized. That's the only thing that motivates me now. Think about that new world we live in. My kids go behind me. So I closed the door today because it's a podcast and the sound needs to be neat. But I got locked myself 20 hours a day and then a lot of them pass by behind my screen. And all my network boss interviews, people have seen those kids. And someone told me, actually it humanized the employees, it humanized the workers. And I do appreciate that you know that say, because I don't come with a burden. I come with great skills thanks to them. But I also have to admit, they're around me all the time. So when they saw that I could handle a talk, a meeting with them around next to me one time was one of the best time. I think we were on that zoom with many people. And the second my 9 year old came and just gave me a kiss and left and the entire screen saw it. And look, I didn't pay him to do this. This is who we are. We're human, we love each other and we show it. And I think people were not used to that. So of course there is the jokes that you live Your video and you go pee and then everyone sees you. That's the bad way. But it made us human. It democratized the fact that you were human. We are not machines.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That's what I liked about the kids in this.

So you are the mother to a teenager, the mentor to women at a middle stage of their career. I would imagine. Very often. One of the things that keeps me up at night right now is the economy that we are in, for all of its faults, and maybe we need to reorganize it. And that's also another conversation happening at the same time. But I worry about our Ed AT graduates entering the job market this year. There's just no question there's fewer opportunities for them. It's not that there's no opportunity because there's definitely are. And they're well positioned being multilingual and very well educated and having this great brand and all of that. But let's be honest, it's a harder time for them to find that exact right first fit they were hoping for than it was last year or the year before. Do you have any advice for our graduates entering the job market this summer?

Yeah, it's funny because I'm trying to recruit and I can't find. Sweet.

We can help you. We can help you, Meredith.

So please, yeah, do advertise that part. But I'd say, look, Asia is still growing massively. The economy was growing so fast that, yes, it took a hit. Instead of 15%, we'll grow 10%. That's what I can say. So if you were to look at a continent, that it will still grow and have opportunities, look on that side, then I would think that we have to consider two factors. I think the values that you had, and if it's money, then you will have to think differently because money is not where it used to be. That's one. And a lot of bankers and consultants will agree with me, and I've gone through both. So I know it's not the same world that it was 20 years ago, but I would encourage them to think what is going to be necessary to our life tomorrow and then look in that direction. And we saw that when we were on lockdown, our nature was doing better. So there's probably something there. And a lot of people will look at energy or sustainability differently. We see. I think they just need to see the world a little bit differently. And I trust that new generation will be able to. To be honest, they'll be scared, like all of us, to not find the right job There is not one good job. I changed my ambition in terms of I want to be the whatever to I want to experience as many lives as I can because I will only live once. So yeah, if I can tell them, look at Asia, think that money will only come if you look at the world the right way and look at that world that suffered and what we can do better tomorrow because those job will happen there. Now, pragmatically, in Singapore, science and tech is where we'll go. This is where we're hiring. So yeah, that combination of insights, they can make something out of it. I don't have the best recipe right now. That's what I can tell you.

Amazing. Marilyn, thank you so much for your time today. Our whole objective of this podcast, as we discussed, is to. Is to help facilitate the sense of community that we want to make sure our alumni feel no matter where they are. And, you know, we know that some countries are under stricter lockdowns than others. Still, some places within countries are in stricter lockdowns. And I just, I really want to thank you for the empathy and the openness you've shown today in the conversation because this is, you know, exactly what helps people feel less alone. So thank you so much.

Well, you're welcome. And thank you for the opportunity. I just enjoy it so much to be on a podcast. This is so fun.

It is a lot of fun. If people want to learn more about you, about the work that you're doing, where can they find out more?

I usually respond to all my LinkedIn messages, so that's the easiest one because Facebook is for my friends.

Makes sense.

Do try LinkedIn. Really? I have answered many, many graduates and I should usually respond. So just, you know, approach me with the right question. I will answer.

Thank you so much. Have a great evening in Singapore.

Yeah, thank you. You too. Have a good day in London.

Thanks. Impact around the World is an initiative of the pioneering edhec delegations team and edhec alumni. A huge thank you to my fellow country managers, Patricia in California, cece in China, Nilesh in India, and Joyce in Singapore for helping to make these interviews happen. We're committed to building a community beyond the classroom for you, our 46,000 alumni in over 125 countries. Follow us on Twitter at edecalumni or visit the alumni website Alumni. Edec. Edu to find out more about how you can connect with the EDDEC community close to you and around the world. Thanks for listening.

Sa.