HBA Canada Region Member Spotlight: Danièle Bolap

What is your current job title? 
I am a dynamic and inquisitive pharmaceutical professional with over 20 years of project management, health analytics, and market access experience. My current job title is Senior Manager, Access - Private Sector at Pfizer.
 
Why did you join the HBA?
I joined the HBA for the continuous learning experiences and opportunity to develop my skills as a leader. The HBA provides an enormous amount of resources to enhance skills and knowledge, and support career development. Being interested in furthering my career, joining a professional association related to my industry, and with a focus on issues that I am passionate about making for a great fit. The opportunity to connect with experienced senior executives and enhance my network through the mentoring program while building my skillset was also an attractive feature. Finally, I wanted to be continuously inspired and engaged in topics related to women, leadership, being our true and best selves, as well as confronting gender and racial injustice.
 
What are your interests outside of work and the HBA?
I love to learn. For me, life is an opportunity to grow. Outside of work, I love to engage in various learning experiences: learning other languages or via creative outlets such as sketchnoting. I also find ways to stay active. I am an avid soccer player and runner. Some of my creative solutions to work problems have emerged while running. Finally, like many, I enjoy travelling and particularly documenting my travel through photography and making photo books.
 
What or who inspires you?
I am inspired by my past. My great-grandmother, who was born in the early 1900s, was illiterate but not uneducated. She was known as an herbalist and provided her family’s sustenance. She valued education and encouraged her daughters to pursue schooling — a rare attitude in a community where many did not continue with education beyond elementary school. I am named after her and every day I am inspired by her resilience, belief in the empowerment of literacy, and vision for her family (and maybe the pharmaceutical connection as well).
 
What’s your favourite quote?
My favorite quote is “The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes.” It’s by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from her essay, “We Should All Be Feminists”. Her books have encouraged me to see things in a way I never thought of before, figure out where I fit in as both a black person and a woman and navigate always being the only black person in the room and feeling like I am under a spotlight.