By AWE Staff
Rowena is the Global Research & Development Vice President for Supplements at Pfizer Consumer Healthcare based in New Jersey. She graduated from University of Oxford, Oxford, UK with a bachelor and a master’s degree in Natural Sciences. While born in the UK, Rowena sees herself as an international having lived in the UK, USA, Germany, Canada, Morocco and Switzerland.
Rowena has accumulated over 25 years experience in consumer health and beauty industries including broad experience managing both upstream design and downstream delivery programs in both sectors. Rowena’s track record and focus has been on combining consumer insights with scientific innovation to deliver against consumer and business needs. Her mantra has been that R&D is an investment, and you have to always focus on making the investment worthwhile.
As Vice President of the Global R&D Franchise for Dietary Supplements since July 2010, Rowena helps put the consumer front and center in OTC healthcare. Knowing she’s making a difference in consumers’ lives inspires Rowena.
Rowena spent 24 years at Procter & Gamble honing her consumer focus and working in categories as diverse as laundry detergents, hair care and fine fragrances as well as respiratory and GI OTC healthcare products. Working in different categories, combined with living in multiple countries, has taught Rowena the power of bringing together multiple perspectives to create unique solutions.
She has a passion for driving change and believes in organizational leadership founded on people first. It drives her to push her team to places they’ve never been before. It also is the starting point for Rowena’s passion for supporting people to be the best they can be, especially women. This has made her active in women’s career development in every leadership role she has had including setting up new diversity groups in both the UK and now in Madison, NJ.
Rowena has been married for 25 years and has two teenagers, a son and a daughter. As a family they are involved in giving back to the community through working with the homeless and those struggling to make ends meet.
Rowena enjoys riding horses, reading, traveling to new places and friends at the table with good fare. Riding has been a constant life reminder. Horses don’t care what you say, but are very tuned into what you do and react to that. Trying to truly walk the walk is a constant inspiration.