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Dr Virginia Bastian, Head of People & Culture, RocheDr Virginia Bastian, Head of People & Culture at Roche, brings a strong foundation in business psychology and a PhD in the field. Her career spans consulting and senior HR leadership across global organisations, shaping people strategy in consumer goods, banking and finance, and the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors.
Through this interview, Dr Bastian reflects on how leadership is evolving in a world of constant change. She explores what it means to build strong careers grounded in trust and opportunity, to align people with strategy through genuine dialogue, and to guide organisations forward with clarity, resilience, and long-term purpose. Her perspective is shaped by experience, disciplined learning and a belief that lasting impact comes from connecting the right people to the right challenges at the right time.
Leading Through Connection, Clarity and Continuous Growth
My career has been shaped by meaningful opportunities and the people who believed in me before I fully believed in myself. When opportunity appears, I’ve learned you must step into it, even when it feels larger than your current experience and then justify that trust through consistent performance. What has mattered most is not just the opportunity itself but the support that came with it. Leaders and colleagues who challenged me, provided honest feedback and helped me grow into responsibilities I wasn’t yet sure I could handle.
Mentoring, coaching and direct conversations have been essential on that journey. I value people who tell me what I do well, where I can improve and how I can increase my impact. This combination of opportunity, support and constructive feedback has shaped my own development and it’s the same environment I work to create for others in my role as an HR professional.
Connecting the Right People to Drive Real Impact
Over the past year, my primary focus has been connecting people. No matter the objective, progress only happens when the right people come together with clarity around what we’re trying to achieve and why.
I stay firmly customer and people-centric, starting with what truly matters to the business, thinking end-to-end and defining the impact we want to create from the outset. Once the outcome is clear, I plan backwards, bringing together the relevant stakeholders and perspectives needed to deliver the strongest result. Aligning people, purpose and execution sits at the heart of my role.
We’re operating in a new reality across Germany and Europe where uncertainty and volatility are constant. This demands disciplined decisions today to remain competitive and prepare for the future. That’s why collaboration across the broader ecosystem is essential. Business leaders, policymakers and institutions must engage in honest dialogue to build a shared understanding of priorities, constraints and opportunities. It takes courage, but this is how we enable sustainable growth, long-term prosperity and the society we want to build.
Why Dialogue Between Business and People Functions Matters
I see an obvious dialogue between business leadership and the people and culture function. Nothing happens in isolation. It’s not a one-way cascade but a continuous loop. When we set a strategic direction from a business perspective, the real work begins with translating that ambition into a clear people agenda. That means asking the right questions as an organisation and finding solutions that truly enable execution.
This often requires acting as a sparring partner, challenging decisions to achieve better outcomes. It means understanding the implications, the preconditions and what it will genuinely take to get us where we want to go. This shared dialogue clarifies long-term ambition and ensures it translates into people policies, practices, behaviours and ultimately the culture we’re working to cultivate.
“Business leaders, policymakers and institutions must engage in honest dialogue to build a shared understanding of priorities, constraints and opportunities. It takes courage, but this is how we enable sustainable growth, long-term prosperity and the society we want to build.”
Equally important is avoiding an activity-driven mindset. Plans and initiatives only matter if they create real business impact. Clarity on the desired end state, transparency on what success looks like and a clear view of what will be different ensure we measure results, not just progress on tasks.
To make this operational, collaboration is essential. Leadership today requires looking beyond individual remits and working end to end, intentionally involving the right stakeholders and perspectives to drive meaningful, lasting outcomes.
Building Capabilities for an AI-Accelerated World
The digital age didn’t arrive with AI. It was already here. AI is now accelerating how we do business, innovate, serve customers and patients and work across every role and function.
The real work lies in building the capabilities to use it well whilst addressing the concerns and uncertainties that naturally come with change. This starts with transparency: being clear with employees and their representatives about how AI will be used, what it’s for and the rules of engagement. A strong framework is essential for defining purpose, boundaries and expectations when deploying AI-driven tools and applications.
From there, the focus shifts to skills. We’ve taken a genuine approach to capability building, offering everyone in the organisation, regardless of role, a structured learning journey. This includes understanding what AI is, where it can be applied, its ethical dimensions and limitations, where human judgement remains critical and how to strengthen practical use, from effective prompting to preparing for agentic AI.
Above all, the pace of adoption must match organisational reality. Technology may be ready, but transformation only succeeds when people, skills and clarity move forward together.
What Modern Leadership Actually Requires
Today’s leaders are required to play many roles at once: staying technologically fluent, adapting to constant change, leading transformation and providing direction even when the path ahead isn’t apparent. That balance of clarity and flexibility is no longer optional. It’s the nature of leadership now.
This requires continuous learning. Leaders must keep their own skills and experiences current whilst also bringing their teams and organisations along on that same journey of growth and development.
At the same time, resilience becomes a core leadership responsibility. Leaders have to be intentional about creating the conditions that sustain performance: safe spaces to reflect, learn, pause, recharge and openly discuss complex challenges. They must also take care of themselves to lead effectively. This combination of adaptability, learning and personal resilience is what leadership looks like in the world we’re navigating today.
The work ahead requires us to stay grounded in what matters: authentic dialogue, shared purpose and the discipline to translate ambition into action. Progress happens when we connect the right people, challenge assumptions constructively and build the capabilities that allow organisations to move forward with confidence. That’s the leadership work that creates lasting impact.
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