Drawing from his background as a foreign correspondent for NRK and an advisor for Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Hansson took forum participants through how Roche has put sustainability at the core of its business by making all of its employees ambassadors for sustainability and working hand-in-hand with both public and private sector stakeholders.
“From patients to governments, our stakeholders have extremely high expectations of us when it comes to sustainability. We can’t just talk the talk – we really need to walk the walk when it comes to these issues,” he remarked.
As the world’s largest biotech company, Hansson further noted that it was critical to have a deep local understanding when translating Roche’s global sustainability commitment across borders, a point he illustrated by discussing how different his native Northern Norway is from Basel, the Swiss city that plays home to Roche’s global headquarters.
“For us, it was very important to identify focus areas in Norway so that we could show our Norwegian stakeholders that we are a credible partner that shares key goals critical to the development of society,” he concluded.