Edda Guerrero: 'Very, Very Happy' With Balance Between Personal And Professional Life

Edda Guerrero's promotion two years ago was a perfect cap to her seven years of experience at the company and her 17 years in the pharmaceutical business. She was named president and general manager of Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, giving her P&L (profit and loss) responsibility, for, among other things, the company's projected $130 million of medicines' sales in the region. She is also responsible for marketing, distribution and more than 100 employees.

But the best part of the new job for Guerrero is what it means to her personally. She was able to return to Puerto Rico (her homeland, after 19 years of living away), and she was able to bring her five-year-old son, who in just two years -- including lots of time with his grandparents -- has become bilingual.

Guerrero was born in Arecibo, a large town on the northwest coast of the island. She received a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico and then applied and was accepted to a master's program at Purdue University in Indiana, becoming the only member of her family to move away from the island. She meant to go back when she graduated, but instead accepted a job as a sales representative at Warner Lambert, where she worked for the next 10 years.

In 1996, she joined Bristol-Myers Squibb as associate director, Product Planning in the neurosciences area (now known as Global Marketing). She then went on to become a director in that group, a senior director in the company's dermatology business, and then area vice president, U.S. Neuroscience Sales. Guerrero served as region business head for a primary care region of the U.S. before assuming her current assignment.

"All of the opportunities I've had, they've helped me grow in different ways, and they've all contributed to enhancing my skills and knowledge of the company and the product portfolio," Guerrero says. "But the fact that this job brings me back here and touches my personal life makes it particularly special. I'm a little biased toward my current role."

There have been trade-offs. For example, her husband has had to remain in New Jersey, but according to Guerrero, he loves to fly and doesn't mind the commute to Puerto Rico each weekend. "In the wintertime, he's one of the few people in New Jersey with a tan all of the time," she says. "That helps him with his work/life balance."

For her, the best thing about Bristol Myers Squibb is the people and the policies the company has in place to retain them, including its extensive career development capacity. "I don't think I would have this job if the company didn't have a clear and consistent focus on people development and giving managers the tools to help us continue to grow."

Recently she has begun putting her experience as a female executive to work as the leader of a new initiative known as the Latin American Women's Leadership Council (LAWLC), an effort to increase the numbers of women in the company's Latin American ranks. "We cannot document this, but we feel that Latin America, in terms of women and diversity, is maybe where the U.S. was 10 years ago," Guerrero says. "We're trying to create an environment that accelerates the development of women by facilitating mentoring and networking, and by sending female executives to the market to share experiences with women in those countries so they see it can be done."

As part of the effort, Guerrero herself has spoken to women in Brazil about such subjects as choosing a mentor. "You have to like the person," she says. "There has to be some chemistry. Identify somebody who really enjoys mentoring and someone you can learn from."

Heloisa Simao, marketing director for Bristol-Myers Squibb Brazil and a member of the LAWLC, says that Guerrero is "a natural leader. She is able to get people talking by phone, which is not easy to do. She's a good listener. She can energize people. She can consider different perspectives and points of view and she's very results-focused."

An avid traveler, who has gone to Europe and Asia, and hopes to go to India next, Guerrero says she likes to eat -- "if it's ethnic, I love it, I love to try new things" -- and to read. Her most recent favorite books are Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy -- "It's really tied to what we're trying to do in terms of executing our new corporate strategy" -- and Letters from Burma, by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese political leader who was placed under house arrest after her country was taken over by a military junta.

Guerrero says Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma, is the person in the world she'd most like to have lunch with. "I think it would be really interesting to meet a woman of such strong values and beliefs."

As to Puerto Rico, she says it is a place of contrasts: mountains and beaches, small towns and cities, the World Salsa Congress and the classical Casals Festival. "I think we have the best of both worlds," she says.

And what is the most important thing to know about Edda? "I'm very proud of my accomplishments, I'm very proud of my heritage and very, very happy with the balance I've been able to strike between my personal life and my business life," she says. "It is not easy. But it can be done and I think Bristol-Myers Squibb provides the right environment for it to happen."