You Can't Drive Change Without Delivering Results: LIVE with Vanessa Clemendot, CSCO at Sanofi

In this article, we revisit this LIVE interview, which gave us the opportunity—among other things—to learn about supply chains in the beauty and pharmaceutical industries, his philosophy on leadership and career development, and his insights into the major challenges ahead for our industries (accelerating cycles, AI, sustainability, and a patient-centric approach). The interview is further enriched by practical advice and a Q&A session.

“I decided exactly one year ago—I’ll be celebrating my one-year anniversary next Tuesday—to continue my career at Sanofi.” Today, I ’m a CSCO, which means I’m in charge of the supply chain for the Sanofi Group, a major French pharmaceutical company that itself has three divisions:

For Vanessa, beauty (L’Oréal) and health (Sanofi) go hand in hand: “I usually say it’s beauty from the inside and beauty from the outside. And both are equally important. I think they really have different kinds of importance, but they’re both important.”

“The fundamentals of the job remain the same (planning, scheduling, opening distribution centers), and the main differences lie in the constraints and structure of the models —‘it’s kind of like the world turned upside down.’ And for me, that makes the experience incredibly enriching. One of the reasons I made the switch was that I wanted to keep growing and learning.”

At L’Oréal, the go-to-market strategy is rich and complex (Amazon 1P/3P, retailers, direct-to-consumer), involving “Supplys” tailored to the variety of channels, while manufacturing is more integrated. Conversely, at Sanofi, the go-to-market strategy remains simple (approximately 75% of volumes go to distributors), but the manufacturing side is significantly more complex (APIs, drug substances, DP), with long cycle times and stringent regulations. A major differentiator in the healthcare sector is cold chain management, down to -80 °C.

Vanessa admits she loves a challenge and solving problems; she places performance at the heart of her work ethic : “It’s an incredibly important concept to me, and it’s also something I learned during my years at L’Oréal. You deliver—you commit to delivering something, and you deliver it. It’s really almost a matter of professional integrity.”

According to her, her progress was made possible by her love of a challenge and the fact that she took the risk time and again of accepting“stretching” roles. The people she met were also crucial: “There are two types of key people: those who are sometimes difficult to deal with, but who also help you grow. And then there are mentors who gave me confidence in my potential. I think it took me a little while to get my engine revving. I had plenty of doubts.”

Her vision of leadership has evolved over time; she admits to having been a “horrible micromanager” when she had access to the systems, and that losing access to those tools paradoxically accelerated her shift toward delegation, structured autonomy, and elevating the role. Today, she seeks out teams that share common values and a shared vision, without requiring that team members have identical profiles, and she values complementary skills.

Vanessa says that living abroad has been incredibly enriching for her. In Canada (particularly in Quebec), she observes that women play a prominent role and that there is an “inherent” diversity that opens up new opportunities, especially in technical fields: “Women have quite incredible power.”

The Canadian market strikes her as a hybrid between the UK and the US—dynamic and unconventional—offering a comprehensive range of distribution channels. In the United States, she encountered a cultural “false friend”—American culture is very different from French culture, and adapting to it takes time. She therefore revised her approach to managing deadlines and communication; rather than simply enforcing deadlines, she prioritizes:

This immersion transformed his management style, prompting him not to impose his own culture but to adapt to local practices. “You shouldn’t assume you know. Until you’re actually there, you don’t know. And it took me several months to truly understand how to work with Americans. I think the reverse was also true, even though we were at a French company. And I think that experience transformed me—honestly—in terms of my relationships with people, my family, and also my approach to management.”

Vanessa identifies a systemic acceleration: the lead times between demand signals and industrial responses are shrinking dramatically, even in the pharmaceutical industry. She emphasizes the need for fast and powerful scenario-modeling tools: monthly IBP cycles based on lengthy Excel simulations (three weeks) are no longer adequate.

“It sounds a bit like a buzzword, but the supply chain profession is going to be fundamentally transformed by AI. We still have a lot of tasks that I consider transactional, and I think we can completely eliminate them with AI agents—and fairly quickly. And as I said not too long ago, I’m truly convinced that I’m part of the last generation that will have worked exclusively with humans.” The field will evolve toward more decisions being made by digital agents “who work at night,” leaving human teams to make informed choices about parameters and decisions in the morning.

In the pharmacy sector in particular, she sees a“go-to-patient” revolution, with a shift toward more delivery and patient-centered services, potentially including related services (e.g., care provided by a nurse). This evolution must be guided by a detailed understanding of patients’ actual needs (some prefer the hospital for social interaction) and rigorous segmentation of products, customers, and consumers.