Blog
Ingenza recently welcomed Lisa Fraser as the company’s first Senior Project Manager. Lisa brings extensive leadership and project management experience to her new role, and she will no doubt be instrumental in driving Ingenza’s strategic goals and supporting its pioneering work in biotechnology. In this blog, we get to know more about Lisa and how her role as project management provides a more structured approach and scalability as the organisation grows.
From Scotland to Singapore and back again
I am a local girl, having grown up in in Penicuik, which is just a few miles from where Ingenza is now situated. I did my undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, and after graduating, I moved straight into an industry role, spending four years in pre-clinical and then clinical quality assurance before focussing my career in clinical research. I then became a clinical research associate and followed a twenty year career path in clinical project management. During my career, I have been lucky enough to spend 15 years in Singapore, holding project management and senior leadership positions at a global contract research organisation, where I was ultimately responsible for delivering a large project portfolio and leading a team of project managers across Asia Pacific.
When our children reached school age, my husband and I decided to move back to Scotland for their education. After our return, I launched a successful freelance consultancy business, providing quality assurance, project management and medical writing services to both clinical and consumer research clients. This gave me the flexibility I wanted to help my children through their school years. When our children were older – one at university and the other about to finish school – I reconsidered my career options, and it felt like the right time to return to a full-time industry role. That’s when I was contacted by a recruiter about a brand new senior project manager role at Ingenza. I was excited by the opportunity, I really liked the people and the vision, and here I am!
Building a stronger project management framework
My previous work in clinical research focused on downstream drug development, from first-in-human clinical trials through to bringing new therapies to market. In contrast, at Ingenza, I’m involved in the much more upstream stages of product development, which gives me an insight into the whole development lifecycle. My role as Senior Project Manager is twofold; firstly, I manage the successful delivery of Ingenza’s projects according to agreed scope, cost and timeline – often referred to as the ‘triple constraints’ of project management. My focus is on fostering collaboration with our customers and the Ingenza scientific and technical teams, to ensure we provide solutions that meet stakeholder requirements. The second aspect is keeping all of Ingenza’s projects aligned with the company’s overall growth objectives. My days are highly varied, but around 80-90 per cent of my time is spent communicating through emails, meetings or personal conversations with the scientists, customers and other project stakeholders.
Ingenza’s rationale for establishing the new senior project manager role was to implement a more structured approach to managing projects that would ensure consistency of delivery across the portfolio and scalability as the organisation grows, and this is a vital part of my role here. By standardising our approach, we can create a robust project management framework where every customer receives the same high quality experience – no matter who manages their project. Our new framework is still in progress, but is built around the five project management process groups that will be familiar to Project Management Professionals: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. To support this, we’re concurrently developing a project management toolkit with standardised processes, best practices, standard templates and project monitoring tools, helping to streamline project execution, and support project oversight and onboarding of new project managers – whether they come from within Ingenza or externally. This will ensure that we can scale effectively while maintaining high standards. Traditionally, Ingenza projects have been managed by scientific leads, but my dedicated project management function frees up our scientists to focus on delivering the technical project deliverables, rather than on operational and administrative tasks. As Ingenza expands further, our project management team will inevitably grow, and I’d love to see the project management function expand too, both with internal talent transitioning into these roles and by welcoming new project management professionals from outside the company.
Shaping the future at Ingenza
It’s incredible to witness the science behind drug and product development, but what excites me most about being at Ingenza is the opportunity to work alongside passionate scientists and contribute to a growing, innovative company. Having experienced similar growth phases – especially during my time in Singapore – I find it rewarding to build and mentor high performing project teams. As I help expand the project management function, I look forward to shaping a solid, scalable framework that will support Ingenza’s long-term success. There’s no doubt that exciting things lie ahead!