Listening as a Leadership Superpower: A Conversation with Brigitte Nolet (Roche Canada)

How do you embed patient voices across a complex, research-driven organization—and across a country’s health system? Brigitte Nolet shares how her own journey with psoriatic arthritis shaped her leadership, why Roche Canada created a Chief Patient Experience Officer role held by someone with lived experience, and how collaboration across government, industry, and patient groups can accelerate access to innovative medicines in Canada.Why you should listenA leader’s lived experience guiding decisions that affect millions of patients.Practical ways to make patient inclusivity real (beyond town halls and surveys).Inside Roche Canada’s Patient Co-Creation Council and what makes it work.Why the new Chief Patient Experience Officer role matters—and how it was co-designed with 65+ stakeholders.What Canada can learn from Switzerland and Belgium on integrated care and health data.A candid look at Canada’s access timelines and the momentum to improve them.Actionable takeaways for leaders: listen more, connect more, and don’t anchor in your own beliefs.Episode highlights (timestamps)00:00 – Welcome & introductions.01:00 – Brigitte’s path: leading Roche Canada and why her psoriatic arthritis shapes how she leads.03:45 – Roche Canada at a glance: ~2,000 employees, end-to-end from research to commercialization.06:00 – Four countries, four systems: what moving internationally taught Brigitte about continuity of care.11:30 – System design that works: a Swiss clinic model with same-visit labs + 30-minute consults; Belgium’s fast health-data platforms.14:00 – Listening as a leadership discipline: the Patient Co-Creation Council and learning from rare-disease communities.19:00 – Creating the Chief Patient Experience Officer role (must include lived experience); how 65+ stakeholders shaped it.22:00 – Momentum beyond industry: Canada’s Drug Agency adding patient voice at the board level.26:00 – Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC): sector snapshot (100k+ jobs, $3.2B annual R&D, $18B economic activity) and the shared goal of faster access.29:30 – The frontier: where biology meets informatics—gene therapies, CAR-T, subcutaneous, oral oncology, AI.31:30 – What’s next: societal perspectives in HTA, interprovincial data interoperability, and cutting red tape.35:00 – Rapid-fire: leadership mantra—“listen more, connect more”—and book recs (Kate Quinn).Want to Share Your Voice?If you’re a patient or caregiver, you can join Patient Voice Connect to share your experiences and help shape healthcare here.Join our email list to get new episode updates here.Together, we can bring more voices to the table and shape the future of healthcare.Share this episode, leave a review, and follow Patient Voice Partners on LinkedIn to help amplify more voices.