Mary Leamy
Vice President - Human Resources & Global Technical Operations BioMarin Pharmaceutical
Mary Leamy is Vice President of Human Resources for Global Technical Operations & Corporate Groups at BioMarin. With over 25 years of HR leadership experience across global, European, and site-level roles, she specialises in organisation design, talent development, change management, and building high‑performing matrix teams. Before joining BioMarin, Mary spent more than a decade in senior HR roles at Pfizer and began her career in talent at Kerry. She is known for her progressive, inclusive approach to leadership and her focus on enabling business success through people‑driven transformation.
Seminars
What does it look like when a people leader operates beyond the traditional HR remit, and how do you build the enterprise relationships and commercial credibility to do it with authority? Explore how CHROs and CPOs in life sciences organizations of different sizes and stages are expanding their scope, taking on board engagement, commercial strategy, ESG, and enterprise accountability, while continuing to lead a high-performing people function. Learn what the CPO+ role demands in terms of personal resilience, stakeholder management, and leadership identity, and what organizations must do to create the conditions that allow people leaders to operate at their full potential.
- What expanding the people remit beyond HR actually requires, in terms of capability, credibility, and personal leadership
- How CPO+ leaders are navigating board relationships, commercial decisions, and enterprise accountability alongside their core people responsibilities
- What life sciences organizations of different sizes and stages need from their most senior people leaders right now
- How to build the conditions that allow a CHRO or CPO to operate at the full extent of their potential
- How can HR leaders support the rapid scale up of technical operations while preserving culture, employee experience, and leadership continuity in a highly regulated life sciences environment?
- Discover how BioMarin built and scaled a manufacturing site in Ireland from start up to nearly 600 employees, before evolving HR support from a local model to a global technical operations remit spanning Ireland, the US, and corporate functions
- Learn how BioMarin embedded succession planning within technical operations, enabling sustainable leadership coverage across a population of more than 2,000 employees supported by a lean HRBP team, offering practical insights for HR teams balancing growth, complexity, and long-term capability building
This interactive Q&A explores how life sciences organizations can scale operations, capability, and workforce complexity without losing clarity, engagement, and organizational discipline no matter what their size. Drawing on the case studies, this session focuses on how to balance growth with simplicity.
