Sarah Holmes-Klotz
Global Head of People and Culture Santhera Pharmaceuticals
Sarah Holmes‑Klotz, GPHR is Global Head of People & Culture at Santhera Pharmaceuticals, based in Basel. She brings broad international HR leadership experience across biotech and life sciences, with deep expertise in talent development, change management, and building high‑performing global organisations.
Seminars
- How can a biotech company safeguard its entrepreneurial spirit during a period of hypergrowth and commercialization?
- Learn how Santhera embedded cultural ambassadors, prioritized hiring for cultural fit, and elevated employee experience as a strategic driver of scale
- Even while growing at record pace, Santhera preserved its core identity and strengthened engagement, ensuring culture became a catalyst rather than a casualty of expansion
This interactive Q&A examines the culture challenge at the heart of hypergrowth, how to move fast enough to capture opportunity while protecting the identity, values, and ways of working that made the organization worth scaling in the first place. Drawing on both the Day Zero culture build and the ambassador-led approach to hypergrowth, participants will examine what is truly non-negotiable in culture at scale.
- What cultural elements are genuinely non-negotiable as an organization scales, and how do you protect them?
- How do you hire for cultural fit at speed without using it as cover for lack of diversity?
- What role do people leaders and managers play in sustaining culture when HR can no longer be everywhere?
- How do you know when culture is starting to erode, and what are the early warning signals?
