Meet Sónia Dias, Director, Quality Assurance - Research!

ACADEMIA AND MOTIVATION

I was born in Chaves, a charming small town in the north of Portugal, where people are well known for their hospitality, openness, and greatness of character, the strong sense of responsibility, and the enormous capacity to work. Their slogan is ‘better to break than to twist’. These are values that I identify with and that I try to make present in different dimensions of my life. Ever since I could remember, my dream was to become a doctor so I could help people, in particular, a psychiatrist because I was fascinated with the human mind and behaviour. I entered the Pharmaceutical Sciences course at the University of Porto, and although I had the chance to pursue medicine, I understood that was not by vocation. My curiosity about different areas of science, chemistry, pharmacology, and pharmaceutical technology, made a degree in pharmaceutical sciences a natural choice.

WHY BIAL?

Choosing BIAL was an easy and obvious choice. I saw an announcement in the newspaper looking for someone to join the pharmaceutical development team with the main responsibility of preparing the CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) documentation to support the regulatory activities where BIAL was operating. Throughout the recruitment process, I had the opportunity to talk with different people and understood that BIAL was a unique working environment. The values, based on innovation, excellence, rigour, and strong ethical values, were aligned with what I wanted for my professional future. And just like me, BIAL also had a dream: I wanted to help people and BIAL wanted to provide new medicines for humanity to improve people’s lives. It seemed the perfect place for me.

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO WORK AT BIAL?

BIAL has always given me the chance to take on new projects and learn and develop new skills. After these years, the balance is very positive and I want to believe that I'm part of BIAL’s history, having contributed with my work to improve people’s lives. It is difficult to summarise my experience with BIAL in just one word, but if I had to, I would choose PASSION. I looked up a definition of passion in several dictionaries and everything was related to romance until I found the definition depicted in the Urban Dictionary, which reflects exactly how I feel: “Passion is when you put more energy into something than it takes to do it. It's more than enthusiasm or excitement, passion is ambition materialised into action, putting as much heart, mind, body, and soul into something as possible”.

JOURNEY AT BIAL

I started my history with BIAL in September 2004 and soon I understood that the sky is the limit, it’s just a question of willingness, belief, focus, and hard teamwork. My career started with the pharmaceutical development team, where, despite my responsibility of preparing the CMC documentation to register BIAL’s products across the world, I also had the chance to prepare medication for clinical trials and I was able to follow closely how our products are developed. In April 2005, after BIAL’s 81st anniversary, I was told that my position was moved to the regulatory affairs team and that I would start the week after with the new team. Over 18 years I was very happy managing the regulatory activities of BIAL’s products in Latin America, French West Africa, Europe, and Asia. In recent years I was more dedicated to new chemical entities, interacting with R&D and with partners in the USA, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, and Australia, an experience that, with no doubt, highly contributed to my professional growth and expanded knowledge. In 2024, I was surprised again with a new challenge: I was asked if I would be available to manage the Quality Assurance Research team, part of the Quality department. My first reaction was surprise, the second was curiosity and the third was certainty that the time had come for a change. It has been an enriching experience, which allowed me to have interactions with almost all of BIAL’s internal departments and affiliates, with a focus on improving our efficiency, simplifying our processes, and making them more flexible.