Read the Conversation
Conversation highlights:
- Mexico as a Strategic Growth Market: Lilly has positioned Mexico as a priority affiliate by consistently delivering on execution and growth commitments.
- Clear Mission Focused on Patient Impact: Celebrating 150 years of existence, the company´s strategy is now centered on expanding patient reach first, with business outcomes following that impact.
- Strong and Sustained Innovation Agenda: A steady flow of launches and new indications is driving long-term relevance across high-burden diseases.
- Clinical Research and Access as Core Enablers: Expanded clinical trials and close collaboration with the health system are key to accelerating innovation and access.
- Digital and AI as Growth Multipliers: Digitalization, AI-driven discovery, and new engagement models are central to scaling operations and medical education.
- Leadership, Talent, and Adaptability: Growth is supported by new capabilities, learning agility, and a culture built to operate on a scale.
EF: What mission were you given when you were appointed?
PP: My journey with Lilly began sixteen years ago as a sales trainee in Brazil. Since then, I have progressed through several roles, including three years at headquarters in Indianapolis, where I focused on supply resilience for a medicine launched last year. I was then appointed as CMO for Latin America and VP for our CardioMetabolic BU for LATAM, before most recently becoming General Manager and President for Mexico. I am proud of how Lilly develops its talent.
Last year was very successful for Lilly Latin America. All launches within the business unit ranked among the best worldwide, across the pharma market in Latin America, and Lilly’s global portfolio.
In 2026, we are celebrating 150 years as a company. Committed to our mission, five key aspects stand out: The first is to continue our strong investment in clinical trials in Mexico, building on the outstanding work led by Karla Alcázar.
Over the past three years, we have successfully positioned Mexico as a priority affiliate for Lilly. The second priority is to continue strengthening that position. This includes a plan to launch two to three new indications or products over the next five years. It is a bold ambition, but both a corporate and personal goal, to bring innovation to Mexico.
Our third priority is to significantly expand our relevance and presence in Mexico. By this, we primarily mean increasing the number of patients we serve by a factor of five. Revenue and other outcomes will naturally follow from that expansion in patient impact. This remains the core priority for the Mexican affiliate.
This third aspect also reflects our ambition for transformative growth. We use this five-times outcome as a key performance indicator to measure progress, with a bold objective of reaching USD 2 billion by 2030. In this context, 2026 will be a pivotal year as we expand our reach and increase the number of patients benefiting from our medicines.
The fourth priority focuses on continuing our close collaboration with the Mexican health sector to bring innovation and access to patients. This includes initiatives such as patient support programs, increasing the number of clinical trials, and supporting efforts to streamline approvals, in line with the government Plan Mexico project.
Finally, the fifth priority is a personal mission for the country and centers on digitalization and AI. Mexico is investing in these areas, and no industry can afford to fall behind without investing in digitalization and automation. We are making several investments across areas, including AI-driven avatars, Salesforce, digital presence, and Lilly 360, our hub for medical education.
To support this digital focus, we are also exploring the use of avatars to interact with physicians, helping them resolve questions related to clinical studies, efficacy, and our medicines more efficiently. Since we cannot reach every physician in person, digital channels are essential to ensure they have the right information to treat patients, and this remains a key area of our current efforts.
EF: What is your pitch to attract resources to Mexico? Why is one dollar invested in Mexico better than invested anywhere else in the Lilly world?
PP: The Mexico affiliate is delivering on what we committed to. That is the main reason headquarters trusts our execution. As an example, our investment in clinical trials in Mexico, from 2019 to 2024, grew fivefold.
Another critical point at the corporate level is the strong growth we have achieved over the past few years. In Mexico alone, we grew by 127 percent year over year in 2025.
Despite this progress, there is still a significant unmet need, with many patients remaining untreated. Around 74 percent of Mexican adults live with overweight or obesity, often with multiple comorbidities that shorten lives and, in many cases, remain untreated at a global level.
Many patients begin treatment for a month and then stop once they see short-term results. However, this is a chronic disease that affects people throughout their lives. Without early and sustained treatment, patients face serious long-term consequences.
Almost eight percent (7.8%) of Mexicans over the age of 60 will develop Alzheimer’s disease. One in eight women in Mexico may develop breast cancer. Our own assessments and questionnaires show that there is still substantial work to be done in how these challenges are addressed.
Our approach to complex diseases is reflected in our pipeline. Around 20 percent of our pipeline consists of novel RNA-based medicines and therapies. These treatments involve a single intervention designed to modify RNA or DNA. While we have not yet fully defined how these products will be brought to market over the next three to four years, including operations, supply management, government collaboration, and patient support, Mexico’s value lies in its consistent delivery of projected growth.
EF: How do you manage growth and the expectations that come with it? What is your advice?
PP: Growth means we need to scale our operations. That effort is directly tied to how we are performing. We need to scale everything. The launches we have delivered are once in a lifetime, and more are still to come.
We are scaling our operations through automation, digitalization, and the development of new capabilities. Some of these launches are different from what Lilly has done in recent years. We are also managing growth by strengthening our team, building capabilities in areas where we previously had less experience, and, when needed, bringing in external expertise.
High expectations are inevitable when you are the most important company in the pharma industry. The real challenge is how we move from 127 percent growth in 2025 versus 2024 to doubling again. In 2026, we are doubling our operations, our presence, and the number of patients we treat.
Leading a company comes with that responsibility. And that responsibility is not about revenue. It is about the patient living with obesity who cannot move or get out of bed, and the Alzheimer’s patient over 60 who can no longer remember their children. That is something we must think about every day when we come to Lilly.
We are moving fast and making discoveries that have not been made before. Our goal was never just to be a medicine company, but an innovative, driven one, and what we are seeing today is the result of a vision set five years ago. I am glad we prepared the ground for what we are experiencing now. What we are doing today will likely have the same, or even greater, impact in five years. The flywheel is spinning faster, and it is fascinating.
EF: How do technology, data, and AI fit into Lilly’s growth strategy, and what capabilities will be most critical as you scale in Mexico and beyond?
PP: On technology and data, we recently announced a collaboration between NVIDIA and Lilly to develop models that simulate how the human body reacts to different assets.
The goal is to build an AI-based model that mimics biological responses and can then be used to identify targets. Once the learning process is established, this creates a powerful flywheel for discovering potential new medicines. Processing more than 150 years of scientific data with AI is something no human could ever do, and bringing these elements together will have a significant impact on how we work.
From a Mexican perspective, we will benefit from this over time, particularly in clinical development and in the application of AI. This includes initiatives such as avatars to help educate physicians about our medicines, as well as connections to our Lilly Store and broader patient-focused digitalization through Lilly 360.
Looking ahead, two capabilities stand out as especially important: adaptability and curiosity. Without adaptability, you fall behind. Curiosity drives continuous learning and learning agility. At the same time, it is essential to be deliberate about what and how you learn; it is easy to get lost in the volume of information. Working in a fast-paced, leading company like Lilly also requires resilience.
In Mexico and across the pharmaceutical healthcare sector, three themes are shaping the future: digital transformation, continued innovation through partnerships, and collaboration to address shared health challenges. Equally important is maintaining a strong focus on high-prevalence diseases, working closely with government partners to bring innovation to patients.
EF: If you had to pick one element from the periodic table, which one would you pick and why?
PP: I would pick carbon number 12 because it can bond with many different things. Sometimes the outcome is not good, but you can mix again, and then it works. Carbon adapts easily to new situations and represents the bonds you can form, whether single or double.
