Read the Conversation
Meeting highlights:
- Thermo Fisher’s Strategic Presence in Costa Rica: Since launching its shared services center in 2016, Thermo Fisher has scaled its Costa Rica operations to over 1,000 employees, becoming a key hub in its global operations.
- Leadership Philosophy & Culture: A transparent, collaborative, and flat organizational culture ensures that every team member feels connected to the mission and empowered to contribute.
- Costa Rica’s Global Role in Life Sciences: Costa Rica is emerging as a global leader not only in advanced manufacturing but also in talent and sector innovation.
- Impact, Mission & Growth: The Costa Rica site consistently delivers high-impact results while aligning with the mission to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.
- Message to Stakeholders: Continued investment, trust, and cross-sector collaboration are key to unlocking even greater growth and opportunity for Costa Rica’s life sciences ecosystem.
EF: Thermo Fisher has a significant footprint, and you are leading its progress. Could you elaborate on your current priorities and your role within Thermo Fisher in Costa Rica?
FD: Thermo Fisher opened its shared services operation in Costa Rica back in 2016 with the primary objective of supporting all back-office operations in North America. Costa Rica’s strong talent pool presented an excellent opportunity to expand our footprint here.
Since then, we've experienced consistent growth, up to over 1,000 contributors in our shared services organization. Our focus now is to become the backbone for back-office operations across the company, ensuring we deliver real value, reduce overall costs, and drive sustainable long-term efficiency.
We want to enable our colleagues in the business to concentrate on what truly matters: supporting our customers and enabling them to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. Moreover, we're dedicated to risk reduction by creating a robust framework of processes, enhancing controls, and developing clear guidelines to maintain quality and consistency.
EF: Given your experience living and working across different regions, how does Thermo Fisher balance the varying processes, risk requirements, and controls across its global service centers?
FD: Each market indeed has its nuances, so our strategy focuses on standardizing processes while remaining system-agnostic. This means we implement the right controls and steps regardless of geography or systems involved, making location differences less relevant as we prioritize doing the right things for our customers.
Thermo Fisher operates as a global network, engaging daily with colleagues in Europe and Asia to share best practices and align our work. This collaboration ensures that we continuously improve and deliver seamless services for our customers worldwide.
EF: With such a global operation, managing different time zones and remote teams must be challenging. How do you handle this complexity?
FD: It is indeed a complex environment. My calendar has multiple columns reflecting various time zones, from Manila to Budapest to Sofia, as we coordinate with colleagues worldwide. While it requires strong organization, this global connectivity is what makes Thermo Fisher an attractive place to work.
It energizes not only our current employees but also attracts talent from outside because they see alignment with a purpose-driven mission. This environment enables us to push forward initiatives and continuously improve our services, ultimately driving more work and opportunities for Costa Rica and beyond.
EF: Recently, executives from Thermo Fisher have been visiting Costa Rica. Could you share the importance of your Costa Rica operations to the group?
FD: Every visit is very successful and reinforces the recognition of the talent we have here. Executives gain a closer understanding of the Costa Rican culture and workforce, which I believe is a major strength.
Costa Rica has made clear strides in prioritizing English as a second language in the public education system. This progress means we now attract very capable candidates not only from universities but also from technical high schools through internship programs.
We support these interns with opportunities to continue their education while integrating into our workforce, which is a significant cultural and developmental advantage.
In the past, companies often competed for resources, but here that has never been an issue. Executives often ask how much Costa Rica can grow given its small population, but I firmly believe the country can continue to expand its talent pool.
Every year, thousands of university graduates and high school students with strong English skills enter the job market. The economy is shifting from agriculture and tourism to service-oriented and technology sectors, which offer a great opportunity.
The mindset of the local teams is the right recipe for continued success, evidenced over the last two decades. Executives leave energized and excited about how to further contribute and grow the operations here.
EF: How does this passion from the new generation of leaders blend with the digital agenda and emerging technologies such as AI?
FD: Innovation is a core value for us. We strive to bring together the best ideas, knowledge, and technology to improve how we work. It’s important to instill in all colleagues the mindset not to fear change or technology.
AI has become a daily part of what we do and the objectives we pursue. We actively seek ways to integrate AI into our processes to make them better. This integration is an ongoing journey, and we are succeeding by fostering understanding and acceptance among our teams.
Our work is continuously evolving, and the quicker we adopt tools like AI, the better we can control the narrative. We leverage these technologies to transform both our products and services, ultimately benefiting our customers. Over the past nine years, our growth has been a great testament to how we continue to deliver value and how the company continues to trust what we are doing.
Every team consistently brings new initiatives or improvements to add value to the end-to-end process. This continuous improvement delivery is the number one selling point for us as a center, as a company, and as a country. There hasn’t been a year where we failed to deliver what’s expected, whether in productivity or value-added initiatives. That consistent delivery and the trust placed in the country and our center are what I am most proud of.
EF: Speaking of alignment and growth, what is your leadership style to make all this happen?
FD: We strive for transparency and a horizontal leadership approach. Our company structure is very flat, and leadership levels are minimized.
The culture is about collaboration and working together. From day one, during onboarding, all colleagues are welcomed by directors, including myself, who emphasize that while we have different roles and responsibilities, what I call the "hat" we wear, underneath we are all individuals with the same interests and concerns.
We make ourselves very available and believe strongly in the power of everyone. Success depends on everyone working together. We win as a team and lose as a team. We all need to be united in this journey, and that unified approach drives our continued growth.
EF: You will soon be celebrating 10 years in your leadership role. What final reflections or messages would you like to share on this milestone?
FD: It has been an incredible journey. Since the center started, Thermo Fisher has always been an intense and aggressive company eager to grow and deliver excellent services to clients. Our mission is something we are immensely proud of and often quoted across the company.
In almost 10 years, we have matured and grown what other companies took 20 or even 25 years. The level of maturity and what we have delivered back to the company is a testament to Costa Rican talent and capabilities.
Working with intensity, passion, and as a truly global team has been key. I have deep admiration and appreciation for all those who have been part of this journey because we’ve not only met every objective we've targeted but have often exceeded them ahead of schedule.
EF: Do you have a final message?
FD: There are no limits to how much we can grow and the global impact we can have. It’s about mindset, putting in the right level of effort and dedication.
As a country, we must continue to develop and fully exploit this opportunity, especially considering the evolution of our educational system and talent pool.
With numerous companies investing in and trusting our talent, we need to continuously deliver on that trust and even go a step further to improve. That’s how we will attract more work into the sector and country, leading to more opportunities for everyone here.
