From Cost Center to Value Driver: Rethinking Quality in the Life Sciences with Marcia Baroni

Nick Capman talks with Marcia Baroni—a microbiologist with 27 years in global pharma-quality leadership—about reframing quality from a controllable expense to a strategic asset.

Baroni contrasts “bad-quality” costs (scrap, recalls, deviations) with “good-quality” investments (testing, preventive controls, oversight) and explains why the latter pay for themselves in resilience and brand value. She illustrates the stakes with a $600 million nationwide OTC-drug recall caused by chemically treated pallets—an error frontline staff flagged but a weak quality culture ignored.

The conversation dives into building psychological safety and metrics that drive the right behaviors, not under-reporting, shifting quality from “policing” to cross-functional partnership, and practical first steps executives can take to gauge their current maturity and start investing for future yield.

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