Sally

PR&D Administrator at DCM

18 years ago, in 2001, I started at DCM as an export employee, admittedly after having successfully passed the longest job interview of my life. But when I saw the job offer, I knew right away this was something for me. I had already gained some experience as a management assistant, but I felt particularly attracted by the international and versatile character of the vacancy. The job advertisement was written by our Export Manager at that time, who later became Managing Director of DCM. 

In those early years, I learned a lot thanks to the contacts with Turkish and Algerian customers for the construction of football pitches and when we started distributing our fertilisers in Greece, but also thanks to the relationships that we maintained with the governments and professional organizations to enable the sale of our products. It allowed me to discover a big part of the world while sitting behind my desk.

In 2004, I went on a 'semi' world tour for seven months. Over time, the export department started to grow and my job shifted more and more towards purely administrative support to our Managing Director to become less export-oriented. 

In 2016, my superior retired. Since then, I have been responsible for the administrative support of the research and development department at DCM. So after 15 years, I suddenly had a new job and new colleagues. It was quite challenging, but it certainly also felt like a welcome breath of fresh air.

My overall tasks can be divided into two main parts. On the one hand, I support our R&D manager in the day-to-day running of her department and the research groups. This ranges from agenda management to the follow-up of Flemish and European research projects, organizing trips and conferences for R&D colleagues, ordering products for research, etc.

On the other hand, I spend a lot of time on contract management: before talks can be started with research centres, potential suppliers, etc., confidentiality contracts have to be drawn up. In addition, there are often contracts for the transfer of materials and, in the best case, of course, cooperation agreements. This is quite a job, but very interesting. Moreover I manage the brand portfolio, a task that I took over from my previous function. Since 2016, I have also taken on the role of internal trustee at DCM, a task that I share with another colleague.

What I really enjoy about my job is the variety. Moreover, a certain autonomy in the execution of tasks is expected. I like working together with our colleagues from R&D, Compliance, the Biorationals Expert Team and Scientia Terrae. The network of our R&D department and the biotechnology sector in general are constantly evolving, which makes DCM an exciting work environment.