Chris Isaacs

Published 31 August 2026

When a fresh graduate who thought marketing was his destiny answers a call to pick up clinical trial faxes, he could not have guessed he was at the start of a remarkable journey.

In this episode, Chris Isaacs—Novartis’ Region Europe Patient Safety Manager and President of PIPER—takes us from the hum of the fax machine to the complex, people-driven world of pharmacovigilance.

Chris tells a story of stubborn curiosity and grit: juggling weekend shifts, a full-time job and an Open University life sciences degree, building a CRO department from scratch, and navigating the twists that led him back to Novartis. Along the way he learns that career progress is part persistence, part seizing the right challenge, and entirely about making work fun and meaningful.