International Women’s Day is about empowering women and the work they do.  To strive for a world free from bias, stereotypes, and discrimination.  This year, in 2024, the theme for International Women’s Day is “Inspire Inclusion”.  It is about the importance of creating an inclusive society where women are valued, respected and empowered to participate fully in all aspects of life.

As a woman, I am very interested in seeing how this is accomplished in the world of business.  My name is Lee Maxwell, and I am the Business Manager at Orion GXP Consulting.  By day, I manage the business and admin in Orion GXP Consulting, and by night, I am currently studying to be a Criminal Psychologist. I find it very hard sometimes to participate in all aspects of life.  Sometimes, when work is busy, I find it hard to have time for family and study; likewise, when assignments are due, family and the house are put on hold for a day or two to complete everything until I can get up to speed and get things back to normal.  I consider myself extremely lucky in the work I do in that I have a very supportive family and a very understanding company that helps me juggle everything I have to do each day to make sure it gets completed.  Because of this, I always feel valued and respected in all aspects of my work and study. 
Here at Orion GXP Consulting, we are very proud to have a predominantly female team, and we asked a couple of members of our team to tell us about what it was like working in the industry as a woman and what their day looked like.
Women in Industry
A typical day - in the car!

A day in the life of – Kay Flahive

No two days are the same when working as a contract QP/QA consultant with Orion GXP. One day, you could be working on Clinical Trial releases into Europe for an Investigational Medicinal Product. This involves preparing the product specification files, review of the batch records, shipping data, deviations, change controls, etc and liaising with the project manager/sponsor on various quality/regulatory queries.  The next, you could be delivering quality-related training, auditing a client site, working on a QMS improvement project, or providing general QA/Reg support on various topics (e.g. technical agreements, submitting a variation to MIA licence), or a mix of the above.

International Womens day
My other bosses – kids and dogs!

The work I am doing in Orion GXP has allowed me to take the knowledge and skills I have amassed with my industrial experience to date and further build on this as each new situation, project, query, etc arises.  As well as the work being very interesting and varied, it is also very rewarding knowing that you are part of the process of assessing new and cutting-edge treatments.

I also love the flexibility and improved work-life balance it provides.  I moved from a 5-day week fully on-site role (that involved a 5:30 am rise to avoid traffic in the Jack Lynch tunnel 😊) to a 4-day week remote role, which allows me to drop/collect kids from school, walk dogs at lunchtime, while still delivering on the client’s needs.

Now, over to one of our UK team members, Nim Tarry!

A day in the life of – Nim Tarry

As an Associate Director and consultant RP/ RPi (in the UK) who works full time, 5 days a week, my clients are at different stages of the processes of WDA(h) licenses in full swing or applications that need submitting.  Their needs are different, some may need QMS support, while others need a QM writing from scratch, I may be needed to provide training and auditing support, so no day is the same and it can feel quite crazy.

My role requires me to be flexible and adaptable, and being flexible is great for me, as I can carry out my work so that it fits around my home life too and vice versa, which creates a fantastic work-life balance for me and my family.  I am able to take the time when I need it, take a breath and walk my crazy cockapoo puppy.  This, for me, is great with the stresses and demands of the role to balance out.

Being a part of the Orion GXP consulting team allows me to feel empowered; things many women would have had to fight for in the past are now just a part of everyday living and working.  Being in a world where there is no prejudice for being a woman and a woman at work is a long way away from where women in the past would have been, and the support received at Orion GXP consulting for its workforce of women just re-enforces this.

My crazy cockapoo!

Thanks so much to Kay and Nim for sharing your thoughts and for being part of our fantastic and growing team!