Sterling Snapshot | Maeve Byrne, EVP and Site Head at Ringaskiddy

EVP and Site Head at our Ringaskiddy, Ireland site, Maeve Byrne has been with the site for over 20 years after initially joining as a Process Chemist. Read below about her responsibilities as Site Head, as well as more about her ambitions for the Ringaskiddy site as part of Sterling.

Can you briefly describe your background?

I graduated from the University College Dublin with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry before going on to do a PhD in Organic Chemistry.

After graduating in 1997, I joined Sterling’s Ringaskiddy facility, previously Novartis, as a Process Chemist and have been at the site ever since.

Shortly after joining I took on the Process Manager role in production working on small scale peptides and then high volume products. I worked in this role for over ten years, before moving to the Production Facilitator role where I worked for another two years.

I then moved into the quality department as a Quality Facilitator before being promoted to Site Head of Quality for the Ringaskiddy facility. I really enjoyed working in the quality department as it was so fast paced and dynamic, there was always a new challenge to get stuck into.

After my time in quality, I briefly moved back to the production team as a Production Lead before I was promoted to the Site Head role in 2020.

Can you tell us more about your current role?

As EVP and Site Head, a key responsibility of mine is supporting Sterling’s integration team with the site’s move from Novartis to Sterling. We want to make sure that our employees and customers experience as smooth a transition as possible, which means that we need to have strong communication and clearly aligned objectives.

Like with all of Sterling’s sites, we have a big people focus, and aim to do the right thing for our employees, supporting them wherever we can. A lot of us have worked at the site for a very long time, so it’s really like a family, and a big part of my role is looking after our people.

How has your previous experience supported you in your current role as EVP and Site Head?

Working across a variety of departments during my years at the site has given me a broad spectrum of experience and exposure into what goes on around the facility. This has equipped me with a good working knowledge of the site, as well as a better understanding of the people who work in each department. Having these strong relationships with employees has really benefited me in terms of communication and ensuring I am approachable.

What are some of your top priorities in your position?

Currently, my top priority is supporting the integration of the Ringaskiddy site to Sterling. We aim for this to be as smooth as possible for our employees and our projects. We want to ensure that during this time we continue to deliver for our customers and that we are providing the right support to our people going through this change with us.

My other top priorities at the site are safety and quality. We have a responsibility to our customers to ensure that we are exceeding their expectations in terms of quality and that we meet these requirements in the safest way possible.

How have you and the site found the transition to Sterling so far?

So far, it’s been really positive. It’s great for everyone to be able to see such an optimistic future for the site, so there’s a lot of excitement about that. From day one, the support we have received from the integration team, the executive team, and all our new colleagues from across Sterling has been fantastic. It has really helped our employees to get fully behind the transition. The values shared by Sterling’s employees are very similar to those which we already hold at the Ringaskiddy facility. It’s great to see how much these values feed into daily decision making, and they have really shone through throughout this process.

We’re really excited to be able to show off our capabilities to a new range of customers too. We have a lot of different technologies on the site including our peptide plant, which we feel will really bring something new to Sterling’s current and future customers.

What’s next for the Ringaskiddy site? What are your goals for the Ringaskiddy site?

In the short term, our goal is to keep meeting our production plan for our current customers, and to ensure we are well prepared for the introduction of new projects to the site.

We are really excited about the future at Ringaskiddy.