A true individualist, Pierre Montanaro has brought an unbridled enthusiasm to his 25 years in the healthcare industry. Describing his style as “buttoned down with a creative side that only a few people know,” Montanaro’s career has run the gamut from that of selling health and beauty aids to the upper echelons of the generic drug trade.

Montanaro says he kind of fell into the pharmaceutical business when he started in health and beauty aids as a sales rep for the Gillette Corporation, a company that would prove to be the ideal training ground for his future in healthcare. Over the next 10 years, he would hone his skills in various marketing positions with multinational companies Clairol and Smith & Nephew.

It was a call from Burroughs Wellcome in 1988 that would catapult Montanaro into a position of General Manager in charge of the company’s fledgling consumer healthcare business. There he would grow the company’s business to $38 million in sales from $12 million, “with little or no advertising budget to speak of.” After six or seven “good” years, the Wellcome consumer business would be snapped up by Warner Lambert and Montanaro would look for other challenges. He found those challenges at Marion Merrell Dow (later Hoechst Marion Roussel and then Aventis Pharma), who would ask Montanaro to create a separate consumer healthcare division.

By July 2001, the division was sold to Pharmacia, where Montanaro assumed the role of General Manager and in less than three years, increased sales of Pharmacia Consumer Healthcare to over $125 million from $38 million. When Pfizer bought out Pharmacia almost three years later, Montanaro headed for greener pastures, landing a job as Vice-President of Marketing for generic drug maker, Pharmascience.
Montanaro, who jokingly refers to himself as “the king of the merger,” feels privileged to have survived “six [mergers] in 12 years.” But during those mergers and throughout his career, he believes his proudest achievements are the longstanding relationships he’s built along the way. “I have a lot of pride in keeping those friendships and relationships going for well over 25 years,” he says of the many team members, peers, and suppliers he’s encountered during his career.

A true philanthropist, Montanaro’s regard for others goes beyond the office confines to his charitable work for the Montreal Children’s Hospital, a medical facility with “some of the best neuro- and pediatric cardiovascular surgeons in the world.” On a regular basis, Montanaro and staff stage parties for the kids providing pizza, videos, toys, and ice cream for the sick children on the wards as well as donating monetary gifts to nurses for continuing medical education. “It’s a mission for me,” he adds, crediting the hospital staff with saving the life of his daughter several years ago.

These days, as Vice President and General Manager of Pharmascience Inc., one of the top four generic companies in Canada, Montanaro proudly surveys a career that’s spanned the entire life cycle of a product. From Rx, BTC, OTC, and to generics, “I spent three quarters of my career marketing consumer drugs such as Seldane, Nicorette, Nicoderm, Allegra, Polysporin, and Sudafed to name a few, and I’ve been involved in several very innovative ad campaigns with our AORs,” not to mention the time spent in the ethical pharmaceutical industry. Montanara says he’s happy to be part of what he considers an exciting, if challenging, industry. “I’m a high energy guy [and] it’s a fast paced industry. The guy who’s asleep at the switch will not be successful in the industry we’re in, I guarantee it.”

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