Building compliance from the ground up: Tim Stow’s vision at Galderma

In a sit-down interview at the Pharmaceutical Compliance Congress, Tim Stow, global head of ethics and compliance at Galderma, spoke with Compliance Insider about his extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry and his current leadership role.

Stow brings over 30 years of experience in the life sciences sector to his current position. A lawyer by training, he has built a career trajectory working with numerous healthcare companies around the world. His professional journey began in the mid-1990s as an in-house attorney and has included positions at SmithKline Beecham, GSK, Schering Plough, UCB, Shire, Takeda, and now Galderma.

A defining characteristic of Stow’s career has been his international experience across multiple countries and jurisdictions in many different types of roles. These have included Stow supporting pharma and consumer healthcare businesses in both the UK and Europe, lead-lawyering major licensing and M&A deals for GSK’s worldwide business development group in both Philadelphia and London, serving as UCB’s US general counsel, and most recently heading up Shire’s legal international group based in Switzerland.

While the majority of Stow’s career has been spent in legal roles, he made an interesting and strategic pivot to compliance in recent years, first serving as head of compliance for Takeda’s global oncology unit in Boston, Massachusetts, before assuming his current role as global head of ethics and compliance at Galderma in 2020.

At Galderma, a Swiss-headquartered dermatology company, Stow leads and has responsibility for the company’s global compliance program, with team members based in different locations worldwide. Though Stow is based in the US, his role is truly global in nature with Galderma’s footprint being extensive in many markets.

In our conversation, Stow discusses his approach to building Galderma’s global compliance program following its spin-out from Nestlé, his strategies for evaluating business partnerships, and his vision for the future of compliance in an increasingly tech-driven industry.

Tim Stow, global head of ethics and compliance, Galderma

What was your strategy for building a new global compliance team at Galderma?

Stow: My strategy was really all about what works best for the organization in terms of meeting the organization’s needs. Having spun out of Nestlé, we were now a different type of company — a standalone dermatology player —and this called for a different type of approach.

When I came into the role in 2020, and indeed what attracted me to the role, was having a metaphorical “blank sheet of paper” in front of me and being asked to design a largely new compliance program and structure. We keyed off what we inherited and then went about building something more honed and specific to our needs. When I joined Galderma in 2020, we had a stated intent at some point to go from being a private company to a public company. So that was also a factor in the background, and indeed, we went public last year.

One of the first things I did was to bring the US compliance group into the global compliance structure because until I arrived, that group reported up through a different line. That created some inefficiencies and unnecessary separation of activities, and we have been able to consolidate and render a more consistent and efficient approach as a result.

We also built out a Europe-based global compliance operations group. With high-quality, driven compliance professionals making up such a team, this group has proven to be the engine room of our global compliance program. In this global compliance operations group, we have a team of specialists focusing on the different components of our global program, building these out and then liaising with our many markets to ensure effective execution and deployment on the ground.

This team has also been in the vanguard of helping to upgrade the internal compliance network within Galderma. For example, how the country compliance officer (CCO) role is to work in each country and upgrading the compliance liaison network in those countries where we do not have a CCO on the ground.

So that’s what I set out to do when I joined in 2020. Here we are in mid-2025 — nearly five years down the road — and I am happy to say that, while we still have things to do, we have met with significant success in terms of that key overarching objective.

How did you identify and prioritize the key elements needed in creating an enhanced global compliance program?

Stow: I looked at the new, evolving Galderma business model and related business activities and determined whether and how they were being adequately supported by the compliance group. That was part of my initial pre-assessment.

We also carried out significant risk assessments in key markets and across key activities. The output coming out of those risk assessments fed into our decision-making around how we were going to best support the business. Quite a lot of this was low-hanging fruit and it was obvious what we needed to do, and we went at it in the first couple of years.

Being critical to our success, I also looked at the culture of the company, including the appetite within the company for compliance, comparing this with other companies that I had worked for and other companies more generally including peer companies. We pay much attention to this — the right culture within a company will always be the cornerstone of the efficacy and success of any company’s compliance program.

What are the key compliance considerations when evaluating potential business partnerships?

Stow: We built a very good and efficient diligence model that takes account of relevant risk factors and informs us of the depth of our diligence and assessment of a potential partner.

We have also done the same for ongoing existing partners and arrangements, and that’s resulted in upgrading existing arrangements to better reflect our wish to have robust protections and assurances covering such activities, especially when those third parties are conducting activities on Galderma’s behalf. We have made significant strides in this space.

As technology continues to evolve, what tools or solutions do you believe will have the most significant impact on compliance programs?

Stow: As you know, data analysis is a critical component of any compliance program, and that’s an area we’re making big efforts to focus on as we move forward. Obviously, AI is a watch and see for us, and we’re carefully monitoring developments in that space to see how those developments can enhance our program in many ways.

We have recently introduced new state-of-the-art HCP engagement and monitoring tools which allow us to better understand activity in those areas, monitor such activity and then consolidate the data that we are capturing for many different purposes. It’s exciting and represents a milestone moment for us in terms of our approach.

How do you see the role of compliance evolving in the pharmaceutical industry over the next decade?

Stow: I think compliance has a central part to play in the business space. What I see is that the compliance function across many companies is becoming more and more integrated. Compliance is the business, and the business is compliance. The business lookouts and needs are the same lookouts and needs of the compliance group. This common ground makes driving compliance so much more straightforward than it might have been previously.

Another observation is that the compliance community itself — particularly the community of compliance professionals — is becoming ever more sophisticated, and that inevitably also means not only better integration but also better credibility with business stakeholders. So you hear less stories (if you hear them at all) about compliance being the function that always says “no,” or having a closed-door approach. This reflects how much more sophisticated and nuanced compliance support has become, and that’s got to be a good thing and a very positive development.

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