For Johanna Mercier, Gilead Sciences’ chief commercial and corporate affairs officer, leadership starts with a clear accounting of what sustains performance across a global role. In a job that rarely conforms to fixed hours, she focuses on her energy: what drains it, what restores it, and how to protect enough of it to lead with steadiness in a business where the stakes are measured in patients’ lives.
Mercier describes energy as a kind of running reserve, something she tracks with intention. “I think about it like a piggy bank,” she told Fortune Next to Lead. Some meetings, tasks, and decisions draw heavily from it, particularly long discussions that go in circles, internal debates that take too long to resolve, and periods when reaching a decision is slowed by overly bureaucratic processes.
