Anelia Uzunova

Why organisations work with Anelia Uzunova

• A corporate operator’s read on wellbeing. She has run point for a CEO at Galderma and managed global innovation projects at Novartis, so the inner-leadership conversation lands as an executive discipline rather than a soft-skills add-on.
• Founder of the wellbeing community at the World Economic Forum, which gives her a credible vantage point on how peer organisations are actually structuring this work, not just how they describe it on their careers page.
• A structured method, the RISE Inner Leadership framework, that gives leadership teams something concrete to take back to their day-to-day, rather than a workshop afterglow.
• A bilingual, cross-cultural speaker with working experience across Switzerland, the US, and the UK, well suited to executive audiences in pharma, healthcare, and globally distributed corporate teams.
• INSEAD-trained executive coach who lectures on Leading for Wellbeing to its MBA audience, which translates into content that survives a sceptical senior room.

Biography highlights

• Chief of Staff to the CEO, Galderma
• Global Leadership Fellow, World Economic Forum; founder of the WEF wellbeing community
• Former global digital innovation project lead at Novartis, Switzerland
• MBA and executive coaching certification, INSEAD
• Executive Masters in Global Leadership, World Economic Forum programme
• Lecturer to INSEAD MBA audiences on Leading for Wellbeing

Biography

Pharma is a useful test case for the limits of conventional wellbeing programmes. The work is high-stakes, the regulatory load is heavy, and the senior teams running global functions tend to be senior precisely because they absorb pressure for everyone else. That is the environment Anelia Uzunova has worked inside for most of her career, first at Novartis in Switzerland and then as Chief of Staff to the CEO of Galderma.

Her shift from operating roles to coaching and speaking was not a reinvention away from corporate life. It was a decision to teach explicitly what she saw working at the top of complex organisations. The Global Leadership Fellows Programme at the World Economic Forum gave her a comparative view across industries; founding the WEF’s wellbeing community gave her a structured one. Both inform a body of work focused on the inner state of the leader as an operational variable.

The teachable form of that work is the RISE Inner Leadership framework, organised around four stages: Root, Ignite, Surrender, Embody. It is used with executive audiences and with the INSEAD MBA cohort she lectures to on Leading for Wellbeing. The framing is not therapeutic. It is closer to executive coaching with a clear curriculum, designed for senior leaders who have already tried the surface interventions and want something that holds up under pressure.

Her credentials sit across INSEAD, the World Economic Forum, and a fifteen-year corporate track record in pharma and healthcare. The reason this matters for serious organisations is straightforward: when wellbeing is treated as an HR programme, it stays peripheral. When it is treated as a leadership capability, it changes how people work. Uzunova argues, and demonstrates, that the second framing is the one that pays back.

Key speaking topics

• Inner leadership and executive composure
• Wellbeing as a leadership capability
• Personal transformation and reinvention for senior leaders
• Leading through change and uncertainty
• Purpose and alignment in executive careers
• Mindful leadership for high-pressure industries
• Women in senior leadership

Ideal for

• CHROs and Chief People Officers building wellbeing into the leadership agenda rather than the benefits stack
• C-suite and senior leadership offsites in pharma, healthcare, and other high-pressure regulated industries
• Executive development programmes and high-potential cohorts
• Women’s leadership and senior talent forums

Audience outcomes

• A working definition of inner leadership that an executive team can use, not a wellness vocabulary
• The four-stage RISE framework as a reference structure for how senior leaders manage their own state
• A sharper view of how composure, alignment, and presence affect team performance and retention
• Practical anchors for executives navigating role transitions, restructure, or extended pressure
• A frame for treating wellbeing as a leadership discipline that boards and CEOs can sponsor with confidence