Thierry Demonceau will tell you what it´s like to work at Bayer Animal Health in France

Thierry Deomonceau talking to his team.

Wonder what it’s like to work at Bayer Animal Health?  Check out our interview with Thierry in France. “When I was 9 years old, I had a horse.  When the horse got sick, I saw a vet taking care of him and was so impressed that I told my parents I wanted to be a veterinarian.  So I did. I studied veterinary medicine and became an equine vet at 22 years old….”

Working at Bayer HealthCare, Animal Health:

This month we are talking to Thierry Demonceau , the Business Unit Manager for Bayer HealthCare Animal Health Companion Animal Products team in France.

 

Hi Thierry – you have a long job title.  What do you actually do at Bayer? 

I’m responsible to make sure that people can get our products for their pets in France.   

My team includes managers for marketing and sales, the colleagues that sell our products to the vets in the country, and the assistants.  Because I am also part of the Animal Health management team in France, I am able to see what is going on in all parts of our business. 

How did you get to Animal Health – what did you study and do before?  

When I was 9 years old, I had a horse.  When the horse got sick, 

I saw a vet taking care of him and was so impressed that I told my parents I wanted to be a veterinarian.  So I did.   I studied veterinary medicine and became an equine vet at 22 years old.  My first career was in equine medicine, and I started a clinic with a colleague in the South-East of Paris.  After a few years I wasn’t so happy with this choice and decided to work in the industry.  But I still wanted to work with animals, so I joined a company specialized in animal nutrition.  During this time I started learning about other animals, including pigs, poultry, and cattle, and also became interested in software development related to animal breeding.  I helped create software for pig and poultry famers with traceability systems to help identify animals with RFID.  We created and sold our products, but like many start-ups this did not last forever, and at the end I joined another company in animal health.  In 2000, I did an MBA in Paris (ESCP Europe) to help me transition from technical expertise to management, and got more involved in the business side to keep animals healthy.  I’ve now have had eight different jobs in my career. I joined Bayer in 2010, and this is the sixth company that I’ve worked for, so I’ve had a lot of experience in this area.

What do you like about working in Animal Health? 

 I like that the culture here at Bayer makes it easy to work with people – even when it is a complex global organization.  Our management team encourages us to work together, and this gives us a competitive advantage.  For example, Bayer Animal Health is the only French veterinary company that serves veterinarians, pharmacists, garden centers & pet shops with internal teams.  And this is because we have good partnerships with

our other colleagues in France at Bayer Consumer Care and Bayer Garden (a division of Bayer Crop Science).

Bayer’s motto is Science for a Better Life – how do you contribute to this? 

32 years old Quarki

I would first say – well, what does better life mean?  This is different for each person.  There are so many lives to consider.  For me the first level is to improve the life of my team.  After that, I work to improve the lives of the veterinarians in France.  I share many values with them.  I am a vet.  I know what their life is like and what their work involves and how to improve their lives day after day. And of course, we also want to help pet owners, so better life means improving the situation for the pet owners and the pets to keep them healthy.  It’s hard to satisfy this - but we work at this very hard every day. 

Do you have a pet – tell us about it!

15 year old Pépite

I have a 15 year old cat named Pépite and a horse, Quarki, and he is 32 years old. When my horse and I were much younger, we did endurance racing.  But now he has been retired for almost 20 years and is living the good life on a farm in the west of France.  For a horse, he is very old, one of the oldest on the farm, but he’s still doing well.