Dr. Aniss Chami is regarded by his peers as an exemplary executive in the specialised world of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Dr. Chami is the CEO of Vitex Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures and supplies vitamins to household name brands in the complementary medicine business, here in Australia and overseas.
Vitex is a manufacturing success story getting better by the day as a result of shifts in global consumer demand for healthier products and lifestyles.
To supply a sharply defined consumer appetite for vitamins, the company has opened a $100m manufacturing facility at Eastern Creek, close to the site of Sydney’s second airport.
And in 2017, reflecting the company’s success, Dr. Chami won CEO Magazine’s Manufacturing Executive of the Year award.
Dr. Chami's success was grounded in several fortunate realities many years before those later achievements. His success as CEO has depended on balancing the skills to run a pharmaceutical company, with all the safety and scientific expertise that requires, in a challenging global economic space.
Dr. Chami says his father Elie is his biggest influence. An immigrant to Australia from Lebanon, Elie started the business in 1989 and eventually convinced his son to join.
Up until that point Dr. Chami had dreamed of becoming a surgeon. He had a passion for medical science and Elie needed a highly skilled leader, someone with a solid pharmaceutical and scientific background.
Elie convinced his son he could help more people as an executive for a pharmaceutical company than he could as a doctor.
But the influence of his father and family was felt even earlier than that.
Dr. Chami recalls the personal sacrifices he made when he was a teenager, denying himself fun so that he could devote his energies to learning about medicine production.
Making products that people put into their bodies requires very high technological and safety standards.
Dr. Chami went on to get degrees in pharmacy and medicine, including an MBA. He was prepared for the top job because, in that line of work, he had to be.
Dr. Chami is frank about some of the fears and challenges of being the CEO. What is interesting is how he overcame them.
Selling pharmaceutical products into a global marketplace was tricky because there were complex geopolitical issues to manage. Building a workforce in Western Sydney skilled and trained in the high-end techniques required to remain competitive was also a challenge.
Family support and the careful selection of like-minded executives at Vitex helped overcome these hurdles.
That said, Dr. Chami concedes he has taken a lot of risks. A philosophical approach to embracing the possibility of failure is key to appreciating success. Failure is part of the job. And a good CEO has to be able to balance risk with reward.
People starting out in their careers should try to make decisions with a perception about what could happen tomorrow. You need to think of the future before it happens.