2012 NAFE WOMEN OF EXCELLENCE: WOMEN’S CHAMPION IN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

As VP Diversity & Inclusion at Cardinal Health, Aida Sabo describes her goal as “leveraging diversity as a competitive advantage. In healthcare, we’re experiencing an explosion of societal diversity first-hand. Women make 84 percent of healthcare decisions, so if we pay attention to their needs and build their loyalty, that will make us more profitable.” Aida strives to more women into senior ranks “in order to align strategic thinking with the woman who is the buyer.” Under Aida’s watch, Cardinal has made the NAFE Top Companies for Executive Women list.

But diversity is not just about business for Aida. She describes arriving in the U.S. as a Mexican immigrant when she was three years old and no one in her family spoke English. “None of us had a voice,” she says. She became a top notch student, then graduated from the University of California at Davis with a BS in electrical engineering and a specialty in electromagnetics. She went to work at Hewlett-Packard as a systems engineer and later, as global business development manager for the satellite test business. She was the first woman to win the company’s Systems Engineer Award – which she won twice running. But she stopped “swimming against the tide in a male-dominated field” when H-P and Agilent Technologies broke into two companies and leapt at the opportunity to serve as Agilent’s diversity director. It was then she began helping others find their voice. She founded the Latino employee network “La Voz” and created a global initiative that linked inclusion and innovation.

Now at Cardinal, she’s laser-focused on moving the needle for women. She is formulating a sponsorship program for women, because, she says, “Men have informal sponsors all the time and it happens organically. But even when a woman performs well, people might not take a risk with her. Women need credible leaders to vouch for them and offer them opportunities.” Her second immediate goal: moving more women into P&L roles by clarifying the paths, identifying the women, and involving men in the process. Asserts Aida, “We want men as partners as we transform our culture.” In 2011, Aida helped launch Cardinal’s Women in Pharmacy initiative to educate women about the benefits and requisites of owning their own pharmacies.

Aida acts on a deeply personal commitment: “At one point I didn’t have a voice, and my family didn’t have a voice. People helped me, and my life became a dream. I want to help other little girls to have the opportunity to have a beautiful life.”