Month: June 2023

As part of our work to reduce our environmental impact while safeguarding access to high-quality medicines, we seek ways to reduce the volume and types of materials we use in packaging while complying with regulatory and quality requirements.

Our priorities are managing and protecting the safety, quality and efficacy of medicines; facilitating patients’ administration of medicine; ensuring access to medicines and compliance with quality and regulatory standards. With these priorities in mind, our teams in commercial, packaging, regulatory, quality and other areas collaborate closely to reduce packaging waste where possible in our existing portfolio and pipeline.

Efforts include the elimination of outer cartons or paper leaflets on medicine bottles – subject to the acceptance of the receiving market as well as the regulatory and quality departments; using recyclable virgin polymer for bottles and caps; harmonizing pack sizes across multiple markets with multiple languages included on one pack and replacing small blister packs with large bottle packs. Today, these efforts can’t be universally applied as different countries and customers have different regulations and preferences, but we work to scale solutions across more countries when appropriate.

Our packaging team is working to eliminate cartons and reduce leaflets for medicine bottles going directly to patients – while still ensuring that patients have access to the important information those leaflets contain. In a pilot set for 2023, we’re exploring replacing leaflets entirely with QR codes that can be easily scanned and accessed using a smart phone – providing the patient with the most up-to-date information about that individual medicine while reducing packaging.

As one of the largest suppliers of ARVs in the world, we are working to reduce packaging materials and waste for these products in collaboration with our customers. Examples of that work include:

Replacing individual leaflets on medicine bottles with pads of leaflets placed directly in the shipping package. For institutional customers like hospitals or pharmacists, the leaflets can be torn off and given to patients as needed.Implementing harmonized packaging artwork across different markets and using a common packaging across multiple countries in multiple languages, including trilingual packs. This means a single pack can have one label and leaflet (in pad form) that holds information in English, French and Spanish, for example, reducing the need to produce individual bottles for each language.Implementing a similar “shared pack” concept in Europe, resulting in less packaging and waste, making our packaging much leaner and giving us more flexibility in our supply chain to divert medicines where they are most needed. We remain committed to continue to work on this concept across more markets in Europe.

Reducing Packaging and Promoting Appropriate Use 

In Europe, we are working on dose dispensing, a way of administering medicine to improve prescription adherence, which is especially relevant among the elderly and for those with chronic conditions who take multiple medicines – and to reduce the number of packages a patient must manage. The semi-automated process of dose dispensing involves pharmacists taking products out of their primary packaging and then filling them into a machine that places the medication a patient needs to take at one point in time into a pouch. Since the primary packaging is removed in dose dispensing, we are working to eliminate cartons for those products, which typically hold bottles and leaflets. Instead, we either leave out the leaflet completely – making it available to patients online or through leaflet pads provided to healthcare providers to disseminate – or glue it directly to the individual bottle caps. The benefits are threefold: less primary packaging to throw away for the user of the product; reduced logistics costs due to the optimized palletization of cartonless bottles and less space being used at the pharmacy level.

View the full 2022 Sustainability Report here.

As published in Qualcomm’s 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report

Our collaboration with organizations that champion diversity, equity and inclusion are vital to our success in providing additional resources, support and capacity-building to our employees. Highlights in 2022 include:

We continued to work with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) as an investment-level collaborator to promote opportunities for gender diversity in technology and computing. As part of this, we continued to participate in Technolochicas, a national initiative of NCWIT, and we announced our very own Technolochica. Technolochicas uses the powerful stories of Latinas from diverse backgrounds in technology fields to raise awareness among young Latinas and their families about opportunities and careers in technology. Our Technolochica will contribute to the initiative by helping to promote our Company’s commitment to hiring diverse candidates and will also serve as a role model for future generations of Latina technologists.We celebrated our fourth year of membership with Reboot Representation Tech Coalition, including our continued support for Reboot’s mission to close the gender gap for underrepresented women of color in tech. Reboot and its coalition company members seek to design solutions to include the most underrepresented communities to increase Black, LatinX and Native American women’s participation in technology and STEM. These solutions involve developing a pipeline from K-12 schools to colleges and graduate institutions, and to develop skills to prepare these young women for professions in tech. We also participated in Reboot’s inaugural mentorship program, which aimed to introduce Black, Latina and Native American women undergraduates in computing to role models who look like them.We continued to be an Inclusion Works Partner with Disability:IN, the leading nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion worldwide. Our collaboration includes participating in speaking engagements for global audiences and implementing recommended best practices across our workplace. In 2022, our CEO signed Disability:IN’s CEO Letter on Disability Inclusion, to continue advancing equality and inclusion and to serve as a positive example for disability inclusion for CEOs and organizations globally. We were also recognized as a Disability Equality Index® Top Scorer and Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion for the eighth consecutive year.We held the Racial Justice Giving Initiative (RJGI) as part of our ongoing effort to collaborate with our employees to support racial justice in the United States. Through the RJGI, employees nominate nonprofit organizations that are working to drive systemic change in racial justice and equity. The RJGI Committee then evaluates the nominations based on pre-determined criteria and selects organizations to participate. Beyond awarding funding from the Qualcomm Foundation and the DEI team, the initiative culminates in a TED Talk-style event for all employees during which the selected organizations share presentations about their work. In 2022, the recipients of the RJGI were ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties; Center for Effective Public Policy; Creating Coding Careers; Friends in Need Children’s Center, Inc.; Front Porch Arts Collective of Boston; Girls Inc. of San Diego County; Greater Than Tech; La Maestra Family Clinic, Inc.; Motus Theatre; and RISE San Diego.

Learn more in Qualcomm’s 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report

Originally published on GoDaddy Life

What is your name and what do you do here at GoDaddy?

My name is Aditya Vikram and I work as a Software Engineer. I joined GoDaddy back in 2019 as a summer intern and have been with the company ever since. In 2020, I joined the GDAsians leadership team. Our mission is to celebrate the unique cultures within the group while collectively building a strong Asian community. I have been a co-leader of this Employee Resource Group for a year and a half, and have been able to contribute and build value to the organization.

What is your daily source of inspiration?

My daily source of inspiration are the people I work alongside with. Everyday, I feel valued and heard; knowing that my team has my back while building incredible products which serve the everyday entrepreneur. Within my role in GDAsians, I truly enjoy executing events that build value for our members.

What has GoDaddy done to support you, your teammates, and your family?

GoDaddy has provided me, along with my teammates, a work environment where I get to build products that impact our customers, realize my passion of helping small businesses grow, and have the stability and flexibility to do things at my own pace.

What do you want your colleagues, neighbors, and friends to take away from Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month?

I think its really important to be aware of the contributions made by the AANHPI communities and also reflect on the challenges and barriers that we are facing. The awareness allows us to strive towards creating an inclusive space where every voice is heard and there is a seat at the table for everyone.

What does AANHPI Heritage Month mean to you?

For me, AANHPI month is about reflecting on my heritage and being proud of the culture that shaped who I am today. It is also about recognizing and creating awareness about the cultural diversity of the AANHPI communities, and acknowledging the accomplishments and contributions made by the community.

Are you enjoying this series and want to know more about life at GoDaddy? Check out our GoDaddy Life social pages! Follow us to meet our team, learn more about our culture (Teams, ERG’s, Locations), careers, and so much more. You’re more than just your day job, so come propel your career with us.

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The Northern Offroad 4X4 Society has created a hub for racing enthusiasts in the Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo region, thanks to some incredible volunteers and strong community support. To help with the heavy lifting, Suncor recently donated a decommissioned excavator to the non-profit.

The Society operates at Area 63 Motorsports Park, located on Highway 63–the main road leading north from Fort McMurray. The organization may be new, but the location is not. The 3/8-mile track was originally built by another car club in the 1980s but had not been maintained in recent years.

Since the Northern Offroad 4X4 Society was formed and granted the park’s development permit in 2020, several people and companies have helped reinvigorate the track and spectator area. Including a local towing company that is providing ongoing maintenance and safety inspection support with the excavator in-kind donation. Society President Larry Aulenbach says the group is grateful for all the assistance.

“There are some exceptional local businesses and volunteers helping to bring our vision to life to be a top-notch motorsport club in Northern Alberta,” says Larry, a heavy equipment operator at Mildred Lake site. “This in-kind excavator donation from Suncor will have so many uses – the sky is the limit. There’s also a few of us with heavy equipment experience, which lends itself well to doing the work in-house.”

To set the in-kind donation gears in motion, Tushaar Dhadwal, Director, Tailings – Maintenance and Reliability, led the work to understand the needs of the Society and followed Suncor in-kind donation processes. He was happy to see the Caterpillar 325 L model be put to good use with the Northern Offroad 4X4 Society. Hein de Jager, Maintenance Manager, Coarse Tailings, was also part of this working group and was on-hand to see the excavator make its first move at the track in May.

“This piece of equipment was decommissioned and had no further use to Suncor. It made sense to serve the community where there was a need,” says Hein, who drives past the Area 63 Motorsport Track daily on his way to Base Plant. “I’ve seen some of their progress to improve the track over the last few years. There has been a lot of blood, sweat, tears and passion put into this work.”

Hauling in support
Many families can relate with the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” and it’s one The Hub Family Resource Centre took to heart with their recent Hub Village facility expansion in Fort McMurray.

The Hub provides free early learning, child development and family support programs in the region and in May they saw some positive changes. A new central location will allow the non-profit organization to enhance their programming and increase the number of families they can serve simultaneously.

Suncor was pleased to be part of their expansion campaign with a support commitment and the addition of a yellow haul truck play structure. Along with this unique piece, Suncor has been proudly supporting the organization through many initiatives since 2011, such as The Hub on Wheels program and June Bug Festival.

“Thanks to the generosity of funders, sponsors, and donors, we can sustain free programming throughout the year in Fort McMurray and across Wood Buffalo. Our new location offers a more inclusive and accessible space for all community members. The Hub Village programs and play facility will help foster social and emotional growth during a child’s early years,” says Samantha Simpson, Executive Director, The Hub Family Resource Centre.