CDMO Relationship Management Across the Americas: Why Culture Changes Everything

“When we go to an external partner, we need to show up as one single aligned organization. If we’re not aligned internally, the CMO ends up becoming the referee.”

In pharmaceutical manufacturing, the quality of a CDMO partnership is rarely determined by the contract alone. According to Sabrina Mattos, Senior Director of External Manufacturing for the Americas at Elanco, what truly separates high-performing partnerships from dysfunctional ones comes down to two factors: internal alignment and cultural intelligence.

Sabrina brings over 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience spanning quality, supply chain, and operations leadership across Brazil, Europe, and North America. As a pharmacist who began her career as a QA representative at Eli Lilly in Brazil, she has progressed through site leadership and global roles to now oversee Elanco’s external manufacturing portfolio across the US, Canada, and Latin America — a hub spanning close to 50 CMO relationships.

In a recent PharmaSource Podcast conversation, Sabrina shared how Elanco structures its external manufacturing teams, navigates the cultural differences that shape partnerships across the Americas, and why getting internal alignment right before approaching a CDMO is non-negotiable.

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