Responsibility in Business: A Matter of Agency
February 2026 | Economics of Mutuality Experts Series
A Conversation with Carly Santer
Carly Santer has spent much of her career moving closer to impact and asking herself what responsibility looks like once you realize how much influence you can actually have.
As Impact Officer at Bayer UK and Ireland, she was responsible for translating global sustainability commitments into local action, embedding environmental and social considerations into real business decisions while managing risk, performance, and regulatory complexity. She also led a team focused on decarbonizing Bayer’s global clinical trials, a critical and complex part of healthcare innovation.
Alongside this role, Carly has been actively involved in the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition, a cross-sector initiative that brings together organizations to accelerate the transition to low carbon care pathways across the healthcare system. Her involvement reflects a belief that challenges such as decarbonization cannot be solved in isolation but rather require collaboration across the wider system.
“I’ve come to understand that business has a much greater influence than I realized earlier in my career,” she says. “And leaders themselves are active participants in shaping the system within which we all operate.”
From Molecules to Systems
Carly’s perspective on leadership has been shaped by years of working where scientific ambition, commercial pressure, and societal responsibility collide – though her career did not begin in sustainability or strategy.
Trained in genetics and immunology, she started out in academic research, working at the level of cells and molecules. But the distance between discovery and real-world impact quickly became frustrating. “I’m quite an impatient person,” she admits. “I wanted to see the positive effect of this work on human health.”
That impatience led her to clinical trial management within pharmaceutical R&D and closer to patients, governance, and decision-making. Over time, she moved into quality and compliance roles, gaining extensive exposure to how large healthcare systems function in practice.
Early on, responsibility felt clearly defined but somewhat limited.
“I had a really narrow view of my agency in terms of responsible business,” she reflects. Sustainability was present, but largely as compliance: rules to follow rather than choices to shape outcomes.
A Moment of Naming and Clarity
Carly joined the Economics of Mutuality Leading With Purpose program at a point when many of these ideas were already alive and present in her thinking.
Rather than changing her direction, the course helped her articulate what she was experiencing. “It gave me the language to define things that were already swirling around in my head,” she says, particularly around recognising value and the role business plays in society. “It didn’t give me the answers - it helped me frame the questions better,” she says.
She valued the space the program created, and time to step back from delivery. Additionally, two key elements stood out. One was storytelling, which she connects to leadership and relationship-building: understanding how to convey what matters when attention is limited. The other was systems mapping, seeing more clearly how different elements can “create or indeed destroy mutual value.”
Since the end of the course, Carly has stepped away from her role at Bayer and into independent sustainability and advisory work in pharma and healthcare contexts, with a focus on climate and health. She describes the program as giving her “new language in my pocket and clarity in my communications” to frame impact conversations with new organizations.
Responsibility as a Conscious Choice
Across Carly’s journey, responsibility has shifted from something narrowly defined to something deeply personal. What began as a compliance exercise has become a choice shaped by awareness, experience, and an increasing understanding of how interconnected healthcare systems truly are.
Leadership, as she now sees it, is not about having the right answers. “Leadership isn’t defined by certainty” Carly says, “but by the capacity to notice where attention is being paid amidst ambiguity and ensuring responsible decision-making for the well-being of future generations.” It is about recognizing agency, accepting the pressure that comes with it, and choosing to act with intention as the system around you continues to evolve.
Are you a leader with a deep conviction that business should be a force for good? Our Leading With Purpose executive education program could for you.
Delivered online over 9-weeks, the course is grounded in the practical Economics of Mutuality operating model, which has been developed with leading companies and universities including Mars and Oxford University’s Saïd Business School.
Since its inception, it has helped over 500 senior business leaders and investors integrate social and environmental impact into their core business strategy.
Applications are open for our 2026 cohort! Find out more via link below.
Program dates: April 20 – June 26
Application deadline: March 20
If you want to speak to a member of our team about joining the program, please contact Liam Sharkey at Liam.Sharkey@mutualvaluelabs.com
