Leadership Gap 2035: The Quiet Turning Point in Pharma Leadership

The pharmaceutical industry is discussing AI, digitalisation and new therapies intensively. An upheaval that carries similar strategic weight remains largely below the threshold of perception: the impending wave of retirements in leadership positions. It does not announce itself with headlines but with demographics, and that is precisely why it is underestimated.

What Is Happening Right Now

The ageing of the working population is statistically documented. According to Eurostat, at the start of 2024 over 21 percent of the EU population was already 65 years or older, and the median age was 44.7 years. The EUROPOP2023 projections show that this trend intensifies up to 2035: in many countries the share of older employees is growing faster than young specialists move up. For the pharma sector, this condenses into a concrete bottleneck. The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW Köln, 2024) points to growing gaps particularly in highly specialised leadership and expert roles, and the VFA Macroscope (2025) notes that the influx of academically qualified people is not sufficient to offset the retirement wave. The result is a structural leadership gap.

The Projection Up to 2035

Up to 30 to 40 percent of current leaders in pharma and life sciences are likely to leave for reasons of age by 2035. The problem here is not only the number of departures, but two effects that intensify it: the period for passing on critical experiential knowledge becomes shorter, so that knowledge threatens to be lost before it has been handed over. And the generation moving up must at the same time bring new competencies, from digital transformation through regulatory agility to data-driven decisions. The gap is therefore twofold: an experience gap and a competence gap.

Six Fields of Action That Interlock

A viable answer is not a single instrument but a coherent framework of six fields:

• Succession planning and talent pipeline. Regularly reviewed talent pools for key positions, career paths that prepare high potentials specifically for leadership tasks, and cross-training between functions such as research, production and market, instead of ad hoc decisions at the point of departure.
• Leadership development and further training. Leadership programmes focused on transformation, agility and regulatory expertise, mentoring by experienced senior executives, and international rotations for intercultural competence.
• Employer branding and talent acquisition. The competition for leadership talent extends beyond classic pharma to tech, biotech and healthcare. Clear purpose communication, attractive working models and transparency on ESG topics sharpen the employer profile.
• Diversity, equity and inclusion. Diverse leadership teams are considered more resilient and more innovative, yet the share of women on the boards of the European pharmaceutical industry is still well below 30 percent. Targeted support, programmes for underrepresented groups and bias training for selection panels start here.
• Digitalisation and future skills. Data literacy, the use of AI and digital collaboration are becoming core competencies of leaders, built through upskilling, the integration of digital natives into leadership roles and cooperation with tech companies.
• Organisational and governance models. Dual-leadership models, a stronger role for supervisory boards and shareholder committees in succession planning, and transparently communicated transition plans give the change a structure.

These fields only work together: without succession planning the best training fizzles out, without an attractive employer profile the talent does not arrive in the first place, and without genuine diversity great potential remains untapped.

Why Act Now

The leadership gap is not a risk whose occurrence is open, but a demographic certainty with a known time horizon. Those who develop a clear strategy today secure not only talent but also innovation and competitiveness. The question is not whether the gap will come, but how a company actively closes it.

How Entourage Supports You

As a consultancy specialised in life sciences with our own access to specialists and executives, we support companies in structuring the transition: from the identification of critical key roles and the building of resilient succession paths, through the filling of leadership and expert positions, to accompanying the organisational change that comes with a generational shift.