That question led her across clinical operations, R&D, commercial strategy and digital transformation. After more than two decades at Roche, where she progressed from delivering global clinical studies to serving in Chief of Staff and Senior Digital Health leadership roles, Dr. Sethi joined GSK in November 2024 as Senior Director, Digital Health Strategy Leader. Today, she brings together scientific depth, strategic thinking, commercial rigour and AI fluency to help complex healthcare organisations turn emerging opportunities into meaningful, measurable impact.

As healthcare enters a period defined by rapid advances in digital health and AI, Dr. Sethi represents a new kind of healthcare leader: one who can move comfortably between science, strategy, technology and execution. Her journey—from the laboratory bench to the boardroom—offers a powerful perspective on what modern healthcare leadership requires.

The Curriculum of Curiosity

Dr. Sethi’s career is a story of intellectual reinvention. Her scientific training gave her a rigorous foundation, but she became increasingly interested in what happened beyond the science itself: how evidence is translated into development programmes, how organisations make investment decisions, and ultimately how innovation reaches patients.

That curiosity pulled her from the rigour of clinical operations at Roche into R&D, commercial strategy and, eventually, digital transformation. Rather than following a conventional linear career path, she repeatedly stepped into unfamiliar territory, developing the ability to understand different parts of the healthcare value chain and connect them.

“Moving from a purely scientific and clinical grounding into strategy, transformation, and digital health required repeatedly choosing to be a beginner again,” she reflects. “Each of those pivots felt risky at the time; together, they are what have made me effective now.”

For Dr. Sethi, that willingness to learn is not simply a career strategy. It is a leadership capability. The ability to enter a room without having all the answers, ask better questions, and translate between disciplines has become central to her approach to transformation.

From Ideas to Patient Impact

One of the clearest examples of Dr. Sethi’s approach came during her Roche career, when she pioneered the company’s first Decentralised Clinical Trial for a Breakthrough Therapy designation in Pemphigus Vulgaris. The programme brought digital tools directly into the clinical trial experience, including electronic consent, telemedicine, mobile health technologies and mobile nursing.

The significance was not simply technological. The approach generated real-world clinical insights from patient-reported outcomes and adherence data while changing how patients could participate in research. It demonstrated the practical potential of bringing clinical research closer to patients and using digital endpoints to generate meaningful evidence.

This experience encapsulates a recurring theme throughout Dr. Sethi’s career: innovation only creates value when it can move from concept to execution. Her work across digital biomarkers, remote patient monitoring, and digital endpoints has continued that focus on translating complex evidence into practical decisions for clinical and business leaders.

The Milestone of Trust

When asked about the milestone that most shaped her as a leader, Dr. Sethi points not to a product launch or a single clinical achievement, but to stepping into a Chief of Staff role at Roche. For her, the significance was less about the title than the trust it represented.

“It required a different kind of skill set: reading the room in high-stakes conversations, building trust quickly with senior stakeholders, and making judgement calls with incomplete information.”

The experience strengthened her ability to operate at the intersection of strategy, people and execution. It taught her that senior leadership is not simply about expertise; it is also about judgement, influence, communication and the ability to create alignment when the path forward is not obvious.

That combination of analytical rigour and human judgement continues to shape her approach to transformation at GSK. In her current role, she leads clinical insights and evidence strategy across therapy areas, including work to support the development and adoption of novel digital endpoints.

Healthcare’s Next Operating Model

Dr. Sethi believes healthcare is moving beyond a model in which digital health and AI sit at the edges of the organisation as discrete innovation initiatives. Instead, these capabilities are increasingly becoming embedded in how healthcare companies operate, make decisions and create value.

“The organisations that win in the next five years will be the ones that treat digital health and AI as core commercial and strategic capability, not a side initiative owned by a single team,” she asserts.

Her view is equally pragmatic. The opportunity presented by AI is significant, but healthcare cannot afford to pursue technology for technology’s sake. The challenge is to move quickly enough to capture new opportunities without losing the analytical discipline, governance and patient focus that responsible healthcare innovation demands.

She also sees collaboration as increasingly important. No single organisation can build the entire healthcare ecosystem alone. The ability to identify, negotiate and deliver external partnerships, and to translate those relationships into genuine value, will increasingly be a source of competitive advantage.

In her current role, Dr. Sethi operates at the intersection of strategy, stakeholder engagement, digital health and AI. Her focus is on helping asset teams move from possibility to practical implementation while maintaining the rigour required for high-stakes healthcare decisions.

Beyond the Corporate Role: The Executive Glow™

Alongside her corporate career, Dr. Sethi is developing The Executive Glow™, an independent platform designed to help professional women navigate career change, build confidence and position themselves for their next chapter using AI, strategic thinking and intentional personal positioning.

The platform reflects a broader leadership philosophy: that professional success is not only about the position someone reaches, but about the possibilities they create for themselves and for others. It is also an extension of Dr. Sethi’s own experience of reinvention—bringing together career strategy, technology, confidence, and personal growth.

“I want to be part of the generation of leaders who make digital transformation in healthcare feel less like a buzzword and more like a lived, measurable reality,” she states.

The same philosophy underpins her ambition to make her experience useful beyond the corporate environment: to create something that enables other ambitious women to navigate change with greater clarity, confidence and agency.

The Final Prescription: Reinvention Is a Leadership Skill

For aspiring leaders looking to create meaningful impact, Dr. Sethi’s advice is refreshingly candid: embrace discomfort.

“Don’t be afraid to keep reinventing your skill set. Each shift required me to be genuinely uncomfortable for a while; to sit in rooms where I wasn’t the most senior or the most expert person present, and to learn anyway. That discomfort is not a sign you’re on the wrong path; it’s usually a sign you’re building the exact capability the next stage of your career will need.”

She also emphasises the importance of developing commercial instincts alongside scientific and clinical ones—and of being clear about what you are ultimately building towards, whether that is financial freedom, professional impact or a legacy of empowerment.

“Impact, to me, isn’t just what you achieve in a job title; it’s what you make possible for others.”

In healthcare, technology can create possibility, but leadership determines whether that possibility becomes impact. For Dr. Sumu K Sethi, the future of healthcare will be shaped not simply by the technologies organisations adopt, but by the leaders willing to rethink how those technologies can improve patients’ lives.