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Lina Parra Cartagena commuted 3,649 miles every few weeks while earning her MBA at MIT. For two years, the current associate director of finance at Vertex Pharmaceuticals flew from Barcelona to Boston in pursuit of her second master’s and continuation of a career in global finance.
She’s lived in five countries; trained multiple, high-performing FP&A teams; and spent free time as a finance expert examining the implications of AI for a UC San Diego-affiliated research group.
In short, Cartagena is a powerhouse who came to Vertex to lead financial planning for the manufacturing and supply chain of cell and genetic therapies. Her role entails providing financial direction and strategic insights that enabled increasing production capacity to meet the demand for the company’s gene therapy.
Given her role, one might expect Cartagena’s background is grounded in pharmaceuticals, but that’s only partially true. Cartagena left her home in Cali, Colombia, at the encouragement of her parents who were alarmed at the criminal and political instability at the time, to pursue an education in Paris. She was able to get her degree on full academic scholarship and spent most of her early career at L’Oréal in increasingly senior finance roles.
In 2017, she made the switch to the pharmaceutical world at Novartis. The transition required some evolution.
“The retail business is so much different because you’re launching products quarterly,” Cartagena explains. “In the pharmaceutical world, you may be launching a new product every ten years. What I have enjoyed about that transition is that you have to think much more long-term, like the consequences for patients, and those have such a greater deal of weight attached to them. It’s a much more significant amount of intellectual analysis, and for me, that’s something I very much enjoy.”
The Financial Future of AI
Lina Parra Cartagena is part of a robust research group at the UC San Diego investigating potential applications of AI across a wide variety of disciplines and industries. Through her financial lens, she’s interested in the application of different statistical models, the potential for biases in those models, and how an organization builds appropriate governance protocols around those models.
Cartagena’s global perspective helps inform her approach. “Europe already has some established frameworks for AI, while the US is still developing them,” she explains. “I think I’m able to bring knowledge and applications of those frameworks but also balance it with my US experience. There are also so many questions about how all of this affects Latin America, especially in terms of equity.”
Cartagena’s focus on supply chain finance at Vertex is the result of what the pandemic taught the pharmaceutical industry: that supply is extremely susceptible to disruption. COVID-19 led to global shortages of paracetamol (a non-opioid analgesic found in products like Tylenol), while high inflation continued to challenge organizations across the board.
“What I love about working in operations and supply chain is that we have a direct impact on patients,” the AD explains. “We help get drugs to patients on time. And there are certain products that patients cannot afford to wait for. Operations guarantees that you are there for the patient at the right moment, with the right lead times.”
Part of what makes Cartagena so effective at her role is the fact that she has made herself invaluable in a variety of different cultures and environments. Cartagena says part of her approach has always been trying to apply her Latina-centered optimism to the world around her. Yes, she may be one of the few with her experience and background in the room, but Cartagena says that’s just more of a reason to work harder to help get more Latinas in the finance world.
“What I have enjoyed about that transition [from retail to pharmaceuticals] is that you have to think much more long-term, like the consequences for patients, and those have such a greater deal of weight attached to them.”
Lina Parra Cartagena
The AD says she’s at the point in her career where she has become more specifically focused on giving back and helping create more opportunities for the next generation. By all accounts, Cartagena is a bona fide success: a world-traveled finance executive who has attained success in multiple industries on multiple continents. Now, she wants to help create more future success stories.
Cartagena says her parents, both physicians still working in Colombia, as well as her sister, continue to be her north star about finding ways to give back to her vocation. “I think I’m focused on passing along my experience and to people I mentor,” Cartagena says. “I really want to help others to think creatively, to pursue their dreams, and to keep setting new goals.”
The MIT Executive MBA is committed to empowering and connecting leaders to redefine our shared future. We achieve this by intentionally designing and guiding experiences that inspire global business leaders to forge themselves—and each other—into the catalysts for evolution our world demands. Students choose the MIT EMBA because we teach the science of management, tapping into MIT’s world-class research to drive innovation and foster new approaches to problem-solving. With applied learning baked into everything we do, students are given the tools to redefine potential, purpose, and themselves. At MIT EMBA, you won’t just navigate change—you’ll lead it.
