Tiago Dias, MBA ’12, is Executive Director of the Cardio Renal Metabolic Business Unit at Novartis Brazil. Prior to joining Novartis, he served as Managing Director and General Manager at Bayer Israel & PA.
Like many students, Dias approached his MBA as a time for deliberate exploration. An engineer by training, his mindset--centered on connection, curiosity, continuous learning, and search for meaning and purpose--ultimately led him to healthcare, where he discovered an important combination of intellectual challenge and meaningful impact. Over time, that work became more than a career path. “It goes beyond the career. It inspired and changed me,” he reflects. “It defined me.”
Dias is Executive Director of the Cardio Renal Metabolic Business Unit at Novartis Brazil. Prior to joining Novartis, he served as Managing Director and General Manager at Bayer Israel & PA. Learning to navigate and embrace the complexity of healthcare globally has become a competitive advantage, allowing him to differentiate his work and create value in environments where others may struggle. Working within different national healthcare systems, he has developed a distinct approach to solving problems. Each country’s system has its own structure, constraints, and patient needs, but their experiences do not need to be isolated. Rather than viewing each system as entirely unique, he looks for patterns then adapts solutions across markets.
Dias has made a deliberate effort to balance business outcomes with human impact; a tension he believes is central to effective leadership in healthcare. Success is not defined solely by performance metrics, but by the ability to create meaningful change, for patients, for teams, and for broader healthcare systems. In Mozambique, he led efforts to improve nutrition, establishing local milk production in a country where access had previously been non-existent or limited to dry milk product. In Israel and surrounding regions, he worked on expanding access to treatments for rare diseases, helping bring life-saving therapies to underserved populations. One of his most impactful initiatives focused on expanding access to eye care in Brazil, where coordinated efforts helped significantly increase treatment rates among low-income populations.
These experiences underscored his broader belief that meaningful change in healthcare requires both strategic thinking and deep collaboration in order to navigate regulatory differences, operational obstacles, and cultural barriers.
“You can go to a country and be in a bubble, but you will never learn or share in the experience” he notes. “You need to be open … to connect at that cultural level.”
In doing so, Dias has leaned into the Booth network, which has been critical in helping him navigate new environments, offering local insight, support, and connection in unfamiliar settings. Additionally, the relationships and networks he started building at Booth have helped him find new partners and opportunities worldwide.
For students at Booth who are similarly interested in building global careers in healthcare, Dias shared this advice, “Be open and be flexible.” He encourages students to take full advantage of the exploratory nature of the MBA experience, using it as a time to test interests, build skills, and expand perspectives. This advice extends into early career roles, where breadth of experience can be an asset. "Sometimes a role that may not seem like a traditionally attractive opportunity can be very beneficial to overall career development.", he adds.
For those open to its complexity, healthcare can be a great industry match. As healthcare continues to evolve, Dias remains energized by the opportunities ahead, particularly in areas like artificial intelligence, which is already transforming operations within the industry. However, his approach stays rooted in the same principles that shaped his MBA education and have guided his career thus far: curiosity, connection, and a commitment to impact.
