On March 2, 2021, Marina Mazurevskaya, Deputy CEO for Legal Affairs and Government Relations, took part in the 5th Independent Professional GR Director Forum “GR FORCE 2021. Transforming and Strengthening the Role of GR During and After the Pandemic”.

The event brought together the pool of experts, heads of GR departments in large companies, to air the burning issues: what impact did the pandemic have and will have on GR as a trade, anti-crisis GR fundamentals during the COVID crisis, the ins and outs and distinctive features of remote GR, and evaluation and ways to increase efficiency of the GR department. The representatives of companies such as NANOLEK, NORILSK NICKEL, SRO MIR, VTB, BIOCAD, MTS and others shared their experience and insights into what was going on.

GR directors of Russia’s top companies discussed changes in the communication strategy to raise the efficiency of the GR function amidst the new reality, prepared forecasts on the political climate and development of GR trade in the near term, evaluated the efficiency of the lockdown campaign, the effects of legislative changes, the efficiency of communications with the government, dwelled on anti-crisis measures, remote and digital GR, and many other topics.

Marina Mazurevskaya is in charge of GR, legal affairs, and the compliance system at NANOLEK. During her speech she told about her experience of interaction with the government authorities in the pandemic.

Marina stressed that companies need to identify their strengths, work out proposals in line with the overall agenda and assess the risks in a time of crisis. A GR service is tasked with timely embedding initiatives in the agenda, responding to external challenges, and taking measures to ensure thorough monitoring of information and regulatory framework.

The pandemic has raised the importance of the preventive vaccination across the globe. The vaccine-preventable diseases are a priority area for the biopharmaceutical company NANOLEK: BMC NANOLEK teamed up e.g. with Sanofi to produce a five-component pediatric vaccine in the Kirov region. Besides, NANOLEK is among the five manufacturing sites worldwide that are WHO-licensed

for the production of inactivated polio vaccine to meet the needs of local markets. Vaccines against pneumococcal infection and human papillomavirus are now under development, besides we produce a few drugs listed in the Covid-19 recommendations.

Marina Mazurevskaya: “Most of the cases implemented in the Covid period suggest that the company has been proactive virtually through the entire pre-Covid time and that others know it as a trustworthy partner. I believe that an important task of every GR service is early identification of challenges, their digitalization, keeping track of possible deterioration of situation according to forecasts, and coming up with thought-out regulatory or managerial solutions.”