Real Chemistry’s Ontonia Hamlin on Women in Procurement

When Ontonia Hamlin joined Real Chemistry four years ago, the company was entering a new phase of growth. As its global footprint, client base and capabilities expanded, procurement was no longer simply a supporting function, it was becoming a strategic necessity.

Today, procurement sits right at the heart of Real Chemistry’s commercial strategy and Ontonia has been the architect of that change.

Ontonia is the Senior Vice President of Procurement and Real Estate at Real Chemistry, a global commercialisation partner for the healthcare and life sciences sectors.

In that role, she has helped to make procurement into a strategic centre of the operation, supporting responsible spending, strengthening vendor relationships, mitigating risk and freeing up internal teams to focus on delivering value to clients.

Right now, Real Chemistry employs more than 2,000 experts across life sciences, advertising, marketing communications, media and data analytics, and has plans to keep expanding.

Its client base largely consists of pharmaceutical and life sciences companies that are seeking to reach and engage healthcare professionals and patients.

It is a specialist agency, operating exclusively within healthcare, and that focus is itself a significant differentiator in a crowded market.

The company’s work is powered, in part, by AI and data analytics, but the human relationships that make that work possible are, according to Ontonia,  just as important as the technology behind them.

Understanding why requires knowing something about how Ontonia arrived at Real Chemistry in the first place.

Ontonia’s career path

Her career path is, by her own admission, anything but conventional.

She began her working life buying pet products for an e-commerce site in New York City.

It was not a role she had sought out or planned.

“I just thought I was having fun making some strong partnerships along the way,” she recalls. “I didn’t even realize it was procurement at the time.”

But the experience was formative.

She learned to negotiate, to set up websites and to manage the end-to-end process of buying and selling – skills that would prove essential to everything that followed.

From e-commerce, she moved into higher education procurement.

There, she helped build out a dental college, working across clinical practice, real estate and a maze of compliance requirements.

It was her first encounter with the kind of regulatory rigour that would later define her work in healthcare.

Next came out-of-home advertising, a sector in which Ontonia worked across multiple US cities, including Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as a stint in London.

That period coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which demanded a quick and rather fundamental rethink of how procurement teams operated.

Each of those chapters added something to Ontonia’s professional arsenal.

“All of those pieces – e-commerce, advertising, higher education – truly have been the pieces of my toolkit here at Real Chemistry,” she explains.

“How I wanted to lead my team, how I wanted to partner with both internal stakeholders and third-party partners – all of that came from paying attention to what worked and what didn’t.”

It is a toolkit built on adaptability, and it is one on which she has relied heavily since her arrival at Real Chemistry four years ago.

Women in procurement

Ontonia is a passionate advocate for encouraging more women to take up roles in procurement.

Historically, procurement departments have been dominated by men, but Ontonia believes that a female perspective is an incredibly valuable thing in her line of work.

“With women, I think we can bring a different view and can look at procurement holistically,” she says. “It’s not just about the cost. It’s about those partnerships and the added value.”

To this end, Ontonia has deliberately sought out opportunities to bring colleagues into high-profile meetings and decision-making forums, and she is candid that adopting this behaviour herself has been as important as mandating it. 

“Visibility matters to all women, all people in general, but definitely women as they’re coming up in their career,” she says.

The goal, she says, is not just to open doors, but to leave them open for others. Her advice to women considering a career in procurement is characteristically direct.

“Own what you know,” she says. “Build real relationships, stay curious and don’t wait to be invited into leadership.” Influence, she adds, does not have to come from a title. “It doesn’t matter what level you are in the organisation. You can step up and have an influence. You just need to use your voice.”