Meeting Gilles Galliou

At the 2013 Golf Industry Show, Bayer CropScience introduced Gilles Galliou as the new president of its Bayer Environmental Science North America division. Galliou, who most recently served as vice president of commercial operations for the division, sat down with Golfdom to share his plans with us.

Golfdom: Congratulations on your new position.
Galliou: Thank you. I’m very excited. It’s by far the biggest business that we have in Bayer Environmental Science, and it’s a very diverse business.

Golfdom: As president, what’s your long-term vision?
Galliou: Having a leadership role in terms of where the industry goes. Plant health is going to be a key element going forward, and my vision is that Bayer would be the logical partner for everybody around who wanted to deal with plant health.

Golfdom: What skills do you bring to the job that make you a strong leader?
Galliou: I’ve been in the crop protection and specialty industry for the last 22 years, so I bring a lot of experience in terms of managing operations.

I also ran the European consumer business (Bayer Garden) before. So I’m allowed to ask silly questions and go to the bottom of it saying, “I don’t understand.” If I go to the bottom of it and say, “I don’t understand,” I think it will help all of us to be very clear on what we want to achieve.

Golfdom: How is working in the U.S. different from working in Europe?
Galliou: I like the strong business drive we have in the U.S. Europe might be more complex because of the different countries, cultures and languages. It makes decision-making much slower. The U.S. has faster decision-making, and I think it’s a big advantage.

Golfdom: Anything else to add?
Galliou: Just that I believe that in Bayer we’ve not talked enough about who we are, and we’ll make conscious efforts to communicate what we stand for in the near future. Part of it is really talking about our experience in plant health and the healthy environment that we foster every day. I’m looking forward to making that speech.