Sander Flaum

Principal of Flaum Navigators, Sander Flaum is an acknowledged business leader, marketing and sales effectiveness coach, leadership and motivational speaker and best-selling author.

Flaum Navigators accelerates business growth through transformational ideas that galvanize leadership, brand building, and innovation. Our paradigm is helping clients obtain new and innovative sales and marketing solutions by providing actionable and sustainable strategic marketing counsel.

Sander created the first persistency program, the first patient guarantee program, the first indigent patient program, the first adherence program and the first “War Games” program. His ability to challenge conventional wisdom has assisted his clients to confront daunting odds and successfully reinvent themselves to maintain their market advantage.

Sander is a featured speaker at numerous marketing conferences and leadership events and conducts workshops to stimulate disruptive innovation. His seminars are credited by clients with helping them exceed expectations, improve sales productivity, and foster leadership values.

PharmaVoice selected Sander Flaum as one of its “100 Most Inspiring People”. After researching his background, they wrote “Many of today’s accomplished executives had been Mr. Flaum’s MBA students in the past. His expertise and leadership have helped shape so many careers and have contributed to the success of many companies – both on the pharma and agency side of the industry. Many of these leaders continue to rely on his wisdom today.”          

Sander serves on the boards of The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences, Fisher College of Business where he also serves as Executive-in-Residence and is the sponsor of The Flaum Speech Fluency Program as well . He is a board member of The John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The James Cancer Center, and The Silberman College of Business, Fairleigh Dickinson University.  

Sander’s best-selling books, The 100-Mile Walk: A Father and Son on a Quest to Find the Essence of Leadership (Amacom, 2006) and Big Shoes: How Successful Leaders Grow Into New Roles (Leadershape Publishing, 2009), have been endorsed by numerous company leaders for providing essential advice on how to tackle the management hurdles of a career. Sander’s 2016 book, The Best Thing That Could Ever Happen to You: How a Career Reversal Can Reinvigorate Your Life (Big Shoes Publishing 2013), was written to guide business professionals to re-empower themselves after a job loss or get unstuck from a passionless career. The following year, Sander published, Boost Your Career, How to Make an Impact, Get Recognized, and Build the Career You Want (Skyhorse Publishing 2017) for ‘Rising Stars” on new and better ways to gain recognition within their company. His most recent book The Stutter Steps, Proven Pathways to Speaking Confidently and Living Courageously (PostHill Press 2021) was written to give encouragement to people who  have a stutter treatment options as well as dispelling myths about this genetic disorder.

Selected in both 2001 and 2011 as the Fordham Business School’s commencement speaker, Sander has also been awarded The Ohio State University’s Professional Achievement Award and the OSU Pacesetter Business Leadership Award. He was the Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business Commencement Speaker in May 2018. 

Sander received his undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University, followed by an MBA degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Following his military career, he went on to work for 18 years at Lederle Laboratories, which merged into Wyeth, then Pfizer. In his tenure as Marketing Director of Lederle he managed Rx products, vaccines and oncology, Sander was responsible for many notable new product launches.

After Lederle in 1988, Sander became Chairman and CEO of Euro RSCG Becker (now Havas Health), where he led a worldwide team of marketing strategists in introducing six blockbuster $2 billion healthcare brands. In 2003, Medical Advertising News named Sander its Man of the Year and Becker its Agency of the Year. Following Becker, Sander went on to launch Flaum Navigators in 2004, where he encourages and coaches his clients to embrace disruptive innovation in marketing, sales, and leadership. He currently writes a monthly column in Medical Advertising News.

Awarded “Transformer of the Year” by Medical, Marketing and Media, and received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2018 by PM360 Magazine, Sander said, “Not that we ever didn’t, but we need leaders in this business more than ever. Leaders are the ones who can get the lawyers past ‘no you can’t’ and the ones who can help us all get past the bad press we’re getting (as an industry). There’s the right thing and the good thing – who’s to say we can’t do both?”