Sandstone Op-Ed: an opinion page for leaders whose case rests on evidence

A slim line at the top gives her designation and her availability for board and speaking work, with her name beside it. Under a heavy rule, the lead essay's topic, compliant medical education, appears in small type with its September 2026 date and an estimated reading time. Then the headline arrives, set very large across the left column, arguing that medical education had to begin once the hospitality stopped. Its standfirst says the campaign revealed how much academic promotion was really buying access, and a link labelled Read the argument opens the full essay.

The right column holds her portrait, turned to greyscale beneath a thick olive bar and captioned with her name and title. For a pharmaceutical marketer that order matters. A compliance-minded reader, whether a nomination committee chair in Shanghai or a hospital pharmacy director, meets her view of promotion before any sales figure.

Below the opening the colours invert. A full-width band of dark olive with cream lettering, labelled The conviction behind the work, carries her philosophy: if a doctor would be embarrassed to see a payment printed beside a prescription, the company should not have made it.

Her other essays follow as a numbered agenda, 02 and 03, each a large linked headline. One holds that a reimbursed price opens the hospital gate without walking patients through it; the other treats clear skin as a trial result rather than a promise. Three figures close the composition: RMB 860 million of 2025 sales for Tanqiao's antibody, 1,140 hospitals stocking it by June 2026, and 63 per cent twelve-month persistence in the support programme, labelled as an indication rather than a controlled result. Her thesis, introduction and four proof points follow.

Sandstone sets near-black olive text on cream, with a muted olive-grey for secondary lines and a stronger olive for links, rules and the bar above the portrait. It reads like a printed journal supplement rather than a brand campaign, which is the register Jing needs: her readers include dermatologists, medical-affairs and compliance leaders, and directors who distrust anything that looks like promotion. Dark ink on a warm light ground also keeps long essays comfortable on screen and on paper.

Two typefaces are loaded: DM Serif Display sets the headlines, and Archivo carries the running text. The high-contrast serif gives each essay title the presence of an opinion-page headline; Archivo, a plain grotesque, keeps trial percentages, hospital counts and record tables legible and unshowy.

Her impact page holds four decisions a doubtful reader would want to test: launching in 110 specialist centres before the reimbursement negotiation, closing 3,800 sponsored department meetings a year, walling patient data off from the sales force, and pulping 38,000 detail aids built on a cross-trial comparison. Each names the colleague who disagreed.

The career page, headed The record behind the argument for honest promotion, gives each of her six roles its own heavy rule, from a Hangzhou hospital territory in 1999 to Tanqiao, with dates, scope and reporting line in a four-column grid. The readiness page opens with her contribution in a sand-coloured panel edged in olive, then sets her first year, conflicts, independence statement and three judgement examples beside a narrower column of committees, exposure, time and governance learning. It explains why mainland rules steer her towards the remuneration and appraisal committee rather than the audit committee.

The Op-Ed works for anyone whose strongest asset is an argument their industry is still having, backed by decisions they have taken. A hospital-chain COO arguing against volume incentives for surgeons, or a consumer-health CFO who reports channel stock differently from peers, would suit it. It needs at least two essays with arguable titles; leaders who would rather be judged first on their career should choose a composition that opens with the record.