Global Medicine, Profitable & Ethical
A live virtual discussion with
Mike Gladstone
FMR Global President
Inflammation & Immunology
This event took place on November 10th, 2022. Read the highlights on Linkedin here. Watch it on YouTube here
Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Pfizer Inflammation & Immunology is known for leading brands that are game changers. Mike Gladstone is FMR Global President of I&I at Pfizer.
Mr. Gladstone’s career also includes some of the most senior executive positions in the pharmaceutical industry in the US and Europe. Among others,
- Chairperson Elect for the U.S. Healthcare Leadership Council and member of the Executive Committee representing pharmaceutical manufacturers.
- Member of the Board of Directors of
- the National Pharmaceutical Council
- the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future
Pharmavoice quoted one of his colleagues saying this about him:
“More than a mentor, Gladstone is a sponsor who speaks your name in a room full of opportunities. He sees the best in people and is extremely generous with his time, devoting hours and hours to coaching people and instilling in them the confidence they need to succeed. These people end up doing great things and becoming leaders themselves — because Gladstone believed in them and saw their potential”
The discussion will be moderated by George Benaroya Global CFO and Adjunct Professor at NYU SPS.
Questions Mr. Gladstone responded. Watch his responses on YouTube here. Each question is separately tagged.
1. What does a Global President at the largest pharma company in the world do? During the Pandemic, what was it like working at Pfizer? George Benaroya
2. In the pharmaceutical industry, including Pfizer, what’s important when dealing with local public health departments and governments to grow the business in international markets? Any good stories with Viagra, Enbrel, or other products? Ye Tao
3. What makes Pfizer different from other pharmaceutical companies? Jing Shen
4. How does Pfizer do market research, that is, identify the needs of patients? Ruiqi Li
5. We know how to estimate future growth for products like Advil in Pfizer’s consumer division. What we want to learn is how does the Pharma industry, makes growth estimates for prescription drugs? Yizuo Wang
6. When Pfizer developed the Covid vaccine, demand was huge. How did Pfizer choose to which countries to deliver first? What can other industries learn from it? Kecheng Den
7. Pharmaceutical investments tripled in value, more than the stock market and housing prices which doubled, but less than I.T. stocks like Apple & Microsoft, which grew seven-fold. When Pfizer gives a 90% discount on 2 billion Covid doses to low-income countries, how do you balance the pressure from investors with ESG? George Benaroya
8. Consumers worry that Pharma promotes drugs just for profit. Pfizer will produce a shingles vaccine, which in China costs $450. According to the CDC, the incidence of shingles is only 0.4%. In social media, people argue Pharma is promoting it to make $450. Any tips on how consumers can balance the info we received to make better decisions? Shiyuan Zhang
9. Enbrel cost $80,000 per year in the U.S. and $7,200 in Switzerland, a richer country with higher salaries. We learned about local, national & global prices in class, but we couldn’t figure out Pharma. Why are prices in the Pharma industry much higher in the U.S.? Any best practices you learned working in Europe? Omika Bajaj
10. 27 million people in the U.S. don’t have health insurance. What can the Pharma industry do so that they don’t have to pay list prices? Asked by Divyaj Shah
11. Last year, Pfizer spent two billion dollars on advertising, and pledge to provide one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine at a not-for-profit price. How can some of those advertising resources be used to convince those who are hesitant to vaccinate or get their annual boosters? For those of us getting a master’s in marketing, should we apply to pharmaceutical companies? Patricia Medina
12. How do global companies benefit from hiring international students? Shimeng Cecilia Guo
13. What is the most important quality Pfizer sees in employees? Should female students apply to work at Pfizer? Eva Ouyang
14. What was your most significant challenge during your career at Pfizer? Any career advice for us? Hsiang-Yu Wu
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Finance for Marketing Decisions
This is part of the Finance for Marketing Decisions class taught by Benaroya. In this class, students learn about Finance by choosing a company and acting as if they were the company’s financial executives. Each week, they decide whether to increase prices, reduce headcount, go public, and expand into new markets. Senior executives join as Guest Speakers to share how they make business and career decisions.
About the series
These talks are offered as part of the Leading Global Growth series from NYU’s School of Professional Studies, and managed in coordination with NYU SPS Integrated Marketing & Communications, within the Division of Programs in Business.