Merck & Co. is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada. Its research is concentrated in oncology, vaccines and infectious disease, and its portfolio includes Keytruda, among the best-selling medicines in the world. The company began in 1891 as the American arm of the German chemical house Merck and became fully independent after the First World War. Alongside its human health division it runs a substantial animal health business, spanning livestock and companion animals. It is now working through a transition from a small number of therapeutic areas into markets that are new to it.
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Betty Larson Chief Human Resources Officer, Merck
Betty Larson is CHRO at Merck, and has held the top people seat four times over: C.R. Bard, Becton Dickinson, GE HealthCare, and now Merck. She fell in love with HR as an undergraduate at Illinois, spent 16 years at Baxter, and took her first CHRO job by moving her young family to New Jersey. She walks through the path to the Chief Officer seat, the mentor whose quiet introduction started it, and the accomplishment she names first: the 10 or 11 former direct reports who are CHROs themselves today, every one of whom still calls.
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