Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer Merck & Co., Inc.

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Earlier Education
Union College, 1963
B.S., Electrical Engineering

Other Jobs
Eastman Kodak Company, 1963-66
"I was the first person in my family to go to college, and before HBS, I expected to work for a big company like Kodak for my entire career."
Arthur D. Little, 1968-76
Becton, Dickinson and Co., 1976-94

Why HBS?
"I learned that an engineer whose desk was close to mine at Kodak had been accepted by the School. I said to my fiancée,'Gee, if he can do that, so can I.'"

HBS Offspring
Beth, MBA '97
John, HBS '03

Hobbies
Sailing, skiing

Recommended Reading
A Conflict of Visions, by Thomas Sowell
"Sowell provides important insights into public policy and how it is driven by certain assumptions about human nature and the way the world works. It's helpful reading for anyone who wants to understand the barriers to effecting change on global issues such as health care."

Under Ray Gilmartin's leadership, Merck has launched an unprecedented number of new drugs and forged partnerships with the public and nonprofit sectors to help battle HIV/AIDS around the globe. "More than ever, the business world has an important leadership role to play in terms of closing the gap in health and other vital social issues," he says.

When Ray Gilmartin joined Merck in June 1994 as president and CEO (he became chairman several months later), it was the first time the pharmaceutical giant had chosen a leader from outside its ranks in its century-long history in the United States. Recruited from Becton Dickinson, a maker of medical devices, he was an outsider not only to Merck, but to "Big Pharma" as well. "Members of the investment community were quoted in the business press as saying, 'Who is this guy?'" Gilmartin recalls with a chuckle.

His inclusive management style quickly won him fans within the company. "I met with a lot of people and asked two questions: 'What do you think are the major issues we face? And if you had my job, where would you put your priorities?'" Gilmartin's ability to refocus the company on its primary mission-discovering breakthrough drugs-soon earned him the respect of Wall Street, too.

Between 1994 and 2001, Merck launched an unprecedented seventeen new drugs and increased revenues from $15 billion to nearly $50 billion. The company divested noncore businesses, including a specialty chemicals group, and expanded significantly abroad, becoming one of the top U.S.-based pharmaceutical businesses in Europe. During this period, Merck also took the lead on a host of pressing social issues, ranging from prescription drug coverage for senior citizens on Medicare to the fight against HIV/AIDS worldwide.

Gilmartin, who has a warm smile and an approachable manner, says that Merck is just trying to live up to the values that have long guided the company. "George W. Merck, son of the company's founder, stated in 1950 that medicine is for people and not for profits. He also said that if we remember this ethic, profits will never fail to appear."

A life-size sculpture in the lobby of Merck's headquarters in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, of two figures-a boy leading a blind man with a stick-serves as a compelling reminder of Merck's mission. The blind man depicted in the sculpture suffers from river blindness, a disease that ravaged countless lives in the developing world until Merck researchers discovered the breakthrough drug Mectizan. The company's decision to donate the drug and help distribute it annually to more than 25 million people provided important lessons for the battle against HIV/AIDS, says Gilmartin.

Not only is Merck pursuing a safe and effective vaccine to prevent and treat HIV infection, he points out, but the company also announced last year that it would not profit in the world's poorest countries from the sale of its HIV/AIDS medicines. In addition, Merck has initiated a unique partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Republic of Botswana-where more than one-third of the population is infected with the virus-to model how the private, nonprofit, and public sectors can work together to attack an epidemic at the local level.

"More than ever before, the business world has an important leadership role to play in terms of closing the gap in health and other vital social issues," says Gilmartin, who came to HBS in 2001 to help launch the Social Enterprise course in the Required Curriculum. "The private sector is increasingly welcome in fields that were long considered the provenance of government and social service organizations, and that is exciting news for the next generation of business leaders."

Gilmartin is quick to point out that Merck's success as a profitable and ethical enterprise is the best contribution he could ever hope to make to society. "Will the research capability of the company-our ability to discover breakthrough drugs-be stronger when I leave than when I arrived at Merck? Will our company be seen as one whose workers not only did great research, but also conducted themselves with the highest standards of integrity? These are the kinds of questions that are important to me," he says.

He didn't know it at the time, adds Gilmartin, "but when I was a student at Harvard Business School, I was in training to be a CEO, because everything we did in study groups and class discussions revolved around learning how to think about complex issues."

On the other hand, he believes, the news media have placed too much emphasis on "celebrity CEOs" in recent years. "Chief executives are too often seen as high-profile dealmakers rather than problem solvers who move their companies forward in competitive and innovative ways."

Recalling his participation in a recent roundtable on leadership sponsored by the Harvard Business Review, Gilmartin says, "When I was less experienced, I would tell myself, 'After I get past this problem, everything out there will be happiness and peace.' Then I realized that happiness and peace came from knowing that whatever problem is brought to me, I-or someone in the company-can solve it." Whether meeting with scientists in a research lab outside London or seeing Merck's work in Africa firsthand, Gilmartin is a business leader who relishes the challenges of a complex world.