Michael Ku and Global Clinical Supply at Pfizer Inc.: Bringing Hope to Patients (B)

In 2011, Michael Ku became Pfizer’s Vice President of Global Clinical Supply (GCS) after the company had undergone three large-scale mergers and acquisitions. As Ku and his new leadership team set out to build a proactive, end-to-end, digital and physical clinical supply chain, they put in place a “Patients First” culture, developed their digital capabilities, and built out their global footprint.
By 2019, GCS had made significant progress toward becoming the agile, innovative organization necessary to support Pfizer’s new ambition to focus exclusively on developing innovative medicines and vaccines. Ku and his leadership team felt the time had come to implement a new cross-functional decision-making hub. They also decided to pilot a 24-hour, 5 day a week workforce model with a team of clinical pharmacists in Manila. Just as they were beginning to onboard their first hires, COVID-19 struck. GCS found itself on the front lines, having to supply Pfizer’s vaccine candidate and investigational antiviral studies, while also ensuring continuity of clinical supply to hundreds of other trials across the globe. By July 2020, the five-person Manila team—all of which had been on-boarded virtually—had come to play a critical role in GCS’s productivity. With Phase 3 of the vaccine candidate trial looming, Ku and his leadership team had decided to double the size of the Manila team by the end of 2020. The question was, who would lead the team?