No Generic Success Story

West Virginia native and Mylan CEO Heather Bresch—the first woman to lead a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company—opens up about her childhood, her career, and how she juggles it all.

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When she graduated from West Virginia University (WVU) with a degree in International Studies and Political Science in 1991, she moved to California. “I rebelled. I went way far in the other direction, needing the space to figure out my own path,” Heather says. When she returned to West Virginia, her father, who was a West Virginia state senator at the time, ran into Mike Puskar, co-founder and CEO of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, at a WVU basketball game and mentioned that his daughter had moved back and was looking for a job. “I don’t deny that I got my first job at Mylan because of my dad. At the time, I knew who Mike Puskar was by name, and I knew he had a company called Mylan, but I couldn’t have told you what Mylan did. I vaguely knew it had something to do with science.”

Heather was told to stop by the office. “I remember telling Dad, ‘Look, I’m not sure what Mylan does, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with what I want to do.’  My dad said, ‘Heather, you need to go hear what they have to say. It’s a good company that is just going to grow.’”

So she did. At the time, the executive offices were in a white trailer in Morgantown. She recalls, “I walk into this doublewide, and the head of human relations comes out and tells me that they have a data entry position open in QC. At the time, I’m still trying to get my head around what this company does, much less what QC means.”  The head of QC, or quality control, interviewed her, explaining that she would be responsible for typing labels on products and that her shift would be 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. “I go home and tell my dad, ‘I appreciate you making this contact for me, but you’ve got to be out of your mind if you think I am going to take this job instead of the other opportunities I have on the table. I’ll be typing up stickers on products that I can’t even pronounce the names of in the basement of the manufacturing building.’ My dad replies, ‘I don’t know what to tell you—you should absolutely take it. Give it a year.’”

That was 20 years ago. “It was one of the only times I’ve been the dutiful daughter,” Heather laughs.

During her tenure at Mylan, she has done it all—from data entry and policy work to government relations and business development. Her résumé reads like a ticker tape from the NYSE. “I’ve held about 15 different positions in the company,” she says. “My first 10 years were a bit happenstance. I worked hard and I learned the industry inside and out. I love to discover what problems need to be fixed, figure out how to fix them, and then fix them.”

Heather’s skills at fixing problems did not go unacknowledged. She has been on the forefront of battling brand-name pharmaceuticals, from challenging attempts to delay the release of generic drugs to playing a vital role in the passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, a congressional revision to the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984, which helped to ensure consumer access to affordable pharmaceuticals. Alongside Mylan’s business leaders in India, she has helped champion enhanced access to lower cost, generic anti-retroviral treatments to treat HIV/AIDS and help prevent HIV transmission in developing countries. In fact, 30 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world who are receiving treatment depend on a Mylan product.

Heather has also been a driving force behind the Generic Drug User Fee Act and a change to the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the resources and authority to inspect the facilities of foreign drug makers at the same rate it inspects the facilities of U.S. manufacturers. More than 40 percent of the drugs sold in the U.S. are manufactured outside of our borders and an estimated 1.5 million tainted or counterfeit foreign prescriptions enter the U.S. each year. The initiatives Heather is championing will not only protect American consumers and the safety of the U.S. drug supply, but also protect American jobs by leveling the playing field for U.S. manufacturers. As a result of her work, she was named one of Esquire magazine’s 2011 “Patriots of the Year.”

Heather believes that consumer protection can make good business sense. Take, for example, an idea that came to her after taking her children to Disney World, where she noticed that defibrillators were stationed in between rides in case of emergencies. Mylan markets EpiPen® auto-injector, a retractable syringe that quickly and easily injects epinephrine into someone suffering from a life-threatening allergic reaction. She asked herself, why weren’t these lifesaving devices everywhere, given that unnecessary deaths, including of children, happen as a result of unintentional exposure to allergens? Today, Mylan is advocating for legislation that would allow undesignated epinephrine auto-injectors in schools, and such legislation has already passed in certain states.