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P28: Educational, Gender, and Age Diversity in the Corporate Leadership of Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical Companies: A 3-Year Update

Poster Presenter

Moyra Aziz

Post-Doctoral Fellow
Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation
United States

Objectives

Assess the evolution of diversity in corporate leadership of the 2017 Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies over three years

Method

A list of the 11 major pharmaceutical companies as per the 2017 Fortune 500 list was obtained and a benchmark of diversity was established based on gender, age, and education of all executive members based on public records. Trends in these characteristics were evaluated for changes over three years

Results

Based on the 2017 Fortune 500 list of major pharmaceutical companies, a list of executive committee members was compiled. Publicly available data on age, gender, educational background (consisting of bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees) was collected for 111 executive committee members across 11 pharmaceutical companies based on 2017 data, and were compared to data taken on 107 executive committee members in 2020. In 2017, the mean age of 111 executive committee members was 55 years old, with 75 members under the age of 60 (67%), 15 members age 60 and over (13.5%), and 21 members with an unknown age (19.5%). In 2020, the mean age of 107 committee members stayed the same at 55 years old, with 75 members under the age of 60 (70%), 16 members age 60 and over (15%), 16 members with an unknown age (15%). In 2017, 22% of executive committee members were female. In 2020, this percentage rose to 29%. Out of 11 chief executive officers, only one is female. In 2020, all but one executive committee members have an undergraduate degree, with 50% having a master’s degree and 40% having a doctoral degree. Of the group with a masters degree, 58% of this cohort hold a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), whilst 27% hold a masters in another field. There is a proportion of this cohort that hold both an MBA and a masters in another field. This data is compared to that of 2017, where similarly all but one member had a 4-year bachelor's degree, with 69% having advanced degrees.

Conclusion

The findings of this three-year update can be used to examine how the current age, gender, and educational diversity of pharmaceutical corporate leadership has evolved. In the last three years, there has not been a noticeable change in age and educational diversity. In terms of gender, female leadership positions increased by seven percentage points. Overall, when looking at all three assessed markers of diversity, there not been a significant change from 2017 to 2020. While the benchmark was set in 2017, and whilst many companies continue to recognize the need for diversity, seemingly, most Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies have had slow results in this three-year period. As more analyses continue to show a positive correlation between executive board diversity and company performance, it is evident that pharmaceutical companies should continue to champion diversity, and increase representation across age, gender, and educational backgrounds.