Henri Termeer was one of the first of a pioneering group of business executives who built a disparate group of fledgling companies into a biotech industry that has driven decades of therapeutic innovation. During a 28-year career at Genzyme, including 26 years as CEO, he created a process of drug development that for the first time was patient-centered. He also helped forge biotech's public policy agenda and inspired a generation of entrepreneurs to take on large and important challenges. An extraordinary number of today's biotech leaders were directly mentored by Termeer. His own leadership was iconoclastic: He broke rules and took risks, setting ambitious goals and finding novel ways to reach them. In doing so he transformed an industry and brought hope to patients with a range of diseases previously deemed too rare to justify the investment needed to support the development of specific therapies.

In Conscience and Courage, John Hawkins, an insightful analyst of healthcare leaders, reveals the philosophy, principles, methods, and habits of a prominent and successful CEO who defied convention to create an investor-owned global enterprise that put people before profits and improved the lives of thousands of forgotten patients.

Author: John Hawkins
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Published: 10/01/2019
Pages: 254
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781621823704


Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2020

About the Author
John Hawkins is a biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry veteran and an expert in assessing the industry's top executive and boardroom talent. For nearly four decades, John has encountered and studied many of the world's best and brightest leaders in the life sciences arena. John's personal exposure to Henri Termeer began through his involvement as a healthcare investment banker in the IPO heydays of the mid-1980s. Later, while serving as the CFO of a publicly held, pioneering mammalian cell culture firm and as a senior partner assessing and appointing more than 200 pharma/biotech Board Directors and CEOs, John accrued a unique contextual perspective on Termeer's life and legacy.

Father of three grown children, Hawkins has climbed four of the world's Seven Summits. He is a Vice Chairman and a Board Director of Odgers Berndtson, LLC, New York. John and his wife, Anne, live in Charlottesville, Virginia.