After overseeing the event of a coronavirus vaccine in record time, Dr. Albert Bourla, chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer Inc., isn’t any stranger to driving progress at lightning speed.

On the 2023 WWD Beauty CEO Summit, in conversation with Jenny B. Nice, executive editor, beauty, WWD and Beauty Inc, Bourla recounted the vaccine creation process through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the changes it caused at Pfizer.

“What makes differences within the culture are the unwritten rules. It’s the mindset that individuals are having in the meanwhile,” Bourla said. “Once I took over the corporate, it was in very good condition, my predecessors had done a implausible job. My transformation was to position the corporate from a excellent marketing machine to a scientific powerhouse. I wouldn’t give you the chance to do this unless I created a really strong foundation for the corporate.”

Bourla took over as chief executive officer in January of 2019 — just a couple of 12 months before the world was without end modified. The pandemic accelerated the belief of Bourla’s vision, and to implement it, he had 4 key tenets.

“The primary one is courage, and also you saw it in the selections that were made during COVID[-19],” said Bourla. “The second was excellence in execution, and we saw that in the way in which we were capable of do things that weren’t possible to do.

“The third was equity, and that drove plenty of our decisions like how we priced the product,” continued Bourla, “and at the top of crisis, found ourselves on the precise side of history. And the last is joy.”

One thing that didn’t impact Bourla’s decision-making when it got here to developing the vaccine was budget concerns. Early on, his message to the team was spend whatever it takes, a gutsy decision for the leader of a publicly traded enterprise. “I could calculate some points,” he said. “I knew it needed to be north of $2 billion. And Pfizer is a giant company, and $2 billion wasn’t going to interrupt the corporate. Every company, losing billions shouldn’t be good, but we had very various things at stake due to what could have happened if we failed.”

One other crucial decision involved not accepting money from the federal government to assist finance the vaccine’s development. “Once you’re taking money from someone, there’s all the time strings attached — especially when it’s the federal government, since it’s taxpayer money,” said Bourla. “Pfizer can also be a really big corporate bureaucracy. I didn’t wish to add the external bureaucracy.”

As well, Bourla desired to keep Pfizer above the fray in an environment that was becoming increasingly polarized. “I saw how politicized all of it was becoming — it was becoming the focus of confrontation between government opposition between the 2 parties, between red and blue states,” he said. “From my perspective, I desired to isolate Pfizer as much as possible from the politics, so I said no money from taxpayers. I’m undecided I succeeded in isolating Pfizer; the politics became the epicenter of each political debate. But it surely was going to be way worse.”

Partnering with BioNTech on the vaccine and deciding to leverage its messenger RNA (mRNA) technology was one other make-or-break decision the manager made within the early days. “Pfizer had multiple technologies on the time,” he said, noting there was no data on the time that would point to a transparent path forward. Pfizer’s senior scientific leaders supported using BioNTech’s technology, and Bourla used that to guide his decision-making.

As successful as Bourla was in overseeing the creation of the vaccine, the period was one in all immense pressure. When asked how he handled the stress, Bourla was candid in regards to the toll it took. “I used to be well trained to withstand stress due to my daughter,” he joked, “But I don’t think I did well on that front. I pushed plenty of people to do what they did, and I never regretted that, but I lost it over and over due to the stress, and that was unfair.

“Individuals are watching and seeing every thing you do be interpreted,” he said. “In case your mood or body language reflects anxiety, it paralyzes other organisms. So it is advisable to relearn how, to start with, to not fake, but the right way to not be stressed, knowing that things shall be relieved, and that the glass is half full. I come from Greece — we speak with our hands and we display out emotions very clearly, we are able to’t hide ourselves easily,” he continued. “But I’m aware of the impact.”

When asked what in regards to the current geopolitical landscape worries him essentially the most, Bourla pointed to the dissemination of disinformation. “There are far more opportunities on this planet than challenges,” he said. “But for me, the thing that shook the foundations of my beliefs was this crisis of disinformation… That might cost lives, could break the bank.”

He continued that the onus rests on governments to combat disinformation. “I strongly consider that the source of fine needs to be the elected officials,” Bourla said. “They’re the people who find themselves elected to throw the ball. I actually have not been elected by anyone… increasingly more, the business community faces greater credibility with the general public; there’s over and over insolvency while you click on data.”

Bourla and his team worked tirelessly through the pandemic to transparently share information with the general public. Bourla needed to do it twice, first with the vaccine and second with the treatment, and acknowledged it was a key goal — but not very difficult. “Look, we saved the world,” he said. “In order that was not very difficult for me to do.”