Dr. Kirk Taylor

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, NORTH AMERICAN MEDICAL AFFAIRS (NAMA), MERCK KGAA

An accomplished medical and business professional and board-level leader, Dr. Kirk Taylor serves in high-profile roles in pharmaceutical, biotech, and startup companies. Under his leadership at EMD Serono (Merck KGaA), the medical team launched two new products in three therapeutic areas: Bladder Cancer, NSCLC, and multiple sclerosis. He currently manages a $75M medical budget to support the growth of a $1.5B portfolio. Working across multiple therapeutic areas, including neurology, oncology, fertility, and endocrine, Dr. Taylor was appointed to the US Country Council for the Healthcare, Electronics, and Life Science sectors, as well as the COVID-19 task force. With an entrepreneurial vision, Dr. Taylor has also been on C-Suite teams driving startup companies to achieve IPO and Series A, B, C funding.

Dr. Taylor maintains a board role with Radius Ensemble and serves as an officer and board member of the Augustus A. White III, Health Equity Institute. He was a strategy and finance committee member with The Bottom Line for 4 years, a non-profit that focuses on helping low-income and first-generation students get to college and earn degrees. He is also on the racial advisory committee for the Town of Wayland Trustee.

In recognition of his creating a medical COVID policy and leading Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [DE&I] efforts at EMD, Dr. Taylor received the Merck Recognition Award. As the Executive Sponsor of the Leaders of Color [LOC] Action Committee, an employee resource group [ERG], Dr. Taylor’s harmonized the needs across the three business sectors, resulting in his appointment to the Merck Healthcare Diversity Advisory Board. To increase health equity and access to care, Dr. Taylor is a regular presenter at industry-sponsored events and symposia.

Dr. Taylor’s contributions across numerous therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurology, rare disease, acute macular degeneration, migraine, psychiatry, and others, are known across North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. He has designed strategy and executed launch plans via advisory boards, mergers, distributor markets, payer pathways, medical field excellence, and clinical research.

Dr. Taylor received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and also studied piano at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. He completed his Doctor of Medicine from the State University of New York, Downstate, his neurology residency at Einstein College of Medicine, and a post-doc at UCSF. He taught pain management to neurology residents at Yale VA Hospital for 2 years. Dr. Taylor fulfilled Deloitte University’s Sigma Pi Phi Board Directors Academy Program. He also completed a certificate program in corporate governance from Columbia Business School.