CHANGE MAKERS JEFF KINDLER

serves as Chief Executive Officer of Centrexion Therapeutics, a company focused on developing safe and effective, non-addictive treatments for chronic pain.

Kindler was formerly the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer, the world's largest research-based biopharmaceutical company, which he joined in January 2002. As CEO, Kindler led Pfizer’s $68 billion merger and acquisition of Wyeth, diversified Pfizer’s product portfolio, improved its R&D pipeline, and reshaped the company’s commercial, innovation, and leadership models to drive growth and cultural change. While at Pfizer, Kindler worked with former President Bill Clinton to help bring medicines to impoverished patients in the developing world through public-private pharmaceutical partnerships. He also represented the pharmaceutical industry in U.S. government healthcare reform efforts, helping to increase access to affordable medicines, while preserving an environment in which pharmaceutical firms can discover and develop innovative treatments.

In his prior work, Kindler joined McDonald's Corporation as Executive Vice President and General Counsel then moved into line management as President of Partner Brands. Before joining McDonald’s Corporation, Kindler was Vice President of Litigation and Legal Policy of the General Electric Company.

Tell us briefly about Centrexion and what you do. Centrexion is a company whose mission is to develop treatments for chronic pain that do not involve opioids or other dependency-forming agents. As you undoubtedly know, we have a serious opioid crisis in the country, and there is a lack of really safe and effective medicines for the tens of millions of people suffering from chronic pain. I'm the CEO, so I have the responsibility of leading a great team of people from our phenomenal lead scientists, to our financial group, to the commercial group, and everything else that's necessary to make a company like this successful.

What opportunities excite you the most in regards to your work? The opportunities to develop medications that help people live better lives excite me most. That's what I've been spending my time on ever since I went to Pfizer. I care a lot about helping bring innovative new medicines to people that need them.

You have sat on multiple boards. What drives your dedication to them? I join boards when I find that the company's mission is important, when the leadership of the company is effective at pursuing that mission, and when the board itself has an important and valuable role in the company, like providing advice and counsel to the CEO. Highly functional boards are really important to ensure that the institution's mission is fulfilled: they ensure that there's good governance of the company.

What are some of the largest ways in which your industry has changed due to the recent world events that have taken place? What do you think might be some of the longer term impacts? Well, clearly the most significant recent world event that is relevant to the healthcare ecosystem, in general, and pharmaceuticals, in particular, is the COVID-19 pandemic. And I was extremely proud of my alma mater, Pfizer, for their incredible work in bringing forward a safe and effective vaccine in record time. Prior to this, the fastest that a vaccine had been developed was around four or five years, and that I believe was for mumps in the 1950s.

The fact that the phenomenal scientists and leaders at Pfizer and also other companies were able to bring forward these vaccines in the kind of timeframe that they did was nothing short of a medical miracle, and it has really had a terrific impact on the health and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people. I think that as a result of this experience, there are probably going to be opportunities to speed up the development of other medicines. There's certainly a lot of work being done in trying to ensure greater access to medicines in countries that have fewer resources than the United States does, and I'm very proud of the work that Pfizer and other companies have done in that regard as well.

What would you say is your biggest career failure or biggest challenge you have faced in your career, and what did you learn from it? It was very challenging to lead a very large company like Pfizer because large companies can often be less agile than smaller companies, and trying to make change in that context can be difficult. One of the things that I've definitely learned over my career, not just at Pfizer but in general, is how crucial it is for leaders to have mentors, coaches, or counselors outside of the company or firm they're working in to provide them with advice. It's a cliche, but it's true that being a CEO is a very lonely job. You really benefit from having someone outside the company with experience, who's been around and has faced similar issues as you're facing, who you can be completely open with, and who can help you think about things from your very unique perspective.

I think that most important leadership jobs require the exercise of judgment, meaning making decisions on matters that fall into areas other than clear cut answers. If the problem has a clear cut answer, there's a high likelihood that it will have been addressed, or at least should have been addressed, by someone else in the organization before it lands on the CEO's desk. So the CEO, ideally, should be dealing with those issues that for whatever reason only the CEO can act on. And that requires judgment and judgment, in turn, I believe, is a function of experience and pattern recognition.

After a while, if you've been around a while and you've seen a number of different situations, you hopefully get to a place where, when a new problem comes along, it has similarities to something you've seen before, and you know how to think about it or who the right people are to talk to about it. I believe in all this so strongly, I've spent a lot of the last 10 years being an advisor to new CEOs.

Obviously you have a lot of management experience. What do you look for in someone you are hiring? If I had to put it in one phrase, I'd call it enterprise thinking. People join an organization typically because they have a skill or a background that the company needs and that they can bring to bear. I think it's sort of a threshold requirement that they have the requisite skills, experience, and ability to perform that function at a high level. That's what you might characterize as checking the box, so to speak. Beyond that, I've found that there's a very significant difference between people who are really good at their particular function or domain expertise, and those who have that expertise but also think more broadly about what's important to the enterprise as a whole. When you are sitting in the CEO chair, you're thinking not of any one particular function, but you must consider how the different functions work together and what's important for the entire enterprise.

When I have a leadership team, the people around the table are each there because of the expertise they bring, but the real value comes when they think of the enterprise as a whole and, more broadly, about how their expertise can fit together with others. That kind of imagination and mindset is crucial the higher you go in an organization.

In what ways did Montclair Academy prepare you for the path your life has taken? I was very fortunate to attend MA. We had a small class and as a result, we had opportunities to participate in a lot of activities and hold leadership positions. I was able to, for example, be the editor of the paper, be in plays, and partake in other extracurricular activities. The education was first rate, of course, but I think, as in any school, a lot of what you get out of it happens outside of the classroom. We were a pretty tightly knit group, and we learned a lot from each other, and I think all of that was very valuable to me, in terms of learning about writing a paper, working with people on a team, or in a play, etc.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to current MKA students? Be open-minded and opportunistic. As you're graduating high school and going into college, you feel like adulthood is coming at you pretty quickly, and you need to start making decisions about where you're going to live, where you're going to work, and who you're going to be with. I would encourage people to try to remember that you are actually still pretty young with a very long life ahead of you. Don't sell yourself short and find yourself too quickly following a narrow path. Keep your mind open to other opportunities. If you're lucky enough to go to a college that offers you the opportunity to see things you would not otherwise have been exposed to, let it happen: let yourself see and hear those opportunities and follow your heart.