Dive Brief:
- Suresh Kumar, a former Obama administration official, is the new executive vice president of external affairs at Sanofi.
- Kumar's responsibilities will include public affairs and interaction with government and international organizations.
- Kumar spent most of his career at Johnson & Johnson (J&J). In 2010, he became asistant secretary of commerce and director general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service under the Obama administration.
Dive Insight:
Kumar has had an interesting career that involves long stints in pharmaceutical companies, as well as high-level government service dating back to the Clinton administration. There are clear synergies and overlapping skillsets between Kumar's governmental roles and his new role at Sanofi.
Sanofi bills itself as a global healthcare company, with broad areas of focus that include not only diabetes, consumer health, animal health, and vaccines---but also tropical diseases. In fact, Sanofi, which has 110,000 employees worldwide, has 300 access-to-care programs in place in 80 countries.