MBA grad discusses pharmaceutical industry

Some Wharton School students may love the financial world, but a career in the “big three” of marketing, consulting and investment banking is not the holy grail for all students, as the large turnout at a pharmaceuticals talk revealed Monday night.

Wharton and College of Arts and Sciences students alike gained insight into the future of the pharmaceutical industry when 2009 MBA recipient Sean Cao spoke at Hunstman Hall about his career at pharmaceutical companies Sanofi-Aventis and Johnson & Johnson.

Cao, who serves as strategy director at Sanofi-Aventis— the world’s fifth-largest pharmaceutical company — described changes that have taken place recently in the industry, in which “blockbuster” drugs are losing protection under patents increasingly early, resulting in a “patent cliff” which he said will cause losses of up to $100 billion by 2015.

Wharton Asia Exchange hosted Cao as part of an effort to “provide students with an insight into the pharmaceutical industry,” WAX board member and Wharton and College sophomore Mark Ding said. “A lot of kids are interested in” the pharmaceutical industry, but it does not have a strong presence on campus due to a tendency by healthcare companies not to hire undergraduates, he added.

Cao emphasized the importance of bridging the gap that currently exists between scientists and business people in the pharmaceutical industry, saying that pharmaceutical researchers and the people who develop the business models typically “don’t talk to one another very much.” He cited his own background as an immunologist as helpful in his understanding of the industry.

Cao’s experience in product development at Johnson & Johnson first gave him insight into the business of pharmaceuticals, which he found “eye opening.” This prompted him to enroll in the Wharton Executive MBA program, which described as “very intense” although there was the upside that “everyone brought their skills to the table” — from people who had worked on Wall Street to those who served in the U.S. military in Iraq.

Roughly 100 students filled the lecture hall, listening attentively before asking questions about Cao’s personal experience and his predictions for the future of the industry.

Wharton and College freshman Joshua Liang, who is on the professional committee for WAX, was happy with the large turnout. He arranged for Cao to speak because he “wanted to add another perspective to Wharton events aside from the financial side.” Wharton sophomore Angel Li echoed this sentiment, saying events like this “open up our minds to other business industries” apart from the big three.

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