But at certain times, it’s not that I put pressure, I lost my temper, and that I regret. The lesson for me is that the leader needs to do whatever he or she can not to come in a position that will stress the people. You can put a lot of pressure, but you should never lose your temper and make people feel unhappy and uncomfortable. So that’s another good lesson that I learned, and I try to do less of it, let’s say.
FREDERICK KEMPE: Obviously, you’re not a politician. You weren’t elected as a politician. But you’ve had to deal with a lot of politics in the last eighteen months. What have you learned about geopolitics and major-power politics? What have you learned about domestic politics? You’ve been through two quite different American presidents. You’ve also learned a little bit about fake news during this period of time as well. So talk to me about what you’ve learned about geopolitics, domestic politics, and fake news.
ALBERT BOURLA: Well, clearly, it was a crash course for me, and I think that I learned enough to have a PhD in political sciences right now but, unfortunately, the hard way. I tried to protect the company from being involved in the politics. In the United States, it was impossible to do that because there was so much animation and polarization, and… COVID-19 was at the epicenter of the debate. The development of a vaccine became the essence of the debate, which it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be discussed in political terms. Only scientists should have to discuss it.
Every day we tried to navigate the political mindset and the way that I saw it was that I had to create pressure [to] our people but also, I had to protect our people from internal bureaucracy, from external bureaucracy, and give them the resources so that they can work.
I had, somehow, to be the seal that will absorb the pressure, the political pressures, rather than having the pressures going all the way down to our people. They should feel that they have to worry only about the lab and their patients. And I tried to do that, and it was not always easy…
The other thing that I learned, because that gave me the opportunity to speak with a lot of leaders… You realize that they are human beings. You realize that they are people that have the same worry about their people, that they try to do the best for their country, and when you interact a lot with them you realize, also, they have family, and they have kids, and they have their own concerns.
It was a very humbling experience to be able to do that and, literally, meet families of many leaders in the world because, you know, we had calls evenings and nights trying to find solutions to their problems, and that was also a very humbling experience.
FREDERICK KEMPE: And you’ve shared a little bit in the past about direct phone calls from the president of the United States, direct communication. How do you in a position like your own deal with that? Because, obviously, there’s a lot of pressure on them as well, as you said, as human beings.
