• Heather Bresch embodied Mylan motto of “doing good by doing well,”
She backed global quality standards in drug manufacturing, which helped push through a federal law that required all pharmaceutical companies to play by the same rules.
She was the first woman to run a Fortune 500 pharma company, one who championed the work of a desperately poor orphanage in India for children with HIV/ AIDS.
During a career lasting nearly three decades, Heather Bresch also was seared by controversy at generic drugmaker Mylan Inc. Making prescription drugs was a business, a profitable one. And for Ms. Bresch, 50, an intensely personal affair.
“This motivates me every day,” she said at the Pittsburgh viewing of a film about the orphanage, “Blood Brother,” at Regent Square Theater in 2013. Balancing the profit motive with social good is baked into Mylan’s motto of “doing good by doing well,” a saying that Ms. Bresch often repeated.
Ms. Bresch, a mother of four, will retire from the company that she joined a year out of college after Mylan merges in an all- stock deal with Pfizer’s Upjohn unit — if the merger receives the needed approvals. The CEO, who received $ 13.3 million last year in Mylan compensation, could receive $ 37.5 million when she leaves the company.
Ms. Bresch’s first controversy at Mylan came in 2007 when her claim to have received an MBA in 1998 from West Virginia University, where she also received an undergraduate degree in 1991, was called into question. An investigation by the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette determined that she had received the MBA after completing only 26 of the required 48 credit hours.
Ms. Bresch’s father, Joe Manchin, was then governor of West Virginia, and then- WVU President Michael Garrison was a family friend. Her MBA degree was rescinded by the university in April 2008 and Mr. Garrison, a onetime Mylan lobbyist, and several other officials later resigned.
More recently, she was the target of public outrage over rapidly rising drug prices during House Oversight Committee hearings in 2016.
Mylan inherited the EpiPen technology with acquisition of Merck’s generic business in 2007. By 2016, it controlled 90 percent of the market for epinephrine injection devices. Although Mylan had increased EpiPen’s price some 500% by then, Ms. Bresch told the committee that the company’s profit was only about $ 100 for a two- pack.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, DMd., was outraged, telling Ms. Bresch at the hearing, “You raised the price to get filthy rich at the expense of our constituents. After Mylan takes our punches, they’ll fly back to their mansions on their private jets and laugh all the way to the bank.”
Stung by the backlash, Mylan introduced a deeply discounted EpiPen, and the Food and Drug Administration approved the first generic version last year.
Ms. Bresch’s official statement Monday claimed it had been a good run. “Nearly eight years after becoming CEO, I’m proud to say this milestone represents the culmination of the goals I set for myself.”
She said she’s embarking on a new chapter in her life, “one that will continue to be focused on serving people, patients and public health.”