Conversations with Mike Milken

“The process of digitization – whether that was e-commerce in retail, or online gaming for media, online streaming in the media business, digital platforms for the public sector – was already underway. But it enormously accelerated with the pandemic.”

In his two years as CEO of Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian has seen revenues for his company’s services soar more than 40 percent. The Indian-born former president of Oracle believes that the “new normal” of telecommuting will continue to help drive future growth – as long as Google Cloud remembers its core values and who it serves.

“Leadership during this time of transition,” he tells Mike, “a time of difficulty in many cases, has been not just about the tactics and the strategy, but also the purpose and the mission. And that has helped us unify our entire organization around this notion of supporting customers during this period of change for them. And we call that the notion of customer empathy.”

“The bigger part of our response over the next year, and then really over the next five years, is how do you really help countries get bigger private sectors, more jobs, including jobs for women and education for girls.”

When David Malpass began his five-year term as president of the World Bank Group in 2019, he could not foresee that months later his institution would face its greatest test since the post-World War II era. Since its founding in 1947, the World Bank has had one mission: to end extreme poverty and promote shared, sustainable prosperity among its 189 member countries. But as the pandemic ground on throughout 2020, the fallout created extreme challenges to those goals, beginning with our youngest and most vulnerable.

“With COVID hitting, as many as a billion children are still out of school in the developing world alone,” he tells Mike. “And the data shows pretty clearly that when children are out of school, they move backwards. So one of our priorities is to get kids back in school … in a safe way. The food programs and nutrition programs, the vaccination programs – those are all driven at the school level. And so that becomes a high priority for what we're trying to do.”

“When we get out of this pandemic, I suspect people are going to want to flock to the movie theaters. But they're also going to say, I still want my content delivered. So, the movie industry is going to face a decision. Do they offer it both ways – on your iPad the same day as the release in the theater? What's the model? They're determining that as we speak. And I think COVID has upended the movie business even more than usual.”

Most actresses who come to Hollywood don’t end up running a major motion picture studio. But in 1980, Sherry Lansing became the first woman to do so, first leading 20th Century Fox, then Paramount Pictures for more than 12 years. She had a hand in over 200 films including “Forrest Gump,” “Braveheart,” and “Titanic.” Since her retirement, she has embarked on what she calls an “encore” career of philanthropy. The Sherry Lansing Foundation is dedicated to cancer research, health, public education, and encouraging seniors to pursue their own encore careers. 

“Every project I've ever worked on was hard and took a long time,” she tells Mike. “And one of the traits you have to have in any job is resiliency. And you also have to believe in something outside of yourself, that what you're fighting for is worth fighting for. It's worth the time, it's worth the effort. If you don't have that belief, you will give up.”

“It has been a year of terrible tragedy. … And yet, it's also been a year of heroism: the first responders, the healthcare providers, putting themselves at risk to try to help those who are suffering. But I also think there are heroes that have risen to this challenge in the research community, in the business community.”

When NIH Director Francis Collins first spoke with Mike in April of 2020, he was marshalling an army of researchers among his 6,000 research scientists to tackle the coronavirus. He had already successfully directed the Human Genome Project from 1993 to 2008, during which much of the genetic groundwork was laid that would later contribute to the development of Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccines. With light now appearing at the end of the tunnel, Mike checked back in with Dr. Collins for further insight and perspective.

“We are going to get past this,” Collins affirms. “And then I pray, let us not forget the lessons we've learned. Let us not slip back into complacency. Let's keep in mind that we are a vulnerable blue planet and that it's up to all of us to anticipate the things that we might need that science could bring to bear on the next problem, and not wait until it's a crisis.”

Sir Andrew Witty

President, UnitedHealth Group; CEO, Optum; Co-Leader, COVID-19 Vaccine Development, World Health Organization

George Yancopoulos

President and Chief Scientific Officer, Regeneron

Esther Krofah

Executive Director, FasterCures

“Are we willing to do for life sciences and global defense what we were willing to do for the financial environment in the 2008 financial crisis? Because if you compare the trillions of dollars committed to stabilize the financial systems to the billions of dollars which are being committed to stabilize the health system, they don't compare. They really don't.” – Sir Andrew Witty

In a special episode, three of biotech’s most valuable players convene for a wide-ranging conversation about the pandemic. The consensus among Sir Andrew Witty (UnitedHealth, Optum and WHO), Esther Krofah (FasterCures) George Yancopoulos (Regeneron) is that getting future pandemics under control will require cross-sector collaboration and investment to build on current successful strategies.

“It's not what we did in the last six months, or the last nine months that will have led to saving us from the pandemic,” George Yancopoulos tells Mike. “If we can successfully complete these efforts that we've undertaken, it will have been the decades of investments in science, technology and platforms that put us in a position to respond, and we can certainly do better as a society being better prepared.”

“The efficacy of these vaccines is spectacular. It's 95%, the same whether you are an African-American or Hispanic or over 65 years old. … Remarkably, these two vaccines developed in different companies, two different continents, give incredibly similar results, totally independent, which is also enhancing the likelihood that these data absolutely are real.”

In a triumph of modern science and leadership, millions of highly effective doses of COVID-19 vaccines are currently being manufactured, distributed, and administered around the world. For this, much credit goes to Moncef Slaoui, the Chief Science Officer for Operation Warp Speed, a U.S. public–private partnership that has fostered development of these breakthrough drugs. 

The Moroccan-born Slaoui – who previously worked on vaccines for the H1N1, Ebola, and Zika viruses in a 30-year career at GlaxoSmithKline – tells Mike that the lessons learned in 2020 should inspire investments to prevent future pandemics. “I think that would be my way forward. We are bleeding $20 billion a day; let's spend $300 million a year when we don't have a pandemic. Let's be preventative.”

Albert Bourla

Chairman and CEO, Pfizer

Alex Gorsky

Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson

“I think history has shown us to have major leaps forward almost after every crisis. Whether it's a war, a natural disaster, or frankly a big challenge such as going to the moon, these kinds of inflection points force us to go in new directions to collaborate and to accelerate technological breakthroughs.” – Alex Gorsky

Two of the most important CEOs in the world today – Pfizer’s Albert Bourla and Johnson & Johnson’s Alex Gorsky – spoke recently with Mike at the Milken Institute’s Future of Health Summit. While Pfizer is already scaling up production and distribution of their mRNA-based vaccine, Gorsky’s company is looking forward to the third-stage clinical trial results for their single dose, vector-based therapy. The unprecedented collaboration fostered at all levels of the biomedical sector has paid dividends, with many more potential treatments to come.

“I'm very proud for what we have been able to achieve,” Albert Bourla tells Mike. “We will see many more companies in the next few weeks and months demonstrating similar successes in their projects against COVID because one vaccine or two vaccines will not be enough for the entire world. The world needs options.”

Sarah Murdoch

Co-Chair, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI)

Kathryn North

Director, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI); David Danks Professor of Child Health Research, University of Melbourne

Hamish Graham

Paediatrician and Senior Research Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI); University of Melbourne; Royal Children’s Hospital

“With COVID, there's been this renewed focus on the importance of medical research. … With more funding and with philanthropic partners, I'm really optimistic about the further impact that we can make on that global scale.” – Sarah Murdoch

When Dame Elizabeth Murdoch founded the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in 1986, she wanted sought to create an organization dedicated to making discoveries to prevent and treat childhood conditions. Today, MCRI is Australia’s top pediatric health research institute and among the top three worldwide for research quality and impact, with more than 1,200 investigators in 35 countries. 

“We've got our eye on the long-term impacts of COVID,” MCRI Director Kathryn North tells Mike. “We have quite a lot of previous data on the well-being, the health, and the mental health of children and families in our community. But we've now been able to continue to liaise with those families, to look at the direct effects of COVID and then look out into the future.”

“The UAE was among the first countries in the world to make sure it implemented and successfully executed a testing policy. We ramped up on capacity, on ICU space, on respirator supplies. And that resulted in one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.”

As the Group CEO and Managing Director of Mubadala Investment Company, H.E. Khaldoon Khalifi Al Mubarak is responsible for creating sustainable financial returns for Abu Dhabi, overseeing more than $230 billion in assets across 50+ businesses and investments in more than 50 countries. Considered one of the royal family’s most trusted advisors, he is especially proud of what the Emirati response to the pandemic tells the world.

“In the easy times you know your people for sure,” he tells Mike, “But the tough times – that's when you know the mettle of your people, be at a company, be it in the country. And 2020 showed the mettle, I think, of the UAE and the Emiratis.”

Himisha Beltran

Medical Oncologist, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Felix Feng

Radiation Oncologist and Vice Chair for Translational Research, UCSF Department of Radiation Oncology

Christopher Haiman

Genetic Epidemiologist and Professor of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC

Deborah Scher

Executive Advisor to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Jonathan Simons

President and CEO, Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF)

“The road to curing COVID runs right through lots and lots of cancer research.” – Jonathan Simons, President and CEO, Prostate Cancer Foundation

Three top cancer researchers, the head of PCF, and a VA leader join Mike Milken to discuss how genomics, immunotherapies, and precision medicine are informing the quest for effective COVID vaccines and treatments. 

The best practices developed by oncologists in the past two decades are now the standard of care at VA facilities across the country. In discussing the 2016 PCF/VA partnership that established Centers of Excellence, Deborah Scher notes the role oncology continues to play in the pandemic. “We have really built a community of researchers who are bringing best-in-class precision oncology to veterans across the country and are using that platform not just for prostate cancer innovation, but today for COVID innovation as well.”