How It Got Here: The Jab

As COVID-19 rampaged through the world during the Spring of 2020, a team at Pfizer in Kalamazoo was working 24/7 to scale up production of a vaccine candidate that they weren’t even sure would be approved. Developing a manufacturing process, procuring materials, and getting the vaccines through the cold chain at the scale needed to inoculate the world was a dizzying endeavor. Follow along as Chaz Calitri, Vice President of Operations at Pfizer, and Wes Wheeler, President of UPS Healthcare tell us how they pulled it off. With insight on why success was far from guaranteed from Gad Allon, an expert in scaling operations at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Glenn Steinberg, Global Supply Chain and Operations Lead at EY, and Professor Medini Singh from Columbia Business School. 

It’s not the vaccine that saves lives; it’s the vaccination. This is the story of the last mile: getting life-saving doses into people’s arms under the strain of unprecedented demand. Hear from Donna Drummond, Chief Expense Officer at Northwell Health where the first Pfizer vaccine in the US was administered, along with Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA University Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at Columbia who has been a leading voice in global public health for decades. Our series ends with a deep dive into how the pandemic has transformed global supply chains and what it means for the future in a world where disruption is likely to be the norm. Join Rear Admiral (RET) John Polowczyk, Columbia Business School professors Medini Singh and Awi Federgruen, and Prashant Yadav of the Center for Global Development as they discuss the lessons learned, if, indeed, we will heed them.