Honoring Dr. Andrew Plump, President of R&D, Takeda with USAIC's Distinguished Service Award 2024

All right, thank you to absolutely wonderful panel. And I just want to take a moment to thank all the panelists and moderators and all those that did work to give us just a fabulous day from morning till now. And you know, really a huge thank you to Karon himself for every single year organizing a fabulous conference. So at this moment, the cake part of the conference is over. Now we're going to look at some fabulous icing, which is the celebration of Dr. Andy Plump. And so with that, I'm going to hand off to the next. Let us give a big hand to.

Mai, thank you. You know, because people think this role of EMC is not easy, it's a lot of time commitment. So hi once again, thank you. And here the best part starts for Andy. So I'm not going to be talking much, but we have five people who will talk on my behalf about you. So let's start with Chris. Chris, go ahead. Two minutes, two minutes only. Two and three, so average. Take it one and a half.

All right, all right. Hi everybody, I'm Chris Benco, I'm CEO of Connexa Health, and I've known Andy a long time. It's a pleasure to be asked to come up here and talk a little bit about him. One of the quotes about leadership and talent development that has stuck with me the most, and I don't know the attribution of it, but it's one of my absolute favorites: 'Who believed in you before you believed in yourself, and who are you believing in now?' I know for sure that I am one of many people in this room that has felt the energy of Andy Plump believing in them and their ability to break boundaries beyond their own imagination. And that's one of my favorite things about you, Andy. I know that because one of the great things about this meeting is getting to reconnect with colleagues that I've known from lots of different walks of life, from Merck, from Takeda. And I see so many people, particularly people who've been on your leadership team at Takeda, who are here now, who had your encouragement, your support, your belief, and your energy. And they're CEOs of companies, they're chief medical officers of companies, and they're still friends with you and mostly with each other, which is a testament to how you've built and grown and developed leaders throughout your career. I've also been fortunate to watch the evolution of your leadership team and how you continue to stretch people and grow people, push people, and believe in them to expand their boundaries of what they're capable of in support of Takeda's mission. The second thing that's been amazing to watch about you is how you do that on an organizational level, and I've observed that since you've been at Takeda. So I grew up at Merck and I've known Andy since that time. I didn't work with him at Sanofi, but I know that company well. And I've often commented to you and your team that your perspective from being at two big global pharmas was incredibly important to your leadership at Takeda, but I know damn well you did not learn a lot of the things that you do at either of those two companies. It was a privilege in 2015 when you invited me to be one of your advisers as you were taking on the leadership role at Takeda and I was spinning Connexa out of Merck. What Andy says to his team when he brings in advisers, particularly people who've known him a long time, is that we're there to tell him when he's full of shit. And I really do enjoy that, perhaps not as much as Sam does, but I really do enjoy getting to tell him that he's full of shit. What I appreciate is the number of times you've proven me wrong. You've tried to stretch the organization in ways that are beyond its boundaries and comfort zone, things that you may have never seen before and none of us have ever seen before, but you've made them happen. You've had a relentless focus on narrowing your therapeutic areas and making sure Takeda is getting drugs to patients. Under your watch, we've watched that happen. We've watched medicines get advanced, get registered, and get to patients, which is the most important thing we can do in this business. But at the same time, you've also set the stage for a very long-term future for the company, much like the predecessors before you at Takeda. So expanding the modalities, expanding the partnerships, expanding the mindset of Takeda to be more open to different types of innovation, to have a different attitude toward risk, has fundamentally shifted the culture of the company. So I don't know if George is still here. Kate is not quite as old as Harvard, it's only like 240 years old, but watching what you and the leadership team have done in the last 10 years has been absolutely tremendous. So it's been an honor and a privilege to work with you and to call you a friend. Thank you so much.

We request Colleen if she's here. Andy, you need to sit there, it's your chair, yeah. Absolutely.