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Alex Gorsky on workforce development

From Recursion's "Era of TechBio" Panel at JPM Featuring Dean Li, Kimberly Powell, Alex Gorsky & Tony Kim · · Recursion

“I think one of the biggest challenges that we're going to face as an industry is how do we how do we ensure that we're educating that we're training we're developing people with all the right capabilities particularly as we go through this transformation because it won't happen just overnight and um and we and and so instead of saying well the technologist over this there yet you know the the clinicians the more traditional developers are over here I think the more the the faster that we can get to a Common Language um and um and and frankly not be so differentiated uh I think just the more ubiquitous and commonplace and uh impactful it'll become”

Alex Gorsky
Former Executive Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson
workforce developmentorganizational cultureeducation

On , Alex Gorsky, Former Executive Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Johnson & Johnson, spoke about workforce development during Recursion's "Era of TechBio" Panel at JPM Featuring Dean Li, Kimberly Powell, Alex Gorsky & Tony Kim on Recursion.

Recursion's "Era of TechBio" Panel at JPM Featuring Dean Li, Kimberly Powell, Alex Gorsky & Tony Kim
Watch on YouTube at 19:06
Recursion's "Era of TechBio" Panel at JPM Featuring Dean Li, Kimberly Powell, Alex Gorsky & Tony Kim
Recursion
Watch on YouTube at 19:06
A panel featuring leaders across investment, tech, and industry discussed the "Era of TechBio" at Recursion's event at the San Francisco Mint during the 2025 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. In a panel discussion led by Natasha Loder of The Economist, panelists answered the question – when it comes to TechBio, are we there yet? Dean Li, executive vice president and president of Merck Research Laboratories, said the “era of computational power will effect every industry,” and that TechBio “flavor” will be embedded throughout the pharma industry. Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at NVIDIA, said not only is TechBio here, but it is creating a “paradigm shift” where we’ll now start discovery with AI “use the predictive power of models and then go into the wet lab [to validate], and take that data and put back in models - it’s a complete flip flop of how it’s been done.” Alex Gorsky, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson, said the question now is: “How does AI impact the entire system of bringing drugs to market?” Tony Kim, Managing Director at BlackRock, said he sees “promising signs” as a 27-year tech investor, adding that generative AI “has a superpower that could crack this vertical industry.”
Alex Gorsky

About Alex Gorsky

Former Executive Chairman & Chief Executive Officer · Johnson & Johnson

Alex Gorsky, former Executive Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, participated in a keynote discussion at the LSI USA '24 Emerging Medtech Summit in May 2024. During the conversation, he argued that the traditional model of pricing medical devices with a small performance difference at a significantly higher cost "is not going to work." He stated that healthcare spending will increase over the next decade due to demographic shifts, and he described this as "not a bad thing" for a developed society. Gorsky also warned that if the industry does not focus on ensuring broad access to technology, "countervailing political forces" could change the healthcare ecosystem. He noted that large-scale M&A is "quite challenged" and expressed concern about that trend. Gorsky predicted that enabling technologies like cloud, connectivity, and AI will become the focus of medtech within ten years, and he advised entrepreneurs and investors to "think differently" about enabling the next generation of healthcare. Earlier, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Gorsky discussed Johnson & Johnson's development of a vaccine on a not-for-profit basis, stating that the company aimed to provide broad access. He emphasized the importance of relying on "data, science, and well-established regulatory guidelines" during a politicized time. In a 2018 interview, Gorsky described leading Johnson & Johnson with a "start-up mode" mindset, stressing the need for constant reinvention. He also discussed the importance of the company's Credo, a set of principles he said serves as a "moral compass," and noted that all employees had participated in "Credo challenge" sessions to discuss its relevance. In a 2013 interview, Gorsky identified significant organizational and people changes as among the most challenging decisions he faced, and he said he evaluates leaders based on their performance, their track record in developing future leaders, and how they develop talent with the Credo in mind.

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