Novavax names John C Jacobs as new president and CEO
Vaccine company Novavax announces that John C Jacobs will succeed Stanley C Erck as President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors: effective as of January 23.
Jacobs brings more than 25 years of commercial, operations, business and leadership experience across multiple therapeutic areas. He will join Novavax from Harmony Biosciences, where he has served as President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors since June 2018, and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer from October 2017 to June 2018. Notably, Jacobs led the company through a successful IPO and led its first product through FDA review, approval and commercialization.
Prior to joining Harmony, Jacobs held leadership roles at Teva Pharmaceuticals beginning in 2014, including Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Respiratory Business Unit, Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations in North America and General Manager of Teva in Canada.
Jacobs has also held positions of increasing scope and responsibility at major pharmaceutical companies including Cephalon, Wyeth and Pfizer. He received a B.S. in business from State University of New York College at Plattsburgh and an M.B.A. from The State University of New York at Binghamton.
Outgoing CEO Erck will serve as an advisor to the company for the next fifteen months. Erck was named President and CEO in April 2011 and was responsible for bringing the company's COVID-19 vaccine, its first commercial product, to market in over 40 countries around the world and for achieving Emergency Use Listing with the World Health Organization. Under his leadership, Novavax created a manufacturing and supply network to support global distribution of its COVID-19 vaccine and advanced its late-stage pipeline with both stand-alone influenza and COVID-19-influenza combination vaccine candidates.
Novavax credits his effort as ‘transforming the company into a truly global organization with a footprint in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific regions’.
