Jeff Berkowitz
SVP, Pharmaceutical Development and Market Access, Walgreen Co.
Jeff Berkowitz is the Senior Vice President, Pharmaceutical Development and Market Access at Walgreen Co., a Fortune Top 40 Company and the largest retail drugstore chain in the United States with over 8,000 locations. In this role, Mr. Berkowitz leads Walgreen’s pharmaceutical purchasing, pricing and contracting and trade relations with pharmaceutical manufacturers for the entire company. He is responsible for enterprise-wide purchasing and inventory management of all brand, generic and specialty pharmaceuticals for retail, mail, specialty and home care pharmacies. In this role, Jeff also serves as an officer of the corporation.
Prior to joining Walgreen Co. in October, 2010, Mr. Berkowitz served as Senior Vice President, Global Market Access at Merck. In this capacity, he served as a member of Merck’s Global Human Health Leadership Team holding joint commercial accountability for Merck’s global sales of $48 Billion and developed and led the Global Market Access team at Merck where he was responsible for all activity related to access, pricing and reimbursement, payor marketing, health outcomes and health technology assessments for Merck’s enterprise-wide portfolio on a worldwide basis.
He was invited to join Merck to create this new function during its 2009 merger with Schering-Plough. His tenure at Schering-Plough started in 1998 in the law department and culminated in his role as group vice president of diversified products and global market access. In this capacity, he held global P&L responsibility for the company’s $2.5 billion diversified products franchises and was a member of the global management team. He envisioned and developed the Global Market Access function at Schering-Plough after running the U.S. Managed Markets organization where he held responsibility for managed care sales and marketing, and the development and implementation of all strategies, initiatives, and operations for Schering-Plough core brands in all managed markets within the United States.
He led a team of over 200 field and home-office personnel responsible for gaining and maintaining appropriate formulary placement and managed-care marketing, with pharmacy-benefit management organizations, managed-care organizations, medical groups, specialty pharmacies, and the State and Federal marketplaces. The Schering-Plough US Managed Markets organization was consistently recognized as “best-in-class” in the industry. He also served as a member of the U.S. Executive Team setting the strategic direction for U.S. sales and marketing and chaired the U.S. and Global Pricing teams.
Mr. Berkowitz has been twice recognized, in 2009 and 2010, as one of the 100 Most Inspiring in the Life Sciences by PharmaVOICE and serves on the Editorial Advisory boards of Pharmaceutical Executive and Pharmaceutical Commerce magazines.
Prior to joining Schering-Plough, Mr. Berkowitz was a health care attorney with the International firm of Proskauer Rose, specializing in health care mergers and acquisitions, fraud and abuse, licensing, and corporate issues.
