Occupation Business executive Name Judy Lewent | Role Executive | |
Alma mater Goucher College, MIT Sloan School of Management Education Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972) Similar People Kenneth C Frazier, Jeffrey B Kindler, Ian C Read, Charles Pfizer, Peter S Kim | ||
MIT Sloan Global Women's Conference 2017: Women on Boards
Judith Carol "Judy" Lewent is on the board of directors for GlaxoSmithKline, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Motorola Solutions. She worked from 1980 to 2007 at Merck & Co. where she spent time as executive vice president and chief financial officer.
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Early life
Lewent received her high school diploma at Hunter College High School, her B.S. in Economics from Goucher College, and her S.M. in 1972 from the MIT Sloan School of Management with thesis titled The French Open-end Investment Companies (1964 to 1971): an Application of the Capital Asset Pricing Model.
Career
Joining Merck in 1980, Lewent developed a new planning model in 1983 based on the Monte Carlo method, as more traditional financial valuation methods seemed not to take account of the long-term nature of pharmaceutical risks. In 1990, on her appointment as CFO, Lewent took on responsibilities for Merck's overall financial and strategic development, and for licensing matters. This appointment made her the first woman to serve as the CFO of a major corporation.
Since then Lewent has also been responsible for Merck's collaboration with Johnson & Johnson in a consumer pharmaceuticals joint venture, for the setting up of the animal health company Merial (a joint venture with the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis), and for Merck's ongoing relationships with AstraZeneca and DuPont. She chaired the governing boards of several of these joint ventures.
Lewent is a member of the Board of Directors of Dell Inc., Motorola and the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Family Fund; she is also a life member of the MIT Corporation, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Between 26 July and 07 Aug 2007, Lewent sold 200,000 shares of Merck stock for about $10,262,000, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
In February 2007, Merck has announced she will retire and leave the company in July.