Chris Round EVP, Head of International Operations & Global Core Franchises Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

After a decade in finance and general management, Chris Round embarked on a pharma career that has seen him live and work in the US, Europe, and Asia and oversee commercial activities for the EMEA, APAC and LATAM regions.

Chris is currently Head of International Operations & Global Core Franchise in the Healthcare division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company that comprises three business sectors: Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Performance Materials. The company has been around for more than 350 years, yet the majority of its owners are still the descendants of Friedrich Jacob Merck, who founded the company in 1668. Merck’s Healthcare businesses specializes in four franchises: Oncology, Neurology & Immunology, Fertility, and Cardiovascular, Metabolism & Endocrinology. Chris takes responsibility for the international business comprised of APAC, China, Europe, MEAR and LATAM, and also assumes global accountability for the Fertility and the Cardiovascular, Metabolism and Endocrinology Franchise. In this interview he speaks about how the company has rapidly pivoted commercial operations into a virtual environment over the past year. Chris joined Merck in 2017, as Head of the EMEA Region.

Prior to that Chris served 20 years with MSD (Merck & Co. in the United States and Canada) including General Manager roles in Sweden and the UK as well as five years at the company’s New Jersey headquarters as SVP of its Oncology and Immunology Franchise—where he led the global oncology positioning and commercial strategies. In 2015, Chris became Managing Director of MSD in China.