Klaus Beck, MD/Ph.D.

Klaus is a physician and scientist with 30 years of industry experience, in roles with increasing leadership responsibility in the US, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region as well as Europe, Middle East and Africa – working across the R&D commercialization spectrum, spanning from discovery, translational and clinical research to launch, medical affairs and maintenance, plus global business development and licensing. Klaus worked at Genentech, Amgen, Elan, AstraZeneca and Merck & Co in local, regional and global roles.

Klaus’ most recent full-time role was as Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Organon & Co (a women’s health-focused company, spun out of Merck & Co) where he had direct organizational responsibility for Global Clinical Development and Pharmacovigilance & Clinical Safety Science. Klaus led or was a key contributor to the creation of all corporate governance processes and review bodies at Organon and served as co-chair on two strategic priority Franchise teams, i.e. Women’s Health and Fertility and he chaired the R&D Review Committee, i.e. the most senior technical/medical decision-making body within Organon.

Klaus has extensive product commercialization experience, having supported the launch and maintenance of several new products in the US and Japan. He has successfully led international teams (up to 850 colleagues) with a budget of up to $250MM and he has overseen (and in most cases initiated) extensive organizational change initiatives including building large cross-functional teams (from initiation to 350 staff) as well as significantly downsizing and reorienting existing teams. He has successful crisis management experience during the COVID-19 pandemic as Europe, Middle East, Africa and Canada Medical Affairs lead for Merck & Co and as Japan R&D Lead at AstraZeneca KK during and following the Tohoku/Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

Klaus holds MD/PhD degrees (“Approbation als Arzt” in Germany; PhD in pharmacology) from the University of Heidelberg, Germany and a PhD degree (neuroscience) from University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

He is a US and German dual citizen. He is fluent in English and German, with basic skills in French, Spanish and Japanese.