Arpa Garay is a senior executive with 20 years of healthcare general management experience across geographies, therapeutic areas, and product lifecycle. Her career reflects extensive success in consistently driving business growth to exceed financial expectations, innovation to reflect an evolving global healthcare environment, strategic insight to drive M&A decisions, and leadership to build and inspire diverse, talented teams.
Arpa is currently the President of Global Pharmaceuticals, Commercial Analytics, and Digital Marketing at MSD (the tradename of Merck & Co., Inc). She leads the commercialization of in-line and pipeline assets as well as business development across the specialty, hospital, and chronic care businesses, totaling ~$20bn / 50% of net sales for the company. Additionally, she is responsible for data analytics, digital marketing, and partnerships worldwide for headquarters as well as country operations.
Prior to this role, Arpa was Senior Vice President, US Vaccines, where she collaborated with policy makers, the BIO Industry Association, and public health organizations to drive growth across the vaccines portfolio. She also led the company's business in Norway as Managing Director, where she worked closely with the government on healthcare policy, developed innovative approaches to securing patient access, and led the subsidiary to become the #1 pharmaceutical company in the country, which was a first around the world. Arpa also brings significant US healthcare experience through a variety of roles at both Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Arpa started her career as a management consultant at Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte), gaining significant experience across industries and business challenges. She has been externally recognized for her leadership as Fortune’s Most Powerful Women: Next Gen, Business Insider’s Global Top 30 under 40 in BioPharma, and Philadelphia Business Journal’s Top 40 under 40 business leaders.
Arpa holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she focused on medicine, public health and public policy. She has lived in five countries, visited seventy, and loves to travel with her husband and three children every chance she gets.