Overview

Gender

male

Jean-Luc Delay brings to Takeda an extraordinary background, with extensive knowledge and nearly 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. His unique understanding of the biopharma industry stems from his training as a chemist and experience working in different areas of the industry, including roles in pharmaceutical marketing, sales, and consulting.

Pharmaceutical innovation appeals to Jean-Luc’s solution-oriented mindset and also satiates his desire to help people. Medicines are fascinating to him for their capacity to deliver solutions. In particular, Jean-Luc appreciates how innovative therapies enable patients to lead higher quality lives and allow them to re-engage in daily work, family and social interactions. For Jean-Luc, patient value is a central motivating factor of his job.

Jean-Luc began his pharmaceutical career in Switzerland, where he held several positions at Janssen, Grünenthal, and Healthcare & Pharma Consulting AG. He joined Takeda in 1999 as Business Unit Manager of Gastroenterology/Urology, a position he held for four years before becoming Takeda’s Country Lead for Switzerland (2003–2012).

In 2012, Jean-Luc became Country Manager for Takeda Pharma Vertrieb GmbH in Berlin and accepted an additional role as Chairman of the Board for Takeda GmbH Konstanz. Jean-Luc assumed the mantle of his new role shortly after Takeda’s acquisition of Nycomed, which marked an important milestone in Takeda’s growth toward becoming a global organization with company operations in more than 70 countries around the world. Uniting two separate corporate cultures and cultivating shared excitement for Takeda’s future was no small task, but Jean-Luc rose to the challenge. He has witnessed Takeda’s rapid transformation into a patient-focused, specialty care organization, and credits this shift with returning Takeda Germany onto a trajectory of double-digit growth and high profitability.

Jean-Luc is a dedicated long-distance runner, athlete and lifelong sports enthusiast. As a firm believer in the benefits of leading an active lifestyle, Jean-Luc started a running club for physicians at Takeda several years ago. A phrase Jean-Luc is fond of, “Don’t pray—be a role model,” became the running’s group’s unofficial motto. The physicians in the group train with one another on a self-paid basis and are currently preparing to run in the New York City Marathon. Some of the doctors—as well as Jean-Luc himself—completed their first marathon as a result of their participation in the running group. As of today, Jean-Luc has 13 marathons under his belt.

Jean-Luc is married and has three grown up sons. He is a Swiss citizen, though was born in Mexico. He enjoys working in the Nordic-Baltic region and maintains the area is a lot more diverse than most people think. He enjoys the region’s collaborative culture and appreciates how people and organizations in the Nordic-Baltic region openly embrace innovation.