Jaak Peeters

After nearly a 40 year career with J&J I had planned to retire in April 2020. Over the preceding months, as #COVID19 was taking grip, I had stepped away from leading our Global Public Health (GPH) organization and was looking forward to setting new personal and professional goals. At the same time J&J scientists had taken the sequence of the coronavirus to assess whether we could develop a vaccine. By late March our team had selected a lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

I ultimately postponed my retirement to take on one final assignment as Special Envoy for COVID-19 Vaccine. At the core of our vaccine effort was a commitment to ensure widespread global access to our vaccine candidate on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use. My role has been to coordinate our efforts, in the fastest possible way, to ensure that we have the infrastructure and partnerships in place to fulfill our commitment.

Through a series of prospective global collaboration agreements we have edged closer to our goal. Thanks to unparalleled teamwork & end-to-end coordination—across industry, governments, foundations, multilateral partners and civil society—we are on the cusp of achieving global equitable distribution of COVID vaccines and starting the journey to put this pandemic behind us.