Judy Lewent


Judith Carol Lewent is on the board of directors for GlaxoSmithKline since April 2011, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Motorola Solutions. She worked from 1980 to 2007 at Merck & Co. where she spent time as executive vice president and chief financial officer. She was also on the board of US Company Purdue Pharma until 2014

Early life

Lewent received her high school diploma at Hunter College High School, her B.S. in Economics from Goucher College, and her S.M. in 1972 from the MIT Sloan School of Management with thesis titled The French Open-end Investment Companies : an Application of the Capital Asset Pricing Model.

Career

Joining Merck in 1980, Lewent developed a new planning model in 1983 based on the Monte Carlo method, as more traditional financial valuation methods seemed not to take account of the long-term nature of pharmaceutical risks. In 1990, on her appointment as CFO, Lewent took on responsibilities for Merck's overall financial and strategic development, and for licensing matters.
Since then Lewent has also been responsible for Merck's collaboration with Johnson & Johnson in a consumer pharmaceuticals joint venture, for the setting up of the animal health company Merial, and for Merck's ongoing relationships with AstraZeneca and DuPont. She chaired the governing boards of several of these joint ventures.
Lewent is a member of the Board of Directors of Dell Inc., Motorola and the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Family Fund; she is also a life member of the MIT Corporation, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Between 26 July and 07 Aug 2007, Lewent sold 200,000 shares of Merck stock for about $10,262,000, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
In February 2007, Merck has announced she will retire and leave the company in July.