Emerging Pharma Leader: Joerg Ahlgrimm, Baxter BioScience

By the middle of 2015, global healthcare giant Baxter International Inc. is expected to officially split off its BioScience business, establishing the unit as an independent, innovation-focused biotechnology company.

Helming the operational component of these pursuits will be Joerg Ahlgrimm, 41, the division’s current vice president of operations and global supply chain. Ahlgrimm was appointed to the post in late 2013, when the BioScience unit combined its global operations structure and network under one leader. As the defining stage in the division’s evolution nears, Ahlgrimm is developing an aggressive strategy to ensure that operations and supply chain management is optimized to support BioScience’s future growth.

Joerg Ahlgrimm

Amid Baxter’s business transformation and the completion of final steps in separating its BioScience and Medical Products businesses, one could certainly assume Ahlgrimm’s focus is on the big picture these days. After all, as head of operations, his organization supports more than $5.5 billion in sales and more than $2 billion in value of production. Ahlgrimm’s belief is that operations, which he calls the “backbone” of a premiere biotech company, will be an important enabler for the new BioScience company in the years ahead.

It seems clear that Ahlgrimm - who has held a number of leadership positions at Baxter since 2001 - is intent on viewing the looming spinoff and all the accompanying expectations as his opportunity to apply the day-to-day management skills that have gotten him this far - on the precipice of leading the operations of a new global biopharmaceutical company. Ahlgrimm’s forward-minded and collaborative leadership style has, his colleagues contend, served as a driving force of change at Baxter.

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