Alex Azar has extensive health care experience in the senior-most levels of the US government and the private sector, giving him a unique perspective and background.

Azar served as the 24th Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (2018–2021), leading over 85,000 employees with a budget of over $1.4 trillion. He was the architect of Operation Warp Speed, delivering COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics in record time. He led the historic transformation of the health-care system in the United States and HHS’s response to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. He drove US government efforts to tackle the opioid crisis, increase private insurance options, bring transparency of price and quality information to health care, expand telehealth, give patients ownership of their health records and make those records interoperable and transportable, enable health-care provider collaborative care models, remove regulatory barriers to low-cost, high-quality care, transform payment systems to pay for health and outcomes rather than sickness and procedures, reduce drug prices, and transform kidney care for the first time in almost 50 years. Azar also led key public health initiatives such as banning flavored e-cigarettes, reducing youth tobacco use by nearly one-third in one year and youth e-cigarette use by 54 percent in three years, creating and implementing the program to end the HIV epidemic in America in 10 years, preparing for and responding to public health threats, crafting the first rural health initiative to improve access and quality of care, and launching a program to dramatically reduce maternal mortality. Azar has played significant roles on the global health stage, leading many of the US’s global health security efforts, representing the US in the World Health Assembly, working with the World Health Organization to end Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, chairing the most active G7 health ministerial in history in 2020, and convening and leading western hemisphere coordinated efforts to assist with the Venezuelan refugee crisis.

Azar served for five years (2012–2017) as president of Lilly USA, LLC, the largest affiliate of global biopharmaceutical leader Eli Lilly and Company, producing over $10 billion in revenue (2016). Azar previously was vice president of Lilly’s US Managed Healthcare Services and Puerto Rico from 2009–2011. He joined Lilly in 2007 as senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications. Before his tenure at Lilly, Azar was the Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (2005–2007), where he was the number two official and chief operating officer. From 2001–2005, he served HHS as General Counsel.

Azar earned a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in government and economics from Dartmouth College in 1988, and a law degree from Yale University in 1991. After law school, he clerked for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court of the United States. Secretary Azar sits on several corporate boards and advisory boards, is an advisor to Foresite Capital, is a part-time adjunct professor of business and senior executive-in-residence at the University of Miami Herbert Business School, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Institute’s Health Strategy Group, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Health and Medicine Division Committee, the Stanford University School of Medicine Department of Health Policy Advisory Board, the American Task Force on Lebanon’s Policy Advisory Board, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Future of Health Care Advisory Group, the advisory board of the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, and the Healthcare Leadership Council. Azar previously served on the boards of HMS Holdings Corporation, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the Healthcare Leadership Council, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Indianapolis Airport Authority, the American Council on Germany, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.