When he was appointed to lead Pfizer and asked in the boardroom if he had anything to say, Albert Bourla's response was: “Only in America.”
“Only in America someone with humble beginnings like me, from a small country, with a heavy accent, would make it to the top of one of the major multinational corporations in the world,” he explains. “It was an expression of appreciation for the country.”
Pfizer — which was also founded by an immigrant, the German-born Charles Pfizer — is now a household name as a company that successfully developed a COVID-19 vaccine, which Bourla has called “the biggest scientific breakthrough of the last 100 years.”
Bourla grew up in Greece, the son of Holocaust survivors. His mom escaped a firing squad during the Nazi occupation, and his father had to pretend he was a Christian to escape death — a threat that, as Jews, many of his family members faced.
Bourla came to the United States in his 30s — a doctor of veterinary medicine who also had a doctorate in the biotechnology of reproduction. He has been at Pfizer for more than 25 years.
“I have great admiration for this country,” he has said. “I became a U.S. citizen and I like to say I’m Greek by birth, American by choice.”
