Steve Andrzejewski
CEO
Spiritus Pharmaceuticals
Company and Brand Turnaround Artist
Steve Andrzejewski has been making his mark in the pharma industry for the past 30 years. He’s done everything from establishing marketing best practices, to serving as a company turnaround artist, to even co-founding his own pharma company. In fact, Steve’s mark is imprinted on every pharma TV spot you see.
At Schering-Plough Corporation, Steve’s team was the first to do DTC TV with Claritin. The message was simple, “Ask your doctor about Claritin.” That same message continues to be used in every pharma TV spot to this day. That is only one of the best practices Steve helped establish while working on Claritin. Additionally, they did unbranded communications by talking about allergy as a disease and formed a sponsorship with Major League Baseball. All of that and more helped to take Claritin from its original goal of annual sales of around $150 million to $3 billion.
Steve went from leading brands to leading companies. When he started at King Pharmaceuticals it was a smaller company that was very successful from a business development standpoint, but didn’t have as much experience in the commercialization and optimizing of products. Between 2005 and 2007, Steve helped to grow revenue 21% and profits 19%, eventually leading to a sale to Pfizer. The story is similar at Nycomed USA where Steve helped to solve manufacturing and finance issues by optimizing the organization and changing the overall culture. The moves revitalized the company, which was acquired by Sandoz in 2012.
In 2011, Steve channeled his entrepreneurial instincts to co-found Spiritus Pharmaceuticals. The idea to start the company revolved around the fact that people using the wrong inhaler regiment results in asthma hospitalizations and ER visits. In addition to focusing on asthma, the company is also involved in anaphylaxis, sinusitis, and COPD. In January 2017, the FDA approved four new drugs from the company.
In 2016, Steve added teaching to his vast resume. He leads courses on health economics as an adjunct professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. He also continues to serve on the board for Health eVillages, which provides mobile health technology to areas without direct access to healthcare.
