 "Reshma Kewalramani named among Time magazine's 100 most influential people")
Reshma Kewalramani, the Indian-origin CEO of a US global biotechnology company, has been named among Time magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People of 2025’.
Kewalramani is hailed as the first female CEO of a major biotechnology firm in the US. She migrated to the US from India at the age of 11, and in 2018, she went on to become the chief medical officer of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Thanks to her impeccable leadership style, she was promoted to the CEO role within the next two years.
Time Magazine quoted Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, as saying: “Reshma sat on my board at Ginkgo Bioworks, and her insights proved invaluable: she knows how to effectively push the limits of science while navigating the drug-approval process. She told us that when you are doing something innovative, if it sounds crazy or impossible, that’s OK—it’s only because no one has done it before.”
Under her leadership, Vertex achieved a groundbreaking milestone by securing the first-ever FDA approval for a CRISPR-based therapy. This treatment addresses sickle cell disease by correcting the patient’s own DNA mutations.
“Reshma is the kind of leader who can deliver that extraordinary future—it only seems crazy because no one’s done it before,” Kelly wrote.
Trained in internal medicine and nephrology, she once intended to teach, treat patients, and work in a lab after medical school. However, her passion for developing new medicines proved too strong to ignore — a passion she realised she couldn’t fully pursue while staying on that traditional medical path.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“I realised if I wanted to do that — drug discovery, clinical trials, make new medicines — that actually happens in industry, whether it’s biotech or pharma,” Kewalramani said in a Babson interview, “that’s really the heart of where that action is.”
The string of successes that began in the lab has propelled Kewalramani to financial heights that few women in the pharmaceutical industry have achieved. In 2023, her total compensation exceeded $20 million, placing her among a small, traditionally all-male group of top-paid pharma CEOs — including those from Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, AbbVie, and Pfizer, as noted by Fierce Biotech.
Key achievements of Vertex under Kewalramani’s leadership
In 2023, Vertex reported $9.87 billion in revenue, marking an 11 per cent increase from the previous year.
Under Reshma Kewalramani’s leadership, the company achieved major milestones, including regulatory approvals in 33 countries for Casgevy—the first FDA-approved gene therapy using CRISPR/Cas9 technology.
She also led the $4.9 billion acquisition of Alpine Immune Sciences, known for its treatments targeting inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
Vertex is now advancing non-opioid therapies for acute and chronic pain, with a selective pain signal inhibitor currently in Phase 3 trials. The company also surpassed a $100 billion market cap in 2024.
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