That’s Albert Bourla’s reality, post-COVID.

As CEO of Pfizer, a company he first joined in 1993, Bourla — a veterinarian by training — led the company through the pandemic. His team is working around the clock to deliver products to combat the crisis—Pfizer has partnered to start BioNTech to bring the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine to market; it also introduced Paxlovid, the first antiviral drug adapted to fight COVID. Business increased to record profits.

Fast forward to today, and Pfizer has a new set of challenges. It faces a patent cliff for some of its most profitable drugs, and the COVID bump that boosted its revenues has ended. By 2022, Bourla said, COVID-related revenue will rise to more than $56 billion. Today, that revenue sits at nearly $5 billion.

“At the top of the hill, you’re the best company,” Bourla told me on a recent episode of my vodcast, Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors. “You were named the best CEO. People at Pfizer are the proudest employees in the world. All of a sudden, with a financial decline, it hurts a lot, and that creates emotional reactions for everyone in the company, including me.”

So Bourla set the company up to make new moonshots: Pfizer aims to capitalize on other revolutionary drugs like GLP-1, and make cancer a disease that can, if not always be eradicated, then survivable. Bourla, who was raised by a mother who survived the Holocaust and is an eternal optimist, remains determined:

“I believe that winners in life are no different than losers in life because winners never fall,” he said. “They differ because the winners always rise again.”

Here are some of the leadership lessons I took away from our conversation (read the full transcript here):

• Bourla’s relationship with President Trump, and how he reached an agreement with the administration in 10 days to reduce drug costs for Americans:
  • “It’s very clear to me that what he had in mind in the first administration has now become a serious itch that needs to be scratched: He is very adamant that he cannot allow that other rich countries pay less than Americans pay.”
• How he won $10 billion Game of Thrones-like claims battle for GLP-1 maker Metsera, best rival Novo Nordisk:
  • “I told everyone: ‘That’s it. We’ll get it. Don’t worry.’ My people were devastated … when they saw Novo coming and complicating the things we thought we had in our pockets.
• Why the world is so ill-prepared for the next pandemic, and when authorities have made mistakes while fighting COVID:
  • “I still remember big trucks with refrigerators that instead of having chickens and meat inside, they had human bodies because we didn’t have anywhere to put them. People tend to forget because it’s not the case now, but it’s not the case because of vaccines and treatments.”
• How AI is accelerating drug development to make solutions to diseases like cancer possible in our lifetime:
  • “I think we need to cure (some cancers). The ones left untreated will become chronic diseases: You can live with your cancer like you live with your diabetes.”

Listen to the full episode at Fortune 500: Titans and Industry Disruptors with Bourla the YouTube, Spotifyor Apple Podcasts.—Alyson Shontell

Contact CEO Daily by Diane Brady at [email protected]

Top leadership news

Target’s future CEO is finally speaking out

Minneapolis-based Target has been criticized for its silence on ICE raids in its hometown and the killing of Minnesotans by ICE agents. In a message to employees on Mondayfuture CEO Michael Fiddelke said he was troubled by the “violence and loss of life in our community” and that the company was “doing everything we can to manage what we have control over.” He did not mention the names Alex Pretti, Renee Good, or Donald Trump.

Inside a billion-dollar data center

Tech behemoths like Meta and Google are investing billions in data centers designed to accommodate their massive AI plans. This is what these great facilities are all about actually it seems.

The US expansion of JD Sports Fashion

UK-based JD Sports Fashion is one of the biggest shoe retailers in the US, earning $6 billion a year in America with plans to double its physical stores stateside. CEO Régis Schultz States that success came by training his employees to have their own “point of view” to help customers.

The markets

S&P 500 futures rose 0.25% this morning. The last session closed at 0.50%. STOXX Europe 600 rose 0.29% in early trading. The UK FTSE 100 rose 0.46% in early trading. in Japan Nikkei 225 increased by 0.85%. in China CSI 300 fell by 0.03%. South Korea KOSPI increased by 2.73%. in India NIFTY 50 increased by 0.51%. Bitcoin available at $88K.

Around the watercooler

Trump’s own Big Beautiful Bill will add $5.5 trillion to the deficit and help sabotage his plan to ‘grow out’ of the national debt crisis said Shawn Tully

The Trump administration has bought a stake in USA Rare Earth as government deals with critical minerals continue by Jordan Blum

Palantir/ICE connections flare as questions are raised about Medicaid data tracking tool to find people to arrest by Tristan Bove

Despite running $75 billion automaker General Motors, CEO Mary Barra still answers ‘every single letter’ she gets by hand by Preston Fore

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.