Robert B. Ford is an American businessman and the thirteenth

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Abbott Laboratories Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known dr ...

, a publicly-traded medical devices and

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

company based in Abbott Park, Illinois. He received a bachelor's degree from

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

and an MBA from

Haas School of Business The Walter A. Haas School of Business, also known as Berkeley Haas, is the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was the first business school at a public university i ...

Career

Ford joined Abbott in 1996 within its diabetes care business, later heading the company's medical device businesses, and Abbott's integration of

St. Jude Medical St. Jude Medical, Inc. was an American global medical device company headquartered in Little Canada, Minnesota, U.S., a suburb of Saint Paul. The company had more than 20 principal operations and manufacturing facilities worldwide with products s ...

in 2017, its largest acquisition at the time. He was named President and COO in October 2018. On March 31, 2020, Ford became the chief executive officer of Abbott Laboratories, elected unanimously by the company's board. He stated that the sale of medical devices such as FreeStyle Libre and diagnostics would be prioritized while CEO as well as developing technology to monitor consumer health through smartphones and other connected devices. At the beginning of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, Ford led the company's COVID-19 testing development and distribution. He pulled Abbott's scientists and manufacturing teams off their projects to work on four teams, each focused on specific tests. The company introduced its first two tests in March 2020 and delivered more than 400 million in 2020. Ford said he considers Abbott's BinaxNOW test to be a model, setting a trend for rapid point-of-care testing after the coronavirus pandemic for ailments such as influenza, sexually transmitted diseases, and hepatitis. In April 2020, '' Chief Executive'' recognized Ford for Abbott's response to accessibility for testing. On December 10, 2021, Ford was elected as chairman of the board for Abbott.

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Haas School of Business alumni Boston College alumni Abbott Laboratories people American chief executives {{US-business-bio-stub