This week marks Bristol Myers Squibb’s seventh annual Global Patient Week, one of my favorite times of the year. Patients are the heart of what we do, driving us to work smarter and faster to improve their lives in the face of serious illness. Global Patient Week celebrates that work, bringing it to life with real faces, voices and personal stories. It’s a core part of our culture and who we are. 

Empathy and the drive to innovate 

Culture is shaped by values, actions and strong beliefs; stated simply - it’s how we feel when we come to work, whether in a lab, an office, with a customer or on the plant floor. It’s the compassion we feel for Winter, a patient with an immune-mediated disease hoping for a transformative treatment. It’s the pride in Atiba, a cancer survivor and BMS employee who was able to grow her career while undergoing treatment. It’s the drive to help Eduardo, who survived a rare cancer diagnosis. 

Hearing directly from patients does two important things. First, it connects all of us, regardless of our role or location, to our vision to transform patients’ lives through science. Second, it sparks innovation through empathy. When we listen to a patient’s experience in a clinical trial or hear the perspective of a caregiver, we gain valuable insights that drive innovation. Their stories remind us of the transformative impact we’re having on people around the world and fuel us to create even more breakthroughs. 

Focus on diversity, equity & inclusion  

As we focus on patients, our commitments to diversity and inclusion are top of mind. We’re exploring critical healthcare topics like the importance of diversity in clinical trial design and recruitment, to help ensure that trial participants are truly representative of the patients who suffer from the condition under study. We’re also looking at how we can reach more patients who are on the margins of healthcare, giving them access to the resources and care they need. 

In our own workforce, we’re committed to achieving gender parity at the executive level globally and doubling executive representation of Black and Latinx employees in the U.S. by the end of 2022. Our workforce should reflect the patients we serve, with diverse perspectives and informed decision-making.