Who are AstraZeneca's decision-makers?

Pascal Soriot, a French national, has been AstraZeneca's CEO since October 2012. Before joining AstraZeneca, he served as Chief Operating Officer of Roche's Pharmaceuticals Division and CEO of Genentech — arguably the most prestigious role in US biotech at the time. His scientific background in oncology commercial development and his experience scaling Genentech's Herceptin and Avastin franchises directly informed the strategy he applied at AstraZeneca: concentrate resources on high-unmet-need science, build deep co-development partnerships (Daiichi Sankyo for Enhertu, Merck for Lynparza/Imfinzi), and acquire category-creating platforms (Alexion). Soriot has declined numerous approaches and departures, cementing an unusually long tenure that makes AstraZeneca's strategy one of the most consistent in global pharma.

Aradhana Sarin, CFO since August 2021, holds both a medical degree (University of Delhi) and an MBA (Stanford). She practiced medicine in India and Africa before moving to investment banking at Citi Global Banking, UBS, and JP Morgan, where she specialized in pharmaceutical M&A. She then became CFO of Alexion, giving her an unusually smooth integration into AstraZeneca upon the $39 billion acquisition close. Sarin joined the Board of Directors in 2021 and handles capital markets, investor relations, and financial transformation as the company scales toward the $80B 2030 target.

Pam Cheng, EVP, Global Operations & IT and Chief Sustainability Officer, is a less visible but operationally critical SET member. She has led AstraZeneca's manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, IT, and sustainability functions since 2015, overseeing 22,000+ colleagues across 18 countries. She joined the Board of Directors in April 2025. Cheng owns the Axial SAP S/4Hana transformation program — the largest SAP project in Europe — alongside AstraZeneca's $50 billion US manufacturing build-out, making her one of the most influential figures for technology and operations vendors.

AstraZeneca's buying committee structure reflects its three-business-unit matrix and global functional divisions. For enterprise technology and digital infrastructure, the Chief Information Officer (embedded under Pam Cheng's Operations & IT function) leads evaluation, supported by business-unit digital leads and functional heads in Finance, HR, R&D, and Commercial. The major recent enterprise decisions — SAP S/4Hana consolidation under 'Axial', Salesforce Agentforce Life Sciences CRM selection in December 2025, and the Amazon Bedrock generative AI platform deployment — each required multi-stakeholder approval with Cheng's office and SET involvement.

For manufacturing and facility investments, the VP of Global Operations and Supply Chain (under Cheng's EVP remit) manages procurement, with legal/regulatory and local site management providing input. The $50 billion US investment is managed centrally from Cambridge with regional project managers at each new US site. Clinical and R&D vendors are evaluated by therapy-area SVPs and the respective R&D EVPs: Susan Galbraith (Oncology R&D) for ADC, immuno-oncology, and genomics tools; Sharon Barr (BioPharmaceuticals R&D) for cardiovascular, respiratory, and immunology research platforms.

For commercial partnerships (co-promotion, co-development, licensing), decisions are made at EVP business unit level (Dave Fredrickson for Oncology, Ruud Dobber for BioPharmaceuticals) with CEO/CFO approval for material transactions. Mid-market SaaS or professional services contracts are owned by senior directors and heads of function within each business unit, operating with delegated budget authority. The Chennai technology hub and Silicon Valley AI centre are active evaluator nodes where vendors often pilot before enterprise rollout.

AstraZeneca operates a matrix structure: three commercial business units (Oncology, BioPharmaceuticals, and Rare Disease/Alexion) each led by a dedicated EVP, layered against functional divisions (Finance, R&D, Operations & IT, International, Legal/HR) with global remits. The International division under Iskra Reic (appointed EVP International in December 2024) covers all markets outside the US, with regional presidents managing Europe, Emerging Markets, and Asia-Pacific. China is AstraZeneca's largest single-country market by revenue outside the US, served by a major commercial headquarters in Shanghai.

The company has deliberately invested in technology and talent hubs in Chennai (India) and Silicon Valley to scale digital and AI capabilities without the cost overhead of the UK/US pharma employment markets. The R&D function is anchored at The Discovery Centre (DISC) at Cambridge Biomedical Campus (global HQ), with strategic R&D centres in Gothenburg (Sweden), Gaithersburg (Maryland, US), and Kendall Square (Cambridge, Massachusetts, US). Jeff Pott serves as Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and General Counsel — a combined SET role that covers people, governance, and legal risk at enterprise scale.

As AstraZeneca scales toward the $80B 2030 target, organizational design continues to evolve. The post-Alexion integration introduced the Rare Disease business unit as a semi-autonomous entity operating under the Alexion brand; full functional integration into AstraZeneca systems (ERP, CRM, quality management) is still underway under the Axial and Agentforce programs, creating ongoing vendor demand for integration specialists.