Jacqueline Schiavo, one of Orange County’s highest-ranking women executives, is retiring as an executive vice president of Allergan Inc., the Irvine-based drug maker.
Schiavo, 56, is leaving as Allergan’s executive vice president of global technical operations after nearly 25 years with the company.
She’s set to step down April 29.
Schiavo’s left her mark on Allergan.
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Schiavo: oversees some 1,800 Allergan workers |
Some 1,800 of Allergan’s 5,000 global workers fall under her worldwide operations unit. She oversees drug finishing plants in Texas, Brazil and Ireland.
Schiavo also has had a big hand in Chief Executive David E.I. Pyott’s streamlining of Allergan in recent years. In an earlier Business Journal interview, Schiavo shared part of Allergan’s operations story, including plant consolidations and creating the worldwide operations unit 15 years ago.
“We all reported to different places in the organization,” she said. “That was fairly typical of pharmaceutical companies in the 1970s and the ’80s. By the time we got to 1990, we realized this was not the future of manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry.”
A case can be made for Schiavo as the most powerful businesswoman in the county.
Kelly Gray was co-chief executive of Irvine-based clothing designer St. John Knits International Inc. up until last year. She’s now creative director with the hiring of Richard Cohen as chief executive last year.
Another notable is Rosemary Turner, who from Aliso Viejo runs the Southern California district of Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc. The district is the company’s largest with $1 billion in yearly sales.
But the nod could go to Schiavo, who’s had a critical hand in the operations of Allergan. The drug maker had $2 billion in 2004 sales.
Still, all of this is lost on Schiavo.
“I don’t concern myself terribly as to whether I’m the 10th-ranking female executive, the 15th-ranked or the first,” Schiavo told the Business Journal. “When I come to work, my focus is on Allergan and advancing the business.”
Schiavo’s business focus even extended to her office, decorated with photos of her with colleagues and a few other work-related tokens, but little else. She also politely declined to address any questions about her life outside Allergan.
She did jokingly refer to herself as the “class historian” as she recounted how Allergan changed, including what she said was the company’s evolution from an eye care company to a specialty drug maker. SmithKline, now part of GlaxoSmithKline PLC, owned Allergan in the 1980s. SmithKline spun Allergan out in 1989.
Upon Schiavo’s retirement, Allergan’s global technical operations duties are set to fall to Eric Brandt, the drug maker’s executive vice president of finance, strategy and corporate development.
Protein Related to Alzheimer’s
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have identified a protein that triggers the onset of memory loss in the form of plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
A team lead by Frank LaFerla, co-director of the UCI Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia, found that a protein called beta amyloid accumulated within the brains of mice triggers memory loss.
The protein’s produced in all brains, the team said. But healthy ones are able to clear away excess amounts. Brains with Alzheimer’s are unable to control the accumulation.
LaFerla said in a release that his team’s finding had implications for drug makers in terms of developing treatments that can target beta amyloid as soon as it builds up within neurons.
“Once the plaques and tangles form, it is too late,” LaFerla said.
The researchers reported their findings in the March 3 issue of Neuron, a scientific journal. Grants from the National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association, as well as a National Research Service Awards postdoctoral fellowship, funded the project.
Separately, another study led by LaFerla and Salvadore Oddo, a UCI graduate student, determined that chronic nicotine exposure from smoking actually worsens some Alzheimer’s-related brain abnormalities, contradicting a common belief that nicotine could be used to treat the memory loss disorder.
In the study, the researchers found that smoking increased the tangles that are one of Alzheimer’s neuropathological hallmarks.
Bits and Pieces:
St. Joseph Health System, Orange, and several other health systems and hospitals filed a federal lawsuit against the California Department of Health Services seeking to put a stop to what they characterized as “devastating” Medi-Cal reimbursement cuts. St. Joseph and the other plaintiffs are fighting against a mandate in the state budget that calls for a retroactive funding freeze for hospitals that treat Medi-Cal patients but don’t have contracts with the state’s contracting arm “Pay for Performance (P4P): Is Your Doctor Performing?” is the topic of the March 24 meeting of the Orange County Employee Benefit Council. Panelists include Jay Cohen of Monarch HealthCare, Patrick Kapsner of Bristol Park Medical Group and Diane Laird of Greater Newport Physicians. The morning meeting is at the Beckman Center next to UCI. Information: (714) 573-8605.
