Today we’re getting under the hood of Dr. Kattayoun Kordy, a mother, daughter, sister, friend, adventurer, mentor, leader, scientist, big pharma executive, and physician passionate about advocating for women's and children’s health and endlessly in pursuit of curiosity.
Kattayoun is the Head of Rare Disease and Maternal-Fetal Clinical Development at Johnson and Johnson. Triple-board certified in general pediatrics, pediatric gastroenterology & hepatology, and clinical pharmacology, her journey in medicine started off traveling the world providing HIV clinical care in developing countries from the Andes Mountains in Ecuador and Malawi to Thailand and rural South Africa. Her love of the transformative impact of science and medicine led her to pursue an academic career in pediatric liver transplantation and gastroenterology in prominent pediatric transplant centers in the country. She ran her own translational research lab studying the intersection of HIV and the gut, and the pharmacologic interventions preventing infection. Her appreciation of the power of research led her to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry, and the foundation of her career has been informed by her belief that drug development enables her to more effectively work in service to save millions of lives on a global scale.
Kattayoun’s pharmaceutical career started in Novartis, leading innovative drug development strategies on a wide range of pediatric diseases across indications ranging from ultra-rare conditions to diseases with significant burdens on childhood mortality such as malaria. She transitioned to Johnson and Johnson to take on new and challenging areas of developing medicines for rare diseases and maternal-fetal conditions, including treating pregnant women to prevent poor fetal/neonatal outcomes. She is working to disrupt the drug development paradigm by innovating successful clinical trials among pregnant people to encourage the greater community to pursue research and therapeutics for this historically neglected population and to ultimately bring equity and life-saving therapies to women and children globally.
The views expressed are her own, and not reflective of JnJ.
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