Very few people have had as profound an impact developing life-saving medicines—and developing the ambitions and potential of like-minded students and fellows at Harvard—as Vicki Sato. Through decades of mentorship, teaching, and biopharmaceutical industry leadership, she has touched countless lives and fundamentally changed our sense of what is possible, both at Harvard and in medical therapeutics.
Sato grew up in Chicago, studied biology at Radcliffe College as a member of the class of 1969, and earned her MA and PhD in cellular and developmental biology at Harvard in 1972. She taught on the Harvard faculty before embarking on a highly successful career in biotechnology enterprise, leading drug discovery efforts for diseases ranging from Hepatitis C to HIV to cancer. Her career included 9 years at Biogen, where she served as vice president of research and worked with her Harvard mentor, Wally Gilbert, and 14 years at Vertex, initially as chief scientific officer and ultimately as president. In 2005, Sato returned to Harvard and taught for more than a decade as a professor of the practice in both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. She remains active on the boards of directors of many companies and just last year was appointed to President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
When he first met Sato in the 1990s, Nitin Nohria, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and former dean of Harvard Business School, was struck by her rare combination of scientific acumen and business sense. “Vicki is not just a great scientist; she also has the business judgment to know how to prioritize scientific projects,” Nohria says. “She’s a perfect translator between the scientific community, which she was clearly deeply connected to, and the business community: the best bridge between those two worlds. She is a brilliant scientist, an extraordinary teacher, and a rare person. I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to get to know her very early on in my career, and she’s been an inspiration throughout.”
Vicki is not just a great scientist; she also has the business judgment to know how to prioritize scientific projects.
—Professor Nitin Nohria
In 2013, Sato became founding faculty chair of the Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship, part of a generous gift to Harvard from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, headed by Len Blavatnik, MBA ’89. Sato devised the program’s structure and continues to serve on its key advisory board. One former Blavatnik Fellow, Manny Simons ’04, MBA ’12, founder of the biotech company Akouos, reflects, “I’ve really benefited from Vicki’s ability to remind you why you’re doing something, how it fits into the bigger picture. She also understands that every challenge and new company formation in the biotech space is unique.”
Isaac Kohlberg, Harvard University’s senior associate provost and chief technology development officer, commends Sato’s deep connections to Harvard and the region. “Vicki has been very loyal to Harvard over the years, and in the broad scope of her formidable career, she’s been a trailblazer and a champion for the biopharma ecosystem in Greater Boston,” Kohlberg says. “The Blavatnik Fellowship has also become the source of a large number of talented biotech entrepreneurs, future leaders who were mentored and coached through the program Vicki developed.” All told, 39 Blavatnik Fellows have created new life science technology ventures and raised more than $468 million in funding.
Sato has had a similarly profound influence on undergraduates. When she returned to Harvard as a professor of the practice in 2005, she developed and led two courses that had immense appeal for Harvard College students: Commercializing Science at Harvard Business School, and Principles of Drug Discovery in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Before Vicki started teaching Commercializing Science, it was almost unheard of for undergrads to go over to the Business School, and that changed dramatically,” says Gregory Verdine, Erving Professor of Chemistry, who co-developed and co-taught Principles of Drug Discovery with Sato. “Both courses created a cultural change at Harvard in which it was okay to be entrepreneurial as an undergrad. Harvard students are so talented; if you intercept them at that stage, and you help set them on a course for their career, you can actually change the world. Vicki’s a force multiplier.”
This is all in addition to the powerful force of Sato’s own career in biotech. To take only one example: at Vertex, she led the effort to develop the first disease-modifying treatment for cystic fibrosis, a deadly condition that results from a genetically defective protein. “The conventional wisdom was that if you have this kind of protein and it’s broken, there’s no way to fix it,” explains Verdine. “But Vicki led her team on an audacious and previously unprecedented mission to discover a fix for the lost protein function, and they succeeded. It broke every rule in the book. That’s the best that our industry can do: to use science to fundamentally bend the arc of people’s lives. Vicki’s influence goes way beyond Harvard; she has really changed the way we look at what medicines can do for people. She’s an institution.”
Vicki Sato, for your visionary leadership and life-changing breakthroughs in the biopharmaceutical industry, and for inspiring and guiding so many Harvard students and fellows who seek to follow in your footsteps, we are proud to award you the 2022 Centennial Medal.
