John F. Milligan, PhD

Executive Chairman

John F. Milligan, PhD has served as the Executive Chairman of our board of directors since August 2020. Dr. Milligan had a 29-year career with Gilead, retiring as President and Chief Executive Officer in December 2018. During his tenure at Gilead, he led teams that developed, manufactured and commercialized more than 25 new therapies for significant unmet needs, including the first single tablet regimen for HIV treatment and the first 12 week, all oral cure for HCV. John led multiple transformative acquisitions including Triangle Pharmaceuticals in 2003, Myogen in 2006, CV Therapeutics in 2009, Pharmassett in 2012 and Kite in 2017. Before taking the CEO role, as CFO, John built a robust international organization that allowed the company to grow from $190 million in revenue to over $4.2 billion in just six years.

He helped the company become a global organization with direct operations in 44 countries that was able to deliver its medicines to more than 10 million patients every day. John joined Gilead when it was a private company with 32 employees, and upon retirement, 29 years later, Gilead had over 11,000 employees, sales of over $21 billion and a market cap of $85 billion. John serves as the Chair of Pacific Biosciences of California (Nasdaq: PACB) and also as the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Ohio Wesleyan University. John received a BA in chemistry from Ohio Wesleyan University, a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was an American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellow at UCSF.