Express Scripts Holding Company, based in St. Louis, Missouri, is a Fortune 100 company and is the largest pharmacy benefit management organization in the United States. The company model: “We make the use of prescription of drugs safer and more affordable,” brings benefits and convenience to millions of patients across the country.

It was a great opportunity for GMF II students to take a tour of Express Scripts led by David Myers, who has served as Vice Present in Investor Relations for 14 years, and Jamie Kates, who is currently the Director of Investor Relations.

We appreciate that David and Jamie gave us an overview of the company and then deeply went through the responsibilities of the Investor Relations Department. For example, the role of investor relations is as follows: increasing understanding of the company, strategic communications and differentiation, serving as liaison to the financial community, conveying competitive intelligence to management, anticipating questions, and managing expectations.

Also, they gave us an insight on branded and generic drugs, which was really fascinating. As a group of young graduates with future business desires, we were impressed by this presentation.

Afterwards, we took a tour of the pharmacy center and research lab. It was interesting to note that 90% of the pharmacy center consists of an automatic production line; only 10% are manual production. All of the facilities were self-invented–we saw a wall of patents hanging on the wall.

As for the research lab, the working environment was very nice–the office facilities were all very innovative, and their design was modern and advanced. Moreover, most employees are PhD’s in Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry, or Engineering. Working among these highly intelligent people would be very challenging.

Guest Bloggers: Danlei Zhang, Yi Zhang (GMF 2015)