Pam Cheng ’92 M.Eng. ’95: Bringing Life-Changing Medicines to the World

Pam Cheng ’92 M.Eng. ’95 was once told “girls aren’t good at engineering.” Obviously that isn't true, and today she leads a global team of 18,000 professionals in 18 countries for one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies.

Cheng serves as executive vice president of Global Operations and Information Technology at AstraZeneca, where she guides manufacturing, supply chain, procurement and IT. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, she spent 18 years with Merck & Co. in ascending roles, including as president of Merck (MSD) China, responsible for sales and marketing, commercial operations and oversight for manufacturing and research and development. Before that she served as senior vice president of Global Supply Chain Management and Logistics for the entire Merck enterprise.

Today Cheng is a non-executive director for Codexis. Inc., an industrial biotechnology company, and Smiths Group, a multinational diversified engineering business. She is also an advisor to the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineering's board of directors; was a member of the graduate advisory board at Rutgers Business School; and taught as an adjunct professor in Rutgers' MBA program.

Cheng’s husband, Hong Cheng '93, also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stevens — and the couple's two daughters now carry the torch forward as Stevens students. Continuing to give back to Stevens today, Pam serves on President Nariman Farvardin's President’s Leadership Council, on the Parents Council and on the advisory board of the School of Business. She was thrilled to give the university's graduate Commencement speech in 2016 and was the recipient of the 2019 International Achievement Award at the Sixth Stevens Awards Gala.