Benjamin Hamalian ’24

While majoring in chemical and biomolecular engineering as a Drexel undergraduate, Benjamin Hamalian did co-op work at Bristol Myers Squibb. Upon graduation in 2018, he took a job with another major pharmaceutical company, Merck.

“When the pandemic began in 2020, the entire workforce was changing,” he says. Remote work paired well with the opportunity for remote study, and he returned to Drexel for an online MBA.

Now a senior category lead, global vaccines, at Merck, Hamalian does life-or-death work. He’s helping to ensure that vaccines are safe and effective before they’re allowed to go out the door.

As part of an organization-wide approach, Hamalian helps to coordinate the efforts of hundreds of people, including internal Merck employees — like scientists and lab managers — and outside suppliers.

On the supplier side, he ensures that Merck is getting the scientific supplies and equipment it needs. In vaccine production, “lab methods call for very specific materials to execute a procedure, and it’s my responsibility to ensure that these essential testing supplies arrive on time and in full,” he says.

Internally, he’s all about vaccine safety. “There are so many steps to get from the start of producing a vaccine to the end. Throughout each of the steps, samples have to be tested to make sure that the quality is nothing less than perfect,” he says.

“One of the main focuses of my role is to sustain strategic alignment across functional areas for lab-testing requirements,” he says. Alignment helps to save the business time and money, and it protects against supply-chain issues that could delay the testing that’s needed before a vaccine can be released.

To help ensure that organizational alignment, Ben leans on his experiences in the LeBow MBA program.

“I wanted more of the soft-skills trainings, rather than the technical skills, and what I found most valuable were organizational behavior courses and management courses,” he says.

“These types of courses address specific conflicts between different types of teams, and proper ways to address them,” he says. The coursework included an emphasis on “mapping out the different perspectives and how to find common goals, to optimize the end results for the business.”

One particular course, Negotiations for Leaders, took a deep dive into specific skills and strategies. “That has proven important in my day job, especially with contract negotiations,” he says.

In fact, the organizational understanding proves important virtually every day, as Ben coordinates the efforts of multiple teams. “I am able to present good news and bad news to leadership, to point out different areas where there are gaps and how to problem-solve,” he says.

Insights gleaned through the LeBow management and organizational behavior courses help him to navigate matters that impact multiple business functions. “A lot of what is taught in those courses is about framing different types of perspectives, mapping out different end goals and how to tie them all together. I actually use my notes from Drexel when I’m handling these tricky situations,” he says.

As Hamalian moves up the corporate ladder — he’s gone from global engineer to category lead to senior category lead — he says that he takes special satisfaction in kind of work he’s doing.

“The production process is very, very involved. There are a lot of hands on deck,” he says, and when he gets those hands to work together, it makes a world of difference. “Every day, with every challenge that we face, everything comes down to saving and improving lives.”