and friends from across the administration and from the United States Congress. And let me also acknowledge our James Beard-winning guest chef, Mirwani Irani, who is here with us today. And you should know that Mirwani credits his mother as his earliest culinary inspiration, and I think we're all about to be very inspired by what she gave to him and he's now about to give to us. It's been 30 years, Prime Minister, since you visited this country through a State Department exchange program. You said that experience showed you, and I quote, the dreams of the American people and the boldness of their ambitions. In your address to our Congress yesterday, you highlighted the boldness of India's own ambitions, the remarkable advances that your country has made in recent years, expanding free medical care, empowering women, harnessing clean energy. The positive impact in the lives of the Indian people is immeasurable and it will be lasting. And it underscores that these aspirations for a better future are ones that we share and ones that we depend upon each other to help realize. That's why when President Eisenhower became the first American president to visit India, he told your parliament that the welfare of America is bound up with the welfare of India. Over the past several decades, the United States and India have been advancing the vision of greater interdependence, brought closer by administrations of different parties in both of our countries. Having worked for President Biden for over 20 years, I know that his belief in this partnership is long-standing and his commitment to delivering on his promise is unwavering. And during the last two and a half years, we've transformed the relationship between our countries. We are working closer together on more issues than ever before. From semiconductors to space, from education to food security, the energy, ambition and potential of our cooperation is boundless. The United States and India have become, as the Prime Minister has put it, indispensable partners. And that partnership, President Biden has said, is a defining relationship of the 21st century. Together, we're promoting greater peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and around the globe, combating disease, responding to natural disasters, strengthening the maritime security, standing up for the principles at the heart of the United Nations Charter. We're working to safeguard our planet for future generations, developing affordable solar panels and sustainable aviation fees. We're driving opportunity and innovation from the entrepreneurs powering our economies to the U.S. companies investing in India and vice versa. And the cutting edge research that we're jointly advancing from quantum to artificial intelligence is helping to sustain our technological edge and shaping a digital future that safeguards democratic values. Here in the United States, India is part of our daily lives. We enjoy Jhupala Hiri's novels over samosas. We laugh at the comedies of Mindy Kaling. We dance to the beats of Diljit, said Coachella. And yes, Mr. Prime Minister, and I can say this from personal experience, we keep ourselves more or less fit and healthy doing yoga. The United States is endlessly enriched by our thriving Indian diaspora. Doctors, teachers, engineers, business leaders, public servants, almost all of whom it seemed were on the White House lawn yesterday to greet you. And so many of whom are here with us today.  We're diplomats right here at the State Department, where a man whose father came to America with just a bus ticket and $14 in his pocket rose to become the first United States Indian American ambassador to India. And today, Richard Rahul Verma serves as the Deputy Secretary of State the highest-ranking Indian American official in the department's history. And, Mr. Prime Minister, that ultimately is maybe the strongest bond that unites us. As you glimpsed in your earliest travels here, whether we call it the American dream, whether we call it the Indian dream, whether it's the son of an immigrant from Jalandhar rising through the State Department, or a T-seller becoming Prime Minister, are people believed profoundly in opportunity, that no matter who we are or where we come from, we can make something more of ourselves. So please join me in raising a glass to our shared hopes for the future and to the U.S.-India partnership that will help make those hopes a reality. Cheers. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you the Vice President of the United States. Mr. Secretary, Madam Ryan, thank you for hosting us here yet again. It is the honor of dug in mind to be with you, honoring the friendship and the importance of the relationship between India and the United States. Prime Minister Modi, we are honored to welcome you. We also welcome the members of the President's Cabinet who are here and all of the members of Congress who are here, including Speaker Emerita Pelosi, Chairman McCall, and welcome to all of our distinguished guests.  Take, for example, the historic number of members of the United States Congress with Indian heritage. Representatives Ami Berra, if you're here, please stand. Pranila Jayapal, Radha Krishnamurthy. This is a caucus for those of you who do not know. And around our country, we see the impact of Indian Americans from the sea suites of American companies to neighborhood businesses, from the studios of Hollywood to university research labs across our country. So as many of you know, India is a very important part of my life. When my sister Mai and I were growing up, our mother would take us from the Bay Area to India pretty much every other year. And the purpose of those trips were many, including that we would well understand where she came from, what produced her, so that we could spend time with our grandparents, with my uncle and our Chittis, and to really understand the love of good idli. And we traveled to visit my grandparents in what was then called Madras. And I will tell you, my grandfather was one of the most favorite people in my life, truly. We were pen pals, in fact, throughout my childhood. And I was the eldest grandchild. And so, as I'm sure many of you know, culturally to be the eldest has a certain significance, and so I took full advantage of that status in our family. And my grandfather, of course, convinced me, as he did I think everyone of his grandchildren, that we were his favorite. Yet, on those visits, I was the only member of our family that my grandfather allowed to join him for his morning routine. You see, by the time that we were going there as children, my grandfather was retired from his career as a civil servant. And his morning routine, every morning, consisted of taking long walks on the beach with his retired buddies. And they, as retired civil servants, would debate the issues of the day. So I would hold my grandfather's hand on these walks and listen intently to him and his friends. And I will tell you, as a young girl, I think I've fully appreciated the essence and the import of the debates that they would have. But I did clearly understand and do recall stories about the freedom fighters and the nation's founding heroes, and about the independence of India. I remember them talking about the importance of fighting corruption and fighting for equality, regardless of one's belief or caste. Throughout these walks, I recall my grandfather teaching me lessons about not just what it means to have a democracy, but to keep a democracy. And I do believe it is these lessons that I learned at a very young age that first inspired my interest in public service. Look back now, and I do fully realize how much these conversations influenced me and my thinking and how they have guided me ever since. In fact, it is a large part of who I am today, these lessons I learned from my grandfather, P. Viglopalan, and from the dedication, determination and courage of his daughter, my mother, Shamala. And it is that being the reason that I stand before you today as Vice President of the United States. The history and teachings in India and of India have not only influenced me, they of course have shaped the entire globe, as Secretary Blinken just described. Throughout history, India has inspired millions of people around the world, whether through philosophy and theology, the power of civil disobedience, or the commitment to democracy. Indeed, as I travel the world as Vice President, I have seen India's global impact firsthand. In Southeast Asia, Indian-made vaccines have saved lives and livelihoods. On the continent of Africa, India's long-standing partnerships support prosperity and security. And throughout the Indo-Pacific, India helps promote a free and open region. I also know of India's extraordinary impact with regard to innovation, medicine and science. I know this as a daughter of California. I know this as a former District Attorney, Attorney General and Senator, who has worked on technology with leaders in Silicon Valley. And I know this, of course, as a daughter of a scientist. My mother at the age of 19 arrived in the United States by herself as part of the first wave of Indian students to travel here. She chose UC Berkeley because it was known as being one of the best universities in the world. And growing up, I remember my mother, our mother, spending day and night and weekends in the lab. She always asked the big questions and searched for the answers that would be a clue to improving the condition of life. She understood what was possible, unburdened by what has been. And since then, I think about it in the context of the work she did and her studies that have led to advances in breast cancer research. And I think about it in the context of the millions of Indian students who have come to the United States since to collaborate with American researchers to solve the challenges of our time and to reach new frontiers. Indian innovators have made great strides in engineering and computer programming. They've sent a mission to Mars, and they have launched and led technology companies that are global leaders in the areas of autonomous vehicles, robotics, cybersecurity, climate data and digital finance. All of which can serve to improve the human condition and uplift the people. The point here being, India's global engagement has not only been to the benefit of the people of India, but also to the benefit of the people of the United States and people around the world. So, Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your role of leadership to help India emerge as a global power in the 21st century. You have helped to reinvigorate the Quad. Your leadership of the D20 is making new strides on climate finance, and you have been a proponent of international institutions and global solutions to global challenges. And as a point of personal privilege, as chair of the National Space Council, I thank you for your leadership in space and for our joint work on an earth science satellite, which will help us address the climate crisis. And I will also thank you, because when you and I first met at the White House, I asked you to join the Artemis Accords, a commitment to the safe and transparent use of space. And today I am happy to report as you have that you have joined the Artemis Accords. So, Prime Minister Modi, President Joe Biden and I are grateful for your commitment to strengthen the ties and the relationships between the United States and India. And we share that commitment. Under your leadership and that of President Biden, our partnership has become more expansive than it has ever been. Over the past two and a half years, you and I have advanced cooperation on climate, on clean energy, terrorism, cyber crime, public health and vaccine production. And during this trip, our countries have launched new areas of cooperation from artificial intelligence to semiconductors. As we look toward the future, the United States and India, the world's oldest and largest democracies, instinctively turn to each other and are increasingly aligned. So I will conclude with this, which is a memory again of my grandfather and what he taught me on those long walks. And in particular, what he taught me about the nobility of public service. Prime Minister Modi, you and I have both dedicated our careers to the noble work of public service. And so to everyone here today, I say it is incumbent on each of us inside of government and outside of government to continue the fight for progress and to serve the greater good. So I raise a glass to the enduring bonds between our nations and our people and to our continued work together, all in the service of the greater good. Vice President Kamala Harris, second gentleman, Douglas M. Hawk, Secretary of State, my friend, Anthony Blinken, White House Community Secretary, Evan Ryan, Sabhi Sammanit Pratnidiga, friends. First of all, I would like to thank Prime Minister Kamala Harris and Secretary Blinken for welcoming me. I would like to express my condolences to both of you, for which I would like to express my condolences to all of you. Today, once again, I would like to express my condolences to all of you in the State Department. In the last three days, I took part in many meetings, discussed many issues. In all of these meetings, one thing was common. All of them were that, between India and the United States, friends and co-workers should be more deeply involved. The trade union between India and the United States was established from the beginning of people-to-people ties. We are able to see the examples of these relations at step-by-step. Prime Minister Kamala Harris's mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, came to the United States from India in 1958. At that time, most people didn't have a phone. That's why her mother used to send letters to her family by writing with her hand. And she had never let the trade union break with India. She had made a living. Whatever the medium was, she used the government. She was trying to make India and the United States live in harmony with each other. Despite thousands of meetings, India was always close to her. Madam Vice-President, you have brought her inspiration to the new world. Your ideas are not just about America. They are very important for the women of India and the entire world. Secretary Blinken, when I started using words like Sur and Gitmala, I was always on your side. The entire world knows about your diplomatic skills. And I will never forget it. There is a lot of talk about your musical talent. While traveling thousands of miles, you have brought music to the world and you have given music to the world. This is very important for all of us. Your very important contribution is to strengthen our strategic partnership. I thank you very much from my heart. During my journey in 2014, my dear friend, President Biden was also here with me in the State Department. At that time, he had promised the citizens of India and the United States over the horizon. In the last nine years, we have travelled a long and beautiful journey. We have united in defence and strategic areas. We are working with new faiths in new and advanced technology areas. We are solving the long and difficult issues of trade. We are working with new frameworks like Quad and I2U2. We are developing a lot together. Whether it is the earth or the sky, whether it is the depths of the ocean or the heights of the sky, India and America are working together. In the meantime, the promise over the horizon is neither a promise nor a horizon. Today, we have reached the point where we are proud of the achievements of all of you. Friends, on this note, I would like to raise a toast to your good health and well-being to our friendship and to the peace and prosperity of all our citizens. Thank you.


The federal government has declared that its planned takeoff of Nigeria Air in December will come to pass despite opposition against it by the domestic airline operators. Stakeholders have been kicking against the project on the ground that it would make Ethiopian airline a major investor in the business. The national carrier, as presently packaged, has equity shares control of 49% by Ethiopian airlines, 5% by the federal government, while the remaining 46% belongs to individual investors. The issues were raised at the House of Representatives regarding the issue that the essence of the Nigeria Air is the dissemination of the domestic carriers will still stand firmly on that ground. Because when we reviewed the business case that was provided by Ethiopian airlines, premised on which they were chosen as a preferred bidder, it is evident that what Ethiopian airline has decided to do, taking advantage of a single African air traffic market, is to enter into the Niger market, use predatory pricing to the detriment of the domestic carriers over a period of six months, following which they intend to, based on their business case, to take over 60% of the market share. The intent is not to kill any business. The intent is to help to promote all businesses to be able to provide the needed service and employee or people. This is the intent. And the more the merrier, the more that you have people doing businesses, then the ones that does it better take advantage and give more service and the people get more served better.


Good afternoon. Welcome to Vermont and House Judiciary Committee. We are working on H183 in act relating to sexual violence and we are continuing our deliberations of the bill from this morning and we have attorney Michelle Childs here to speak to us about House government operations and and just to do a hopefully a quick walkthrough of of the bill 3.1 so we could so we could vote on it. So Michelle, thank you. Sure. Hi. So Evan, can you let me share my screen? Can you see that? Yes. Okay. Great. So I'm just going to walk through the it went well in House government operations and and so I will show you. I'll go through their amendments again. There is just one thing that I forgot that I need to just make one tiny tweak on there, which I'll do when I when I go through show you. So so section one is the definition section. I'm not going to necessarily go into all this because I know you all have seen it lots of times. If you've got questions, let me know. So definition section. Section two, amending the sexual assault statute and there haven't been any changes to any of this in on the portions that you've been working on. So since the for the last couple of versions. Section three has to do with trial procedure and consent. So listing all the different circumstances of what constitutes consent, what doesn't constitute consent. Section four is your data collection and reporting. Remember the when I went over. I think it was yesterday, but my days are all blending together. I'm not sure. But the last time I went over with you was the the revised language on data collection and reporting. And so again, no changes to that. In section five is the the Intercollegiate Sexual Violence Prevention Council. And so there you've incorporated all the suggested changes from House government operations. The one thing I realized I have to change is it's the not the executive director of the independent colleges. It's a president. So so you know the so you went through those we we tweaked that based on their recommendations as to the college appointments, the college student appointments, tweaked the prosecutor language and added someone from the Defender General's Office. Made that small tweak in in the duties with regard to instead of using climate survey, looking at the aggregated data that had already been collected. Limiting the council to four meetings. So the meeting quarterly. And then this was not in the earlier draft that I gave you because the chair of Govup said texted me while I was presenting the last amendment and requested this repeal language. So at the top of page nine. This section of for the council would sunset in seven years and she said that that is their standard time that they use for best practices in their committee so that their legislature is checking in and making sure that you know these types of groups don't stay on the books if they kind of lose their you know people aren't meeting any more things like that so they'll have to be a check in. But also remember that one of the duties of this council is to be reporting to you so hopefully you'll be hearing from them regularly. Section seven is the appropriations so the $13,000 to the network for staffing the council as well as reimbursement of per diems and expenses for those members who aren't otherwise compensated for attending those meetings. The $40,000 for expansion of the forensic nursing program to primary care providers and reproductive health providers in the community. And then the effective date this July, July 1st. That's it. Is it really only 10 pages? Great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle. Appreciate it. Committee members, as I mentioned, we will vote on this today because of crossover and on Tuesday we have scheduled Wilda White and others to address her concerns to understand her concerns. Okay, any questions for for Michelle on this draft? I can't see everybody so if folks want to jump in if they have any questions, please go ahead. I guess not. There you are. There's everybody. Okay. Okay. Well, good work. So I would entertain a motion in support of draft. So Michelle, this will be draft, it'll still be draft 3.1 with the, because I know you just made a change while we while you're yeah just keep it as 3.1. I think if unless although I guess since it's posted why don't you make it vote on 3.2 and I will I will I just changed the draft and added president there and I'll send that to to Evan to post and then as well as to whoever is gonna report it. It has been edited. It has been edited. And so it can go after you vote it can go to the parks office. Okay, great. So it's 3.2 and the only I just want to make sure it's everybody know follow what the one change. Okay, I just want to make sure it's Michelle to go over it. But looks like folks are okay. Okay, great. Okay, so then I would entertain a motion to vote favorably draft 3.2 of h183 that moved. Felicia. I'm sorry. Felicia was moved in Barber second or or that work. Yeah. Okay, great. Wonderful. Okay, any discussion. Nope. Okay, then. Okay, and if you can please call the roll. I'm not is Tom not here. I don't see Tom. All right, well let's let's vote and I'll I'll be in touch with him. Are we okay? Yeah, yeah. Colburn. Yes, totally. Yes. Go slant. Yes. LaLon. Yes. LaFleur. Yes. Norris. Yes. Not. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, so let's let's hold it open. See if Tom is able to join us since we do have another bill to work on anyway. Okay. Wonderful. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you, everybody. And where's Selena has expressed interest in reporting it. There also are, you know, there are different sections within the bill. So certainly folks can talk to different different sections as well, which we've done before when we've had a bill with different different sections. And then we'll we'll see what happens next week when we on Tuesday when we hear from from Wilde and Rory and others. So, but it does have to go up to appropriations. Did you say Selena was was reporting? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So Selena, I will email you this 3.2 right now. So you have it. Okay. Yep. And I guess I'll just need to wait for the final vote because we're leaving it open. And if anybody does want to, you know, co-report with me and move through different sections, I guess, just let me and Maxine know. Is that right Maxine? Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Okay, Selena, I also know that you need to go. So I'm just just trying to think what's up with Tom. I hope anybody I can check back in. I just have to deal with it. You know, here he is. Oh, okay. Great. Hi, Tom. Hello. Tying my tie. We just voted on 183 and are holding it open for you. Oh, it's unanimous so far. I figured. Yeah, if you want to call my name. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, Ken. I called it three times already. No, I was thinking we were coming back at quarter after. No worries. So is that a yes? Yeah, that's a yes. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Great. All right. Thank you, Selena. Take care. Good thing. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Michelle. All right. Great.


Welcome to MIT Supply Chain Frontiers from the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Each episode features center researchers and staff or experts from the field for in-depth conversations about business, education, and beyond. Today, Center Director Professor Yossi Sheffi speaks with Paul Grenadillo, Senior Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Moderna. Excerpted from the MIT Scale Network Winter Speaker Series, Yossi and Paul respond to a variety of questions about managing complex and constrained supply chains during exceptional times. Take it away, Yossi. Welcome Paul. The ability to quickly adopt production line to changing demand is one key to Moderna's success. How do you ensure that the supporting supply chain and many links and the sourcing demand planning is agile enough to keep up with the really amazing flexibility of the manufacturing process? Well, I'll take us back a little bit into 2020. As the pandemic started to unfold, we initially set a target amount of doses that we wanted to produce. And this was us as a small company saying, how can we contribute? What is what we can set as an initial milestone? And so we set a milestone of 100 million doses, which at that point in time seemed like... Not a lot. I mean, we had probably in our company's history produced tens of thousands of doses over 10 years in clinical programs. So this was a very, very significant statement. And so with that assumption, we started looking first at, okay, we need to figure out which supplies we need. Where are we constrained? How do we then work with those constrained suppliers to understand their capabilities to scale up, scale out, get CMOs to help them in producing more of the critical supplies we have? And it has been an incremental journey since that point in time at the beginning of 2020, probably up until around the middle of 2021, when we probably had the last significant push to get to the types of volumes per year that would match the production capabilities that we brought online. What's your production capability now? How many are you making? So our production capability as we go into 2022 as an example is between two and three billion doses of capacity. Last year we distributed a little bit over 800 million. Pretty remarkable considering September or October of 2020, our high-case scenarios were in the 400 to 500 million dose range. So we really, really surpassed what we even had set out as our goals, even in the fall last year. Okay. 2020. That's an obvious question. How do you do it? How can one scale it? Because this is not software development, this is making something really, how do you scale it? Yeah. So it was definitely a lot of team sport in this. The first thing, as I was describing, me and my team were really, really focused on the sourcing aspects of this and knowing the types of materials, the quantities that we needed. Our technical teams at the same time were saying, how do we go from the scale that we have today to the 20-fold scale that we're now using in production? And where do we then find our partners who can help with that? So we partnered with Lonza, with Catalan, with other CMOs around the world who have helped us to then expand our capabilities outside of the four walls of Moderna. Now all that being said, we did have the advantage of having a clinical manufacturing site in Norwood, Massachusetts, so not too far from here, which is where we did our initial phase one, phase two, and phase three production of COVID-19 vaccine, but also we're able to repurpose a lot of that facility to become a commercial manufacturing facility. And so that's then where we're doing the majority of our drug substance production for the U.S. market anyway, and are now starting to supply to many more markets from here, in addition to what we've brought online in Switzerland for the majority of our international drug substance manufacturing. Some people may not realize what the feat it is to make the small facility that's used for research to become a production facility. This had to be planned years in advance. That's right. There was another difficulty because at the time that you were developing, or Moderna was developing the vaccine, there were 130 other companies that were developing the vaccine. There were companies that were developing pharmaceutical. They all needed a lot of the same stuff. Right. So how did you get your stuff as opposed to others? So there were certainly places in which we overlapped in supply needs from many of the other companies, and some of it did have to do with COVID, other places that simply had to do with other life-saving medication, which did put the suppliers in a very challenging position of needing to figure out how do we set the right priorities for the world in the types of materials that are needed for program A versus program B. Now the US government certainly at that point in time, with a lot of our US-based suppliers anyway, was certainly helping to set clarity in which contracts for the US government were priorities versus others and did help I think in ensuring that the right quantities of materials were allocated based on the importance of the different programs and the perceived probability of success. And one of the amazing things is the United States at the time operated like a VC. I mean they were putting money even when they were natural, which to me was one of the, was the amazing thing about Operation War of Speed. For sure. I mean Moderna got... Right, yeah, I mean that certainly funded the development of COVID-19 vaccine and at least some of the production equipment that we used to scale up the facilities. Another question that also some of the students asked, how is the pandemic-reshaped business relationship both internally within the company with your function with others, as well as with competitors, suppliers, government? Particularly for Moderna, dramatically. So my team at the beginning of 2020 as an example was 23 people. We're now 135. So, you know, in addition to just the obvious of producing vaccines, scaling up the vaccine, there has been a lot of team building talent acquisition, I'll call it, as well as expanding and shifting how we're even organized within the team. We obviously didn't have nearly as many functions and teams within supply chain when we first started. We now have people in five or six countries globally, managing between our CMOs, our country supply chain, and our global supply chain activities. And then our relationships within the company, we didn't have commercial at the beginning of 2020. That was not a function we had as Moderna. We didn't have that yet. So that has been a relationship that we've had to build and foster as our commercial colleagues have joined the company over the past year and a half. And that has been very good because in many ways, obviously with 23 people, supply chain was very, very small at that time. So we've really grown up together as we built these two key functions to have the capability that we need to start interacting with governments and supplying product. The relationship with supplier has really changed from us as a customer, supplier as a supplier that is a big box somewhere that you order stuff from to partnership. And obviously, as I was discussing in terms of the type of scale up and changes in quantities that we needed from our suppliers, the need to get very integrated in our planning assumptions, the quantities that we need, the phasing, the changes required, the touch points has really changed. So we have weekly touch points still with all of our critical suppliers. In a couple of cases, we still have executive discussions by weekly basis to make sure that we're really keeping a pulse on what's going on that we need to understand so that we can react and be in sync on the upcoming changes. Looking back over the last two years, what are the most striking lessons you have learned as a supply chain professional? How does this experience help prepare you for future challenges? Yeah, so this has been pretty amazing. So I really had had a career in production planning, process improvement, and supply planning. And coming to Moderna was kind of a leap. It was something fresh and new and something that I was hoping I could grow into. As the company grew, I could grow as a supply chain professional as well. That all just happened a lot faster than I expected it to by several years. So actually, you mentioned the Harvard program that I was doing. I was doing that right up until March of the pandemic. So I came out of this this executive program and went directly into the pandemic. So that was a nice little warm up of case studies and for for for for group studies and and and lectures to real world global situation. How do we how do we assess when we started the pandemic? It was our initial concerns were we need to make sure that our materials that we do have sourced from China are secure because we were worried about border shutdowns or or workforce issues that they would have that could lead to supply shortages for us. So that quickly turned into we're actually going after creating a vaccine and on a whole different journey. So I've had the opportunity over the past year and a half to really get much more introduction to commercial supply chain, to contract management, to global distribution, cold chain management, leadership at a whole different level. So all of these things I think have been a very obvious business acumen improvement for me and help me then in decision making, connecting dots and being able to lead the supply chain function with more confidence. It's been, you know, very, very, you know, concentrated effort of something that most people would probably need 10 years to have experience across that many different aspects of supply chain. Yeah, one can one can hope that it's once in a lifetime that we are not going to have too many of those. The pandemic and what we see now highlighted a lot of staff shortages. In general, how can the supply chain professional competing with every other professional get the talent that it needs to keep to keep growing and it looks like it will keep growing. Yeah, it has been problematic and partially if nothing else if you think about I needed to hire around a hundred professionals from experienced backgrounds, because I didn't really have time to train and go through the basic programs like you may in a normal situation. Luckily for our international headquarters in Switzerland, there has been more of an abundance of available talent because of downsizing of other pharmaceutical companies in that region, Switzerland, lots of pharmaceutical companies, there's a lot of very, very capable people who have multi market experience and I was able to really tap into my previous teams that I had worked with or who had worked for me when I was working in Switzerland. So that was very helpful in the US. It was a lot harder to find one capable individuals who were in the Boston area already or willing to move and obviously moving during the pandemic is even harder than moving in a normal situation. And so that created issues and we've had to find that balance between how much remote work are we willing to accept to make sure we get talent fast and now versus what are we willing to wait for for critical positions that need to be local. But in general, I do think that there is a growing need to continue to create more supply chain capability globally. So I think certainly since I went to university, I think I've seen a big increase in the number of supply chain programs that are available. That wasn't something that I think was as prevalent at that time. And I think between that and you know, I mentioned people now know what supply chain is. I hope that that also then gets more students interested in what is supply chain. Is there a career potential for me here? I'd say that most of my team that I have today does not have supply chain degrees. They have degrees in engineering and management in science and have like I have in some ways stumbled their way into supply chain and really fell in love with it and stuck with it. And so that's great. And I think we want to continue that type of capability but more people coming out of university, understanding, you know, the key supply chain principles and able to jump into analyst roles, planner roles would really be super helpful as we continue. Well, I told these guys that they're entering the profession one of the best time ever. We're talking about the change supply chain just a kind of follow up. Go back, I have a colleague in civil engineering who does earthquake engineering. Every time there's an earthquake is in high demand. Six months later, nobody knows his name. The question is what will happen to supply chain? Supply chain, you know, the shortage at one point will ease. You know, prices will stabilize or get it to equilibrium. Are people gonna go back to say, what is supply chain? I hope not as a, at least so I don't have to answer the question of what does that mean when I want to meet people. But I don't think it will or at least not for quite some time. I see, I think that's hard to fathom. I think that this has gotten so ingrained into people's minds of what supply chain is. I saw something, I think at the end of last year that was, you know, 10 words that need to be, you know, removed and forgotten after 2021. And one of them was supply chain, which I had some bittersweet feelings on that just with the experiences that we've all been through. But I do think it speaks to the fact that people do know now what supply chain is. They're more in tune with the fact that there are disruptions, both simply in distribution, but also deeper to that in terms of manufacturing capacities as well as raw material shortages that are creating issues that are affecting us from everything from food to consumer electronics and automotives and everything that we're seeing on a daily basis. Yeah. Let me go back to some of the students' questions. You guys voted on some questions. Is this some interesting questions? How did you manage the stress of the supply chain team member during the pandemic? Is it still a challenge? Because you're just building the team. Yeah. Yeah, I think I would answer that as a teammate and as a friend, probably more than anything. So many of the people who joined my team, particularly at the beginning, were people that I had worked with in the past. And so along with simply having new team members, new employees, I had people that I had brought in from my life that I felt like, oh my gosh, I've sucked you into this chaos, into this intense stress that we're dealing with. But we have been working so collaboratively and connected together on a daily basis over the past two years that there's not long stretches of time where we don't hear from each other and it's just go do your work and leave me alone. So I think this team approach to everything has really been what we've rallied around, along with the fact that as you can imagine, we have such a clear, consistent single mission right now to help fight the pandemic. And knowing how that is invading our lives for all of us, it's very clear for us of why we are doing what we're doing. So that helps, particularly in those moments when you are overwhelmed. There are so many different priorities to deal with fires burning left, right, and center and trying to figure out how do I deal with this? And this is all bubbling up and it's 5 p.m. And I've got other things I want to be able to do that I'm going to have to just sacrifice for now. Thank you. With limited manufacturing throughputs and the high vaccine demand, how was your decision to prioritize the supply chain to different countries? So it's really been based on, as contracts have been signed, on the timing of when those contracts were signed and the phasing of the supply agreement. Those are really the primary reasons. And so that has just slowly stacked up over time. That's been the primary driver. Obviously, there's a couple huge players in the world that were steering things from the beginning as we talked, the US government obviously had a defense rated contract for our supply that we had to prioritize. And that's really what enabled a huge amount of our manufacturing capability that we've been able to bring online. It's really been based around our contracts and the phasing of that. Thanks.  Right now, we have won a capability to and an appetite to spend on freight. So we are willing to pay those premiums to make sure that we're moving our product and getting it to where it needs to go quickly. But then secondly, we're getting priority. So what we were talking about in terms of the disruptions that we've seen across the supply chain, we have probably seen the opposite of that in many ways. We've gotten more supply. We've gotten more priority. That's not something that's going to last forever. This will normalize for us, and we're going to have to compete in the normal ways in the future. But there has been a, I think in particular, we saw this in 2020, a global response to knowing this is our priority. We all need to figure out how to do this together. And this is somewhere that we want to make sure we partner to find mutual solutions. And so it's been amazing to see the reach out that we had from many of the freight companies in 2020 of saying, we've got our plane standing by.  That kind of reach out from executives. And so that really enabled us to have really a priority service that we needed. But that's a short-term thing. How does Moderna face the supply of the other two vaccines? Is competition is complementary? A rival with the other vaccine didn't reach? How do you deal with your friends? Yeah, it's probably both complementary and competition. We certainly know within our manufacturing capacities that we don't have enough product capacity to be able to serve the whole world. So there's certainly room for more than one vaccine supplier in this space. But we certainly, from our own perspective, want to be seen as the preferred choice. And so there are things I think that obviously from a scientific perspective we're trying to do to differentiate ourselves. As with so many unknown concerns the pandemic, how does Moderna addressing product life cycle management for the COVID vaccine? Boy, that's a near and dear topic for me right now. So that's played out in a number of different ways. So as we have expanded our manufacturing footprint from a single site to what is now probably around 14 sites between drug substance and drug product, that plus different lines that we need to register different secondary sourced materials that we needed to register. It's created a huge amount of life cycle management that we have to manage on a daily basis. The other thing then that we think about as we look into the future, and that we even worked on last year, is the potential for variants. So we've made public that we're working on a Omicron specific variant. This is similar to what we had done about a year ago with beta, then a few months after that for Delta as well. And so those ones didn't necessarily come to market. But there were a lot of activities in the background planning for what would dual supply look like, what would a transition be if we were to introduce a Delta specific variant. And so we're constantly doing scenario planning and evaluation of what life cycle events would need to happen and what the phasing is that we would need to have to bring these on to our different production lines. And then the impact on our end customers of when are we expecting registration approvals so that we can plan for launches and supply. So what's tricky is that there are so many different alternate realities that could play out in the future for us that we're having to manage at the same time. And we don't know exactly how we're gonna move forward. And part of it, if we think about if Omicron wouldn't have come about, would we still be talking more about Delta? So we could be still be talking about is there a need to bring a Delta specific variant? So what's after Omicron? So there's this constant change that's happening in the environment outside of our company that we cannot control that we have to react to and see how we continue to maneuver. How has the management of non-COVID related product been impacted both by COVID and the research allocation for vaccine development? Because you were working on other stuff before COVID. Well, the company has grown dramatically. So I think at first, certainly in 2020, there was some, there certainly was some delay and impact to our other programs. But over the course of time, we've grown, I think, from 800 to 2,800 people in total as a company in the past year and a half, two years. So through that, we've also added to our clinical teams so that they have more self-sustained capabilities and are not as reliant on those of us who have been around longer. We are continuing with that. We now have a, at least from the manufacturing perspective, we have a separate clinical site that we're managing separate from our commercial so that we can make sure that we've got the right focus on our clinical programs. Okay. How does Moderna ensure that their office-based supply chain workers are not disconnected from the reality of the factory or the warehouse workers? Probably the same way that all of us have kept in touch with our friends, our loved ones, et cetera, over the past two years of video calls. So a lot of our office employees, one, partially remote, but then secondly, even here who are locally-based. There's often days when people are staying home and certainly right now, we're in a mode that we're having people stay home for the time being who can, who don't need to be physically in production or in our logistics centers. And part of that is for protection. But we've had what I would describe as cameras on environment from the beginning in our Teams meetings and our Webex meetings to make sure that people are being plugged in. But we've had to do interviews this way. We've had to do onboarding town halls, something like this we've been doing more virtually. So people have become very accustomed to that. Luckily, that has been able to pay off. Is there a detriment to not being able to be physically on the floor? Yes, that certainly is the case in some ways, but I think that the manufacturing management is also dealing with the same environment. So it's not like we are the outsiders to something else that's happening. So we're all recognizing the need that communication needs to be deliberate, that we need to stay connected and that face-to-face even if it's virtual is really, really important. Okay, what is something that looking back you would have done differently over the last couple of years? Hmm. I suppose in some ways it's a good thing that I have to think about this. Yeah, that means I haven't done anything so boneheaded that I regret. I think the thing that is maybe most on my mind is the controls and earlier startup of our life cycle management activities. So this is something that was, we were going through 2020 and the initial launch of the product was really not so much in our minds. We were thinking we've got one thing we've got to get done, let's get this to market and obviously we have had a very simplistic approach of we have one label for the US and we have an international label for the rest of the world and we don't have country-specific artwork. We've done things very plain, very simplistic, very much focused on efficiencies on getting as much supply as possible. As we have started to get then into more real world and reality, the more this is coming, the more that complexity is starting to create a wave of activities that we need to deal with. And I would say that we have a lot of work in front of us to stabilize that life cycle management. So I wish I would have started on that much earlier and recognize those risks that were coming in front of us. But at the same time, I have to protect myself a little bit. When we were in 2020 and in Q4 even, we didn't know if what we were doing was a 100 million hump to the US government and that was it, we were done. We didn't know what was happening with the pandemic. We didn't know what would happen with other vaccine makers. So there are things that were not known to us at the time and we as a company obviously did not want to over invest beyond what we needed for that moment in time, not knowing if this was gonna be a long-term commercial activity for us or a short-term thing. And then we went back to being a clinical company until the next thing came. So it's hard to know. Yeah. The question repeats some of the things. What was the biggest bottleneck in the vaccine manufacturing effort? It has, it's funny, I've put together a slide at the end of last year for my team's town hall that talked about this a little bit. It's changed over time. So it started initially being the raw materials. There were some where we thought we were gonna be constrained by 20% or to only 20% of the full 100% that we needed. And so that was probably the biggest thing that we overcame and that was a custom material that we were having produced. Then it shifted really to drug substance production and so this is our internal capabilities. Then it shifted to our drug product. Then it shifted to our quality control laboratories and then it shifted to most recently our distribution at the end of last year. So it's really been kind of a progression of working the bottleneck through the supply chain to the end of the process. Assuming that the new normal is the emergence of new variants and you need to continuously produce new formulation of the mRNA vaccines, how did this scenario will change what you do and what you work on? Sure.  So if the severity starts to become more manageable and this starts to be treated more like a cold like the flu, then updating to new variants will be an ongoing course of business but hopefully something that is in the background and that public are not really needing to worry about in any sort of way on a daily basis.  So I think that that's one scenario. If there's a scenario in which COVID continues to be as severe and problematic as we are seeing in the last two years, I think that's obviously a very different public health issue that we would need to face, but I don't sense that that's the general thinking of public health experts. Yeah. Okay, guys, I'd like to take Paul very much and appreciate him coming here, so please join me. All right, everyone, thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of MIT Supply Chain Frontiers. My name is Arthur Grau, Communications Officer for the Center and I invite you to visit us anytime at ctl.mit.edu or search for MIT Supply Chain Frontiers on your favorite listening platform. Until next time.


We had two spare bedrooms, so we just wanted to do what we could. Luda and her two children, Natalia and Mark, arrived in April. The children are incredibly happy and they are doing so well at school. And it's lovely to see that, to contrast that with the situation that they could have been in. I would never have imagined how enjoyable an experience it has been. It's lovely to know that we're able to make it as good as it can be at the moment.