Greater Philadelphia, United States, December 2025 — Sangeetha Kanvar has joined Eli Lilly and Company as Head, Quality Systems Excellence & Digital Transformation. In this role, she will focus on strengthening quality systems, accelerating digital enablement, and advancing a culture of continuous improvement aligned with Lilly’s patient-first mission. Her move reflects a strong alignment with Lilly’s purpose-driven approach to innovation, science-led growth, and unwavering commitment to doing what’s right.
In sharing her transition, Sangeetha Kanvar highlighted that Lilly’s mission to create medicines that make life better resonates deeply with her, along with the company’s patient-centered purpose, bold innovation agenda grounded in science and data, and a culture that values quality and genuine care for people.
In her new leadership chapter at Eli Lilly and Company, Sangeetha Kanvar brings a proven record of driving enterprise transformation at the intersection of quality, digital, data, and operating model redesign. Her appointment signals Lilly’s continued focus on strengthening quality excellence through modern, scalable, digitally enabled systems and governance.
Prior to joining Lilly, she served at GSK as Head – PPM DDA (VP, Digital Transformation & Analytics) for nearly three years. In this role, she was brought in to redesign GSK’s digital, data, and analytics strategy for drug development project management, with a focus on improving trust in data, simplifying the digital footprint, and enabling project managers to shift from administrative burden to strategic leadership. Her work reportedly helped elevate data quality dramatically, streamline planning redundancies, introduce AI-assisted stewardship, and shape an enterprise analytics control tower, alongside measurable improvements in agility, accountability, and organizational engagement.
Before GSK, Sangeetha Kanvar spent close to 12 years at Merck, where she held several influential leadership roles spanning digital strategy, PMO transformation, portfolio analytics, and IT service delivery. Her experience included serving as Executive Director, Head PMO PM Capabilities & Standards, Global Project and Alliance Management R&D Program Director, and IT Client Services Lead – Merck Vaccines, contributing to governance modernization, workflow automation, knowledge management scale-up, and large enterprise value delivery across the drug development lifecycle.
In addition to her corporate leadership experience, she was also a Member of the Executive Council for Leading Change (ECLC) for over a year, reflecting her active involvement in broader leadership and transformation communities.
Her academic and executive development foundation includes a Chief Technology Officer program from Wharton Executive Education and an MBA in Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Marketing from Saint Joseph’s University – Erivan K. Haub School of Business, adding further depth to her blend of healthcare domain understanding and technology-led transformation expertise.
Eli Lilly and Company is a global medicine company focused on turning science into healing to make life better for people around the world. With roots dating back nearly 150 years, Lilly continues to advance biotechnology, chemistry, and genetic medicine to address some of the world’s most significant health challenges, guided by a long-standing ethos of continuously improving what it creates for patients.
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