Kind Ambition

He once met ambitious goals as a traveling salesman. Now Dave Fleming ’70 aims for nothing less than reforming our health care system and curing rare diseases.

by Lisa Watts

» Biotechnology’s Promise: a return to normal life

Never mind the gleaming, state-of-the-art, environmentally "green" headquarters near the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Never mind his title, group senior vice president, or what he must get paid to help lead a two-billion-dollar player in the biotech industry.

If you want to know what gets Dave Fleming ’70 out of bed every morning, get on a plane with him and fly to China.

The year is 1997, and Fleming has volunteered to introduce his employer, Genzyme, and its products to mainland China. The director of Beijing Childrens Hospital asks Fleming to visit with a local couple whose only child, an eight-year-old boy, is sick. Fleming agrees, eagerly. But the boy takes one look at the American visitor and falls to the ground, crying inconsolably. Each time he looks at Fleming, the boy gets more upset.

Sitting in their apartment, Fleming learns the family’s story. At age four, their son was diagnosed with Gaucher disease, a rare genetic disorder that strikes mainly children and is usually fatal. Genzyme makes the only treatment for the disease – a product that launched the company in the 1980s. The boy believed that Fleming was bringing medicine to save his life. Seeing the American arrive empty-handed, he lost all hope.

But not for long. The boy became the first of some ninety children in China now receiving drug therapy for Gaucher. Genzyme has identified some four thousand Gaucher patients in more than eighty countries. In a unique partnership with the international nonprofit Project HOPE, Genzyme offers the drug, Cerezyme, free of charge to more than two hundred of those patients.

consistent compassion

A compact man with a quick smile and equally quick mind, Dave Fleming would prefer not to tell his own story. He’d rather guide visitors through the innovative Genzyme Center, the new headquarters (see "Going Green," next page). He loves to tell patient success stories, whether they happen in Cuba or Carlsbad. ("I went to a conference in Carlsbad. A bellman noticed the name Genzyme and knocked on my door to thank me for saving his life – he was a Gaucher patient on Cerezyme treatment. We talked for over an hour.")

"It’s a privilege to be intimately involved in helping patients’ lives. You’re really going out there bringing hope to families."

Fleming has built far more than hope in his thirty-plus years in the health care industry, the last two decades with Genzyme. Half of his job involves managing Genzyme’s diagnostic products – rapid tests for such things as mononucleosis, strep infections, and pregnancy – worldwide. But half of his work involves less tangible products – health care public policy, reform of Medicare and the Food and Drug Administration, even the promotion of renewable energy use.

In a workplace that values innovation and adaptability, Fleming’s days define such things. He may bounce from organizing biotech advocacy efforts to supporting Genzyme’s business development in China and fine-tuning e-business initiatives. He is rarely deskbound. The corporate culture encourages dropping in on colleagues to talk one-on-one.

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