Andrew Witty

Some Lesser Known Facts About Andrew Witty

• After completing his formal education, Andrew Witty applied for jobs at Unilever and Austin Rover but wanted more options.

• His flatmate later told him about Glaxo UK, and he started working as a management trainee in Glaxo UK in 1985.

• He later became a Sales Representative for the Respiratory business, and later worked in various positions in the Marketing department. He later became the Director of Pharmacy and Distribution.

• In 1993, he became the Managing Director of Glaxo South Africa and later Area Director for GlaxoWellcome, South and East Africa.

• He later became the Vice President and General Manager of Marketing for the US arm of GlaxoWellcome Inc., the group’s US subsidiary and settled in North Carolina.

• He was later appointed as the Senior Vice President, of Asia Pacific and settled in Singapore in 1999.

• From 2000 to 2002, he served as an economic adviser to the governor of Guangzhou, China.

• In 2003, he became the President of GSK Europe and became a member of the Corporate Executive Team.

• In 2008, he became the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline plc and earned an annual salary of £948,000 and other compensation around £2,180,000.

  

• From 2010 until 2015, he served on the business advisory board of then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron.

• He served as the chancellor of the University of Nottingham from 1 January 2013 to November 2017.

  

• From 2013 to 2015, Witty was a member of the UNAIDS–Lancet Commission for Defeating AIDS and Advancing Global Health.

• In 2017, he resigned from the position of CEO of GSK.

• From 2017 until 2018, Witty became the head of the National Health Service’s Accelerated Access Collaborative.

• In 2017, the University of Nottingham announced the Witty Entrepreneurial Scholarship.

• In July 2018, Witty became CEO of Optum, a division of UnitedHealth Group and became the president of UnitedHealth in November 2019, holding dual roles at once.

• He later helped the World Health Organization to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

• In February 2021, he became the CEO of UnitedHealth Group.

• In May 2024, he accepted before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance that they paid a $22 million ransom to the hackers who hacked into its subsidiary Change Healthcare.

• In November 2024, the Sir Andrew Witty Scholarship for Leaders in Healthcare at Imperial College Business School was announced.

• He made headlines in December 2024 after Brian Thompson’s murder.