Tom Polen, President And Chief Operating Officer of BD, To Give August Graduation Address

Tom Polen, president and chief operating officer of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), will be the featured speaker at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School’s graduation ceremony, Thursday, August 1, at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. 

Polen oversees BD’s three business segments — medical, life sciences, and interventional —which together comprise all 10 of the company’s global business units. He also has responsibility for research and development, innovation, operations, and the commercial organization of the company’s Americas Region. Polen is a member of the BD Executive Leadership Team and serves as executive sponsor of the Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) at BD.

Polen joined BD in 1999 after growing an early-phase startup that was subsequently purchased by BD. From 1999 to 2004, he held a variety of sales and marketing positions with increasing responsibility at BD. In 2004, Polen joined Baxter Healthcare, where he last served as general manager of Baxter's Global Pharmaceutical Injectables business. Since rejoining BD in 2009, Polen has worked in or had responsibility for a range of businesses within the company. In 2014, Polen was named segment president of BD Medical, where he led the $12 billion acquisition of CareFusion in 2015, the company’s expansion into informatics and digital health solutions, and the $24 billion acquisition of C.R. Bard in 2017.

Polen holds an MBA from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a bachelor's degree from Salisbury University in Maryland.

Accredited by the AACSB, the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is the business school of the Johns Hopkins University. Established in 2007, the Carey Business School’s mission supports business knowledge development and education through its own initiatives and innovations, and through collaborative programs across Johns Hopkins University. Carey creates and shares its knowledge and shapes business practices while educating business leaders who will grow economies and societies, and are exemplary citizens.