Who

Kindler is CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Backstory

Born in Florida and raised in New Jersey, Kindler attended law school at Harvard (where he served as editor of the law review) before clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Beginning his career at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly, he left in the early 1990s after making partner and joined GE's legal department, where he worked with Brackett Denniston and earned praise as a top-notch litigator. Kindler departed GE when he was offered the position of McDonald's general counsel; he made the leap from lawyer to operating executive soon after, taking over McDonald's Partner Brands, the subsidiary that operates Boston Market, Chipotle, and Pret-a-Manger.

In 2002, Kindler traded fast food for drugs to sign on as general counsel at Pfizer. When the stock shed 40 percent of its value in five years under CEO and chairman Hank McKinnell—and with Pfizer facing a mountain of legal and regulatory woes—McKinnell was booted from the top job. In 2006, the youthful Kindler—who was perceived by analysts as something of a dark horse in the running for CEO considering his scant pharma experience—was selected to replace him.

Of note

Wall Street was expecting drastic action following the switch and Kindler has aimed to deliver. As an opening act in early 2007, he sliced 10,000 jobs, including 20 percent of the company's domestic sales force. But his biggest challenge has been dealing with the expiration of Pfizer's patents on its stable of blockbuster drugs, particularly the cholesterol-reducing Lipitor, one of the most successful drugs in history. That many of Pfizer's most pressing problems are legal in nature partly explains why the company's board picked a lawyer to fill the top spot: One possible Lipitor replacement, Torcetrapid, was removed from development after an unexpected number of patients died while taking the drug in combination with Lipitor. The disaster, which unfolded shortly after Kindler took over as CEO, has cost the company more than $1 billion, and opened it up to the inevitable flood of lawsuits. More recently, Kindler has had to deal with the fallout of Pfizer's decision to end production of Exubera, an inhaled insulin product, which led to a $2.8 billion write-down; there was also a small uproar in 2008 over misleading ads for Lipitor which featured pitchman "Dr." Robert Jarvik.

Board game

Kindler serves on the board of Tufts along with Jonathan Tisch, and the Partnership for New York City along with Ken Chenault, Terry Lundgren, John Thain, Bill Rudin, and Chuck Prince, among others.

Personal

Kindler is married to Sharon Sullivan; they have two children, Joshua and Samantha. Daughter Samantha is something of a budding chef: As an eighth-grader, she appeared on an episode of Food 911 on the Food network. The Kindlers live in Westport, just down the road from Martha Stewart.