Robert Duggan: A strong believer in Karma

Posted by aimewolf on April 29th, 2014

There would be many who would recognize Robert Duggan as an ‘incredible CEO’ who made a 15,454% return for his company in four years, since the recession. But, honestly speaking, when we see him we just cannot put him in one bracket. There are other ‘intangible factors’ that place him much above his peers, the humanitarian factor, which drives him to support several causes. And, this makes Bob Duggan a great leader.

Long ago Bob Duggan realized that it is the happy workforce that makes the company productive. He took some initiatives at Pharmacyclics to turn his team into a part of the company in the traditional way: by offering company’s shares at a discount of 15%. Some truly brilliant perks including medical and dental benefits, three weeks of vacation, free gym memberships, commuter benefits like free shuttle service via train from Caltrain station in Sunnyvale, California to the corporate office made them committed and happy. Their happiness helped make  Robert Duggan happy to make it big.

Then Robert Duggan did something that many of us will not think of: donating tens of millions to his Church and important social programs. In 2008 Bob Duggan invested in a brain cancer drug, Xcytrin because of his personal passion. His son had died from brain cancer and he was there to do everything that would eliminate this ailment. But the drug could not be launched and Duggan made Pharmacyclics work with his own money and funded it with $50 million. It is the cause that drove him to take this decision. His next drug, Imbruvica turned out to be a effective treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. It also reduced the tumors in 58% of mantle cell lymphoma patients, who hadn’t responded to any other drugs.

And now, Bob Duggan plans to use Imbruvica as base for creating more solutions to revolutionize health care. He plans to utilize his resources to come up with even more fruitful results that will make our world a better place for the next generation. Here, his vision is his motivation. He strongly believes in ‘body harmonious’ the idea that human body can fix itself. He says that four primary elements oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen that makes 95% of human body. Robert Duggan is now for patient-friendly medicine and developed robotic surgery, with robots capable of performing heart surgery. This lessens the economic burden on the patients and their family.

Robert Duggan and his wife, Trish, support quite a few global programs. For example, they believe in a world free of harmful drugs. They support an organization that helps youths and adults with drug-related information so that they can make informed decisions and avoid harmful drugs. Bob Duggan is a citizen of the world. In one hand he supports his alma mater, the University of California Santa Barbara, with scholarships in athletics and on the other hand he provided two academic Chair donations. One of these is a Tibetan Buddhist chair. In UCSB library he has dedicated a room to preserve 5,000 Buddhist Sutras.

Robert Duggan cannot be introduced as just a CEO of a company. Bob Duggan is a man who believes in humanity.