Daniel O’Day is the Chairman and CEO of Gilead, the biopharmaceutical company, which has more than 11,000 employees around the world. Prior to joining Gilead in March 2019, O’Day served as the Chief Executive Officer of Roche Pharmaceuticals. His career at Roche spanned three decades during which he held a number of executive positions in the company’s pharmaceutical and diagnostics divisions in North America, Europe and Asia.

O’Day, who was the keynote speaker at Irish America’s Health Care / Life Sciences 50 dinner in 2017, was born in Texas and is a third-generation Irish-American with family from Ennis, County Clare on his father’s side.

“The perseverance of my Irish ancestors is a daily motivation to me professionally and personally,” O’Day says. His first job was landscaping, which, he says, “inspired me to pursue my education.”

O’Day holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Georgetown University and an MBA from Columbia University in New York. He and his wife, Mara, have three children Tierney, Meghan, and Brendan. ♦