NOVEMBER 24, 2026
VIRTUAL EVENT
Takeda CEO Julie Kim on Leading Between Worlds
This summer Julie Kim became CEO of Takeda, tapped to lead a 245-year-old Japanese drugmaker into its next era of growth as the company’s first woman in charge.
It’s a long way from where she started.
Born in Korea and raised in the Cleveland area, Julie spent much of her life as the outsider: one of the few Asian kids in her school; a gyopo (overseas Korean) who was too American in Korea; and later, often the only woman or Asian in the room at work.
She started in consulting and came to pharma only after a persistent recruiter talked her into an interview at Baxter. A career across Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Zurich, Boston and Tokyo followed.
Along the way, she shifted from a focus on just fitting in to leading as her whole self.
Now she's the first East Asian American to head a top-tier global pharma, a Korean American woman leading a storied Japanese company in its global expansion.
Aetna Wun Trombley, CEO of Lycia Therapeutics, talks with Julie about what she’s still learning about herself as a leader.
RSVP and share your questions for Julie.
About the moderator
Aetna Wun Trombley, Ph.D., has served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and board director at Lycia Therapeutics (Nasdaq: LYCA) since April 2020, leading the company through its initial public offering in October 2026.
She is a board member of TCG Labs-Soleil, an integrated venture and biotech research and development model, and served as an independent director of Carmot Therapeutics from 2016 until its acquisition by Roche in 2024. Before Lycia, Aetna spent nine years at NGM Biopharmaceuticals, most recently as President and Chief Operating Officer with broad strategic and operational responsibility. She was instrumental in establishing multiple strategic partnerships and in the company’s successful initial public offering in 2019.
Earlier, she served as Chief of Staff to the Chief Executive Officer of Novartis and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. She holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Aetna was born in Kentucky to Chinese immigrant parents who, isolated from both family and a Chinese community, moved them to San Francisco. Now she is fortunate to live near more than 30 of her relatives, three generations, in the Bay Area.