Innovation With Purpose

Driving innovation 
 
Michael’s drive to support our pursuit of creating better health and a brighter future traces back to his childhood. From a young age, Michael has always loved solving problems. “An engineer has been involved in the production of everything that you interact with in some way,” says Michael. And the way Michael sees it, engineering is about being able to solve problems in an efficient way. Michael’s work here is rooted in making data accessible so people can find the information they need to make informed decisions.

Building future-ready capabilities 
 
Michael contributes to our future-ready organization by accelerating digital innovations across Takeda. Earlier this year, Michael and his team implemented a new digital schedule system for manufacturing employees making plasma-derived therapies. The automated scheduling tool provides updates about the production process in close-to-real time, helping employees meet critical production deadlines and analyze the reasons for any delays. “Before, a scheduler would have to make manual updates, which is a tedious process,” says Michael. “Now, people can understand what the current state of the process is without having to wait on the next update.” 

Our priority here is delivering high-quality medicines and vaccines to patients as quickly as possible. Essentially, efficiency means transforming more lives. “If we could eliminate waste in our processes around data retrieval and analysis, we could enable our people to spend more time improving our processes,” says Michael.

Inspiring the next generation of healthcare 

Formerly a cadet at the Civil Air Patrol in high school, Michael makes an impactful contribution as the Director of Aerospace Education for the Georgia Wing, where he teaches cadets ages 12 to 18 about the value of an education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). “There’s always a need for people who have STEM backgrounds,” says Michael, “because if you think about some of the larger scale problems, it’s going to be this group of students that will be solving those problems in the future.” 

Michael recently taught the cadets how to build high-powered rockets, starting with the design on a computer simulation. “One of my proudest moments was when they wrote me a thank you card and presented me with an award for helping them build their model rockets,” says Michael.

Making history and changing futures 

Michael’s hard work both at Takeda and the nonprofit is well recognized. In fact, Michael and his son, Matthew, are the first father and son duo in the Civil Air Patrol’s history to both earn the prestigious Carl A. Spaatz Award—the Civil Air Patrol’s highest cadet honor. 

In 2022, Michael and the training team here also won a Brandon Hall Award for building a plasma process knowledge training program, helping employees at all levels learn the science behind our process for creating plasma-derived therapies. The program is now used at other Takeda sites and has been translated into different languages. “It’s not just that we were competing against some other groups at Takeda or even other pharmaceutical industries,” says Michael, “this award is across all industries, and we won an award where we’re competing against dozens of global companies.” 

From empowering Civil Air Patrol cadets to finding data and digital solutions at Takeda, Michael hopes to make a meaningful difference in the world, solving one problem at a time.