Wendy Lund is going home – to WPP, that is. Lund is leaving the Merck women’s health spinoff Organon where she is chief communications officer for a newly created role as WPP chief client officer for health and wellness. Before Organon, Lund led GCI Group, a WPP healthcare communications agency, as CEO for 11 years.
Lund joins WPP’s group of global client leaders who act as a single point of contact or entry for clients with WPP brands and businesses inside the holding company. and in this case, for the WPP health and wellness business.
WPP counts many of the largest pharmas including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Merck, GSK, Sanofi and AstraZeneca among its clients. It’s also the holding company for leading pharma and healthcare agency brands such as Ogilvy Health, VMLY&R Health, CMI Media Group and Wunderman Thompson Health.
Q&A: Organon chief communications officer Wendy Lund talks about the Merck spinoff, women’s health and why it matters
Lindsay Pattison
Lund called the move “a wonderful opportunity” and said she’s looking forward to her October start and thinking about “how in this very newly transformed environment we can really differentiate and expand our footprint in the sector, and of course, looking at how we diversify.”
She will report to WPP chief client officer Lindsay Pattison.
Lund is leaving Organon after working at the women’s health pharma for more than a year. She joined in June 2021 as the $6 billion-plus business spinoff from
Merck was finalized
. At the time, Merck touted the growth potential for women’s health products, especially outside the US which accounts for about 80% of Organon’s product sales. For Lund, the role at Organon followed her lifelong interest and passion for women’s health issues — one of her earliest jobs was leading marketing at Planned Parenthood.
Geralyn Ritter
“I was obviously very passionate about launching Organon and looking at how women’s health could and would evolve. My passion and my interest in the space doesn’t change — I’m looking for other birds of a feather at WPP who also really care about this and are passionate about it for ways to work together,” she said.
Organon said in a statement to
Endpoints News
that it’s “moving quickly to identify the future leadership of the communication function.” In the interim, Geralyn Ritter, EVP for external affairs will oversee the corporate, ESG and product communications team leaders, it said.