re: #471 Decatur Deb

Handel got her big break at Ciba Vision, if that’s “pharma” enough.

Which is! A subsidiary of Novartis.

Novartis International AG is a multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, ranking number two in sales (46.806 billion US$) among the world-wide industry in 2010.[2]

Novartis manufactures such drugs as clozapine (Clozaril), diclofenac (Voltaren), carbamazepine (Tegretol), valsartan (Diovan), imatinib mesylate and (Gleevec / Glivec). Additional agents include ciclosporin (Neoral / Sandimmun), letrozole (Femara), methylphenidate (Ritalin), terbinafine (Lamisil), and others.

Renamed to Novartis following an acquisition by Ciba-Geigy, it owns Sandoz, a large manufacturer of generic drugs. The company formerly owned the Gerber Products Company, a major infant and baby products producer, but sold it to Nestl on 1 September 2007.[3][4][5][6]

Novartis is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA)[7] and of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).[8]

and…

Novartis was created in 1996 from the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz Laboratories, both Swiss companies with long histories.