On this week’s episode of Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast, co-host Alan Murray talks with former Merck CEO Ken Frazier. In a conversation recorded live at a Deloitte Next Generation CEO event in Washington, D.C., Frazier tells Murray why the decisions he made to leave former U.S. President Donald Trump's presidential advisory council, and to vocally support voting rights, were a matter of principle, not politics.
Frazier also discusses the challenges he faced in his first few years as CEO of Merck—and the shareholders who trusted his vision enough to support him. Finally, Frazier, who is also the cofounder and former CEO of the the OneTen Coalition and current chairman of health assurance initiatives at General Catalyst, talks about starting the OneTen Coalition after the murder of George Floyd, and because he identified a need to find a common language to talk about ESG and DEI.
