Dr. Kathrin Jansen, Head of Vaccine Research, Pfizer: "I did not think about failure. I did not think about success. All I thought about is we have to come up with something that stops this pandemic."

Welcome to our Women’s History Month series on Skimm’d from the Couch - where we’re bringing you the women who made history this past year. 

Meet: Dr. Kathrin Jansen. Dr. Jansen is the head of vaccine research at Pfizer. So she literally helped develop the COVID-19 vaccine that’s being distributed in the US and around the world. But why stop there? It turns out, she’s developed other breakthrough vaccines throughout her career. Like the one that fights HPV.

In this episode, Dr. Jansen shares how she deals with resistance and skepticism (15:28), how she balances listening to her intuition and data (13:36), and the moment when she found out just how effective the Pfizer vaccine was (26:38).

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