I have fielded countless questions since 2018 about why I decided to leave a career I enjoyed and join Philip Morris International (PMI), first as SVP, Global Communications and now as SVP & Chief Corporate Citizenship Officer, U.S.
I understand that people were surprised by my decision to join a tobacco company; I was surprised by my decision. I am not a smoker, nor am I an advocate of smoking. Quite the opposite. At the time, I was a survivor of two atypical meningiomas (brain tumors). (Since then, I’ve successfully battled a third brain tumor and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.) While my tumors were not tobacco-related, they were sufficiently frightening to move my health and well-being from an occasional thought to a primary focus. And they redoubled my commitment to promote causes I valued via my work as a PR professional and marketer.
Consequently, had PMI approached me in 2018 to help them sell cigarettes, I would have said a quick, emphatic (and likely not overly polite) “NO.” That is not why they came to me. PMI asked me to help them achieve their vision of a smoke-free future. That means a future without cigarettes. Yes, you read that right: PMI is a tobacco company looking to rid the world of the product for which it is best known.
An End to Cigarettes
Many years ago, public health authorities challenged the tobacco industry to create a less harmful alternative to cigarettes. PMI took up that challenge. Since 2008, the company has invested billions of dollars and the work of hundreds of scientists and engineers to create smoke-free products that are scientifically substantiated to be a better alternative to continued cigarette use. The key, scientists discovered, is to eliminate the combustion, the burning—which is responsible for the vast majority of toxins produced by cigarettes.
The company’s early efforts went nowhere. Smokers simply didn’t want them—and so they kept on smoking. It wasn’t until 2014 that PMI came up with a heated tobacco product that proved an acceptable substitute for many adult smokers. Many were willing to switch completely to this product, and, as of the end of September 2023, an estimated 19.7 million adults have done just that. That’s 19.7 million men and women who have stopped smoking cigarettes—the most harmful form of nicotine consumption—because they now have a better choice.
To be clear: The best choice any smoker can make is to give up tobacco and nicotine altogether. However, many don’t. As a senior executive at PMI, my job is to ensure that these men and women make a better choice than continued cigarette use—and, vitally, are given the option to make that choice.
Our message is simple:
If you don’t smoke, don’t start.
If you smoke, quit.
If you don’t quit, change.
PMI’s goal is to transition away from cigarettes to smoke-free alternatives, ultimately ceasing the production of cigarettes entirely. The speed at which it can do that depends on several factors, including the support of regulators and policymakers. Adults who smoke need access to these smoke-free products and to accurate information about them. And regulation should be risk proportionate so that those adults who would otherwise continue to smoke have an incentive to switch.
You can follow our progress in unsmoking the world here and learn more about the science behind smoke-free alternatives here.
My Third Act
I have long been an advocate for change and am proud of the work I have done to create a better world—from relief efforts following Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and supporting wounded veterans to being part of the team that created #GivingTuesday. My hope—and, increasingly, my conviction—is that the work I do at PMI will have a far more positive impact than anything else I have done to date. I have a chance to help rid the world of cigarettes. How could I not leap at that?
As of January 2024, I have made another leap—albeit within the same company. I gave up my position as head of global communications to return to my home country, the United States, to help “unsmoke” America. As Chief Corporate Citizenship Officer, I have an opportunity to introduce the U.S. market to Philip Morris International and the smoke-free future it is working so hard to achieve. Prior to its acquisition of Swedish Match in 2022, PMI had not directly sold products of any kind in the U.S. As of May 2024, we will have an opportunity to introduce our leading heated tobacco product to America’s estimated 28 million adult smokers, with the aim of moving them away from cigarettes as quickly as possible. As our CEO Jacek Olczak is fond of saying, cigarettes belong not on retail shelves but in museums.
If anyone had told me 20—or even 10—years ago that my career would culminate with me working for a tobacco company, I would not have believed them. And yet here I am. And I could not be prouder.