Global Fund Appoints Christopher Game as Chief Procurement Officer
09 November 2012
GENEVA - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria today named Christopher Game, an expert in procurement with broad experience in the auto and pharmaceutical industry, to be its new Chief Procurement Officer.
Mr. Game has more than 20 years of experience administering and leading and advising on procurement efforts, overseeing and securing the sourcing of billions of dollars of materials.
Raised in South Africa, Mr. Game worked most recently as Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer at Capsugel Holdings in New Jersey, owned by KKR, a leading U.S. private equity firm.
"Christopher is exactly what we need – a highly skilled executive who can make sure our purchasing and delivery is top-notch," said Gabriel Jaramillo, General Manager of the Global Fund. "Procurement is a critical part of what we do, and Christopher helps us make a quantum leap forward in ensuring our operations are efficient and safe."
At the Global Fund, Mr. Game will report to Daniel Camus, Chief Financial Officer, who himself joined the organization recently from EDF, where he oversaw international operations including procurement at the largest electric utility company in the world.
"To operate with a superior level of efficiency, and to leverage our significant buying power, we need superior expertise in our core areas, like procurement," said Mr. Camus. "This appointment gets us there."
Mr. Game began his career at Nissan Motors in South Africa, where he was a foreman on a production team, leading 70 people. He later moved to Toyota Motors, where he learned about Lean, a production practice focused on efficient expenditure of resources, which has since become an internationally-recognized approach.
He gained valuable experience in procurement at BMW in South Africa, including negotiation practices, as well as learning about the advantages of high-standard and detail-oriented production.
He later worked at Abbott Laboratories in the United Kingdom, leading a team of buyers and procuring raw materials and packaging, and at a generic pharmaceutical company now called Actavis.
Mr. Game became the Global Head of Active Ingredients, Packaging and Excipients procurement at Sandoz, an arm of the Novartis group, and built a track record of innovation and expert management that led to enormous cost savings. He was promoted to become the Global Head of Sourcing at the pharmaceutical division of Novartis, managing the spending of $2.7 billion and leading a team of 120 professionals worldwide, and taking the division through an effective reform process, yielding tremendous cost savings.
Mr. Game’s appointment is one of several major staff moves in recent months, as part of an organizational transformation undertaken by Mr. Jaramillo.
Mr. Game is married and has a son.