Name: Shawn Millerick
New title: President, vision care, Americas, Johnson & Johnson
Previous title: Principal and advisor, The New England Consulting Group
Johnson & Johnson named Shawn Millerick as the new president of its vision care unit in North and Latin America, the company said last week. Millerick, who has spent time at Abbott and Alcon, is responsible for defining strategy and driving growth at a J&J business that sells products including Acuvue contact lenses.
The new hire knows the U.S. contact lens market from the five years he worked at Alcon, which makes contact lenses and eye care products. Millerick was responsible for strategy and new ventures for the U.S. contact lens business in his final year at Alcon and worked at the over-the-counter eye care business earlier in his time at the company. Millerick joined Abbott in 2017 and spent seven years working at the pediatric nutrition business.
After a short spell at The New England Consulting Group, Millerick re-entered the vision sector by taking the position at J&J. Millerick joins a J&J unit that dragged on the medtech business over the first half of the year, delivering declines in sales on a reported basis in the first and second quarters, but recovered in the most recent results.
J&J reported 3.5% sales growth year over year for the vision business in the third quarter. The growth, which increased sales to $1.3 billion, was built on changes to the prices of contact lenses. The price actions helped J&J grow contact lens sales by 4.7% year over year in the quarter, Jessica Moore, J&J’s vice president of investor relations, said on the third-quarter earnings call.
The vision unit includes a surgical business that grew sales by 1.3% year over year in the quarter. Moore said volume-based procurement in China and “softness” in the U.S. negatively affected the surgical business.
J&J has made a change to the leadership of the surgical unit. In the statement about Millerick, J&J said it has expanded the responsibilities of Erin Powers to include leadership of the surgical vision business in the U.S. and Canada.
