When Mike Doustdar started as a summer employee making copies at Novo Nordisk—a teenager living in Austria after fleeing unrest in his home country of Iran at 12—he never imagined he would remain at the company for more than 30 years, let alone lead it as CEO.

Doustdar now heads the Danish company that makes the popular diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss medication Wegovy, both of which contain the GLP-1 compound semaglutide. In January, Novo Nordisk launched the first GLP-1 pill for weight loss, marking a significant step in making the drugs more convenient and less expensive to take than the injectable forms previously on the market. It’s a critical test. 

Doustdar was tapped as CEO last summer in part to restore the company’s presence in the diabetes and obesity space, after ceding ground to competitor Eli Lilly. Lilly’s weight-loss drug Zepbound comes at higher doses and so tends to produce greater weight loss than Wegovy. Novo Nordisk needed a chief executive with resilience and flexibility to lead the comeback, and Doustdar says he adopted those skills moving to a country where he didn’t speak the language. “I learned from an early age to build a bit of resilience and to manage uncertainty,” he says.