Serving as the chief human resources officer at Organon, Aaron Falcione brings unique value to the team and the organization through his experience and talents. In his role, he oversees all human resources functions, including talent acquisition and development, employee relations, compensation and benefits, performance management, diversity and inclusion, and health and safety compliance.
Falcione’s journey to becoming Organon’s Chief Human Resources Officer began in the mid-1990s when he joined the PricewaterhouseCoopers organization, serving as a member of PwC’s Transaction Services practice who specialized in post-merger integrations. During his more than nine-year tenure with the company, Falcione applied his educational background in human resources to his developing career.
During this period of his career, Falcione was able to apply some of the organizational psychology he had learned in college. His understanding of unique dynamics among different companies and cultures allowed him to more effectively navigate his role in helping companies navigate the complexities of integration..
Falcione says, “It was an amazing set of experiences over the years of seeing the tactics and strategies that worked and those that didn’t. It really was a foundational experience for me.”
After his time with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Falcione began to work at Siemens, one of Germany’s leading industrial organizations. While there, Falcione took on numerous roles and experienced acquisitions due to the nature of the company’s operations.
“Siemens is very acquisitive as an organization,” Falcione says. “I had the chance to be part of an acquisition, and then I stayed on the team as a human resources lead for the global business unit.”
From Siemens, Falcione took his talents to Merck, where he worked at the company’s office based in Switzerland. He stayed there for nearly five years.
Falcione says about his time at Merck, “This was the role that ultimately led me to Organon. In that role, I was responsible for HR throughout the emerging markets, and then eventually the broader international markets, all markets outside of the US from an HR standpoint.”
He continues, “I worked with a man named Kevin Ali, now the CEO of Organon, and we formed a really mutually beneficial partnership. And as Merck started to contemplate divesting or spinning off this portfolio of products, they tapped on a proven leader to help orchestrate that and figure out what Organon would look like and how it would be focused — and that person was Kevin.”
On the history of the company’s origin, Falcione says, “I had a lot of confidence in Kevin. I said, ‘I want to be part of it, I want to try and help figure this out.’
At that moment, though, Organon was only an idea. It wasn’t even known as Organon. It was a project within Merck, to figure out what the right portfolio is and what the right focus and strategy of the organization would be, and what the basic economics of that business would look like around the world.
Falcione continues, “Here we are now — the project itself took about 18 months, and we finally went live as a separate, independent publicly listed company in June of this year, so we just hit our one-year anniversary as an enterprise. And it’s been an absolutely incredible journey.”
