Robert B. Ford is an American businessman serving as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Abbott Laboratories, a global healthcare company specializing in medical devices, diagnostics, nutritionals, and branded generic pharmaceuticals( He became the 13th CEO on March 31, 2020, succeeding Miles D. White, and was elected Chairman on December 10, 2021(

Ford joined Abbott in 1996 as a Business Unit Manager in the Diabetes Care division after working as a product manager at BD( He advanced through leadership roles, including heading diabetes care, overseeing the integration of St. Jude Medical (Abbott's largest acquisition in 2017), and serving as Executive Vice President of Medical Devices and President and COO in 2018( Under his leadership, Abbott prioritized innovations like FreeStyle Libre, rapid COVID-19 tests (delivering over 400 million in 2020), and consumer health technologies( Ford holds a bachelor's degree from Boston College and an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business(

Written by Perplexity from public sources.

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