Amgen is highlighting the history and work of its leading engineer as part of South Asian Heritage Month, which runs through July to mid-August.
Showing the video on social media platform Threads, Amgen uses its “An Amgen Minute” short film series to allow Sam Guhan, Ph.D., its vice president of engineering operations, to talk about growing up in what was called Madras, now Chennai, India, and how he found his way to run Amgen’s engineering operations.
“My parents routinely stressed the importance of education,” Guhan said in the video, which cuts between shots of him talking and black-and-white images of him as a child and, later, as an adult.
Guhan said he always wanted to be an engineer. After completing college in India, he moved to the U.S. in 1984 to study at Yale as “an immigrant with almost nothing," he said, and "I was surrounded by people who didn’t look like me."
Guhan pursued his career, eventually landing at Amgen, where he has remained for two decades. He now expresses his pride in being an American while maintaining an equal sense of pride in his South Asian heritage.
The Amgen Minute series, running throughout the year, has featured various staff members sharing their insights. This includes individuals like Tamika-Jean Baptise, the VP of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and Margaret Chu-Moyer, VP of research and head of small molecule therapeutic discovery. Their contributions have been particularly timely, aligning with the celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month.