Thermo Fisher HR Exec Jessica Karvelas '12 at the Forefront of New COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing

All over the world, scientists, researchers, and medical professionals are working around the clock to combat coronavirus. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, team members are busily producing a new high-speed test that can diagnose COVID-19 in as many as five million people a week. As a human resources executive in Thermo Fisher's West Coast headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif., Jessica Karvelas '12 helps directly support the Company's critical COVID-19 response.

“Thermo Fisher is at the heart of the global response to COVID-19. We are working with government agencies and researchers globally to ensure priority access to instruments, consumables, safety supplies, and other products to address the outbreak – particularly in analysis of the virus, diagnosis, and personal protection,” the company said in a statement.

In her role, Karvelas serves as an HR Business Partner for the Company's Biosciences Strategy, Portfolio, and Business Development function and its Sample Preparation Business Unit. "At the heart of my role, I translate our strategic business plans into critical HR actions, programs, and initiatives." 

In a time when organizations of all sizes from small businesses to multinational corporations are implementing new policies to protect the safety of employees while mitigating business impact, corporate leaders are making difficult decisions in an unchartered territory setting. Among many industry leaders, Thermo Fisher has started to implement new organizational initiatives related to site preparedness, employee training and communication, and business continuity planning.

Karvelas has worked at Thermo Fisher for close to five years and formerly served in the Company's East Coast headquarters in Waltham, Mass. Before Thermo Fisher, she managed staffing and recruitment for Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston. As an undergraduate at Curry, the Business Management major was a member of the Sigma Beta Delta International Honor Society.