From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Free Expression with Jerry Baker from the Wall Street Journal opinion page.

This week, I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Albert Bawler, Chief Executive of Pfizer. Dr. Bawler, of course, has been very much in the center of things in the last couple of years with the development of the Pfizer vaccine. And I want to understand and explore with him the origins of that vaccine, how it came about. But I want to start, if I may, Dr. Bala. Tell us a little bit about your own personal background, because you have a remarkable history. You've written a book called Moonshot, I should say, which gives a really quite gripping account of the development of the vaccine. And in that book, you talk a little bit about your own personal background, your family history. So if I can start with that, first of all, tell us a bit about your family background and how you came to be chief executive of Pfizer.

Thank you, Jerry.

I am Greek by birth.

I used to say I'm Greek by birth, American by choice.

I'm also an American citizen, proudly now.

But I grew up in Greece.

And there are two things that are characteristic of me. One is that I grew up in Greece. And there are two things that are characteristic of me. One,

it is that I grew up in a family that they were basically Holocaust survivors. So we were

among the very few Jews that survive the Holocaust in the country of Greece. And as a result,

we lived as a very small minority.

The other characteristic is that after I joined Pfizer, I got the chance to live in nine different

cities of five different countries. So I worked around and I was able to develop a good

understanding and sensitivity of the differences of the different cultures.

As everyone, the family played a cure-home.

Always the family impacts who we are.

Sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but always they do.

The same happened with me.

My parents, because they hardly survived the Holocaust,

they developed some strong beliefs about life that they transferred to me.

The good thing it is that they didn't talk to me and my sister about what happened to them

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