Thought Leader

Dr. Aarti Shah

SVP and Chief Information and Digital Officer, Eli Lilly

Aarti Shah is Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer of Eli Lilly & Company (NYSE: LLY), a global healthcare leader and a Fortune 500 company. She is an accomplished executive with 25+ years of extensive experience in drug development and commercialization, technology, cyber, digital transformation and data sciences. She is an agent of change and has successfully led large transformations with significant positive business outcomes. Aarti is a board member of Northwestern Mutual. She also serves on several non-profit boards. Aarti is known for her inspirational and genuine leadership style, and for leading global cross-functional teams from vision development to strategy creation to execution. She has held leadership roles in the U.S. and Australia.

Aarti reports to the CEO and is a key member of Lilly’s executive committee. She leads information technology, digital health, cyber security, advanced analytics and data sciences globally thus integrating tech, data and analytics to deliver on Lilly’s purpose of uniting caring with discovery to create medicines that make life better for people around the world. She leads a large global team of several thousand employees across the globe.

Aarti began her tenure at Lilly in 1994 as a Senior Statistician and was promoted to Research Scientist in 1999. She became Vice President for Global Statistical Sciences and Advanced Analytics in 2009. In 2012, she assumed additional responsibilities as Vice President for Biometrics (statistics, data management and scientific communications). In 2013, she was named Global Brand Development Leader, where she led a team through global regulatory submissions, approvals, and launches of a blockbuster immunology molecule (>$1B in annual sales). She was promoted to SVP and CIO in 2016. Over her tenure, she has held both functional and business leadership roles. She is agile, curious and a superb team player.

Aarti serves on several non-profit boards, namely; the Indiana India Business Council, Center of Interfaith Cooperation and Shrimad Rajchandra Love and Care USA. She served on the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation board for 9 years and now serves on the Foundation’s Advisory Committee. She has served on the executive advisory council for the Indiana chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA). In 2011, Aarti received the Rising Star Award from HBA. In 2016, she was honored as a “Women of Influence” by the Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) and was named one of the “Fierce Women in Biopharma” by Fierce Pharma. In May 2019, she was named one of the top four finalists for the 12th Annual MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award. She was named 2019 CTO of the year (top honoree) by IBJ and TechPoint.

Aarti received her B.S. and M.S. in Statistics and Mathematics in India before completing her Ph.D. in Applied Statistics at the University of California, Riverside. She is married and has two sons. Her hobbies include; meditation, spiritual learning, community service, hiking and traveling.