Amanda Taylor Named Merck’s New Durham Site Leader

Amanda Taylor
Amanda Taylor

The Maurice R. Hilleman Center for Vaccine Manufacturing has a new leader. She didn’t have to travel very far to take the job.

Amanda Taylor, a 29-year veteran of Merck, assumed responsibility for the site on August 1. She previously was manager of Merck’s Wilson filling and packaging plant, about an hour’s drive east of Durham.

Taylor succeeds Andrew Stratton, who has moved into another leadership role within the Merck Manufacturing Division. Taylor is a graduate of North Carolina State University, with a degree in chemical engineering.

During her career, Taylor has gained hands-on experience in almost every area of vaccine manufacturing, from maintenance, to project engineering, to manufacturing lead for some of the company’s most important vaccines. In addition to Durham and Wilson, Taylor has worked at Merck’s Elkton, Va. plant near Harrisonburg and at its largest manufacturing facility, which is in West Point, Pa.

At Durham, she leads a growing team of more than 800 employees who manufacture some of Merck’s key globally distributed pediatric, adolescent and adult vaccines. The site currently is undergoing a major expansion so it can produce active ingredient for the company’s human papillomavirus vaccine. 

Taylor also is responsible for Merck’s nearby off-site facility that is one of the few remaining global producers of TICE Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, a medicine to treat certain forms of bladder cancer.

Bryant Haskins, NCBiotech Writer
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