John Burkhardt retired last year as Pfizer’s senior vice president of drug safety research and development — an unpredictable outcome for someone who intended to take his first Purdue degree back to the family farm in Winchester, Indiana.

Burkhardt was sidetracked by other options, more than once.

“It’s an interesting thing for students to think about,” he says. “You only know what you know, and you can plan a tentative course, but your career aspirations may evolve based on what you learn.”

When he enrolled in Purdue’s veterinary program, Burkhardt envisioned specializing in swine medicine until his second year, when a pathology class changed his course again. On his way to becoming a veterinary pathologist, Burkhardt completed a PhD and residency through the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab. “So I spent four more years at the university and I was ready to go to work,” he says.

Except ... “I saw how veterinary pathology was practiced and its use in discovering and developing new medicines, and I knew that that’s what I wanted to do,” he says. The realization would eventually lead Burkhardt to the executive ranks of the global biopharmaceutical company and a key role in development of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19.

The man named 2022 Citizen of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut recalls being a small-town kid who dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. People told him he wouldn’t make it.

“The mistake I made is, I believed them,” he says, “until I got my grade-point average the first semester, and it was perfect. And then I realized I could do it if I wanted to.”

“Purdue provided me a bedrock foundation for starting to develop both technical skills and interpersonal skills. That’s a lifelong ambition, an avocation, to continue to develop those skills.” He hopes his story inspires others to believe in themselves — even as they get sidetracked.