Lina Polimeni has spent 23 years at Eli Lilly and Company doing one thing: making Health impossible to ignore.

As Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer — Consumer, she leads corporate brand marketing, media, sponsorships, all product advertising and entertainment partnerships — including Lilly’s Olympic and Paralympic sponsorships and one of the most ambitious cultural marketing programs in the pharmaceutical industry.

The scope of the role is broad. What drives it is singular.

She changes the rooms Health is allowed to be in.

Under her leadership, Lilly stopped being a healthcare advertiser and became a cultural contributor — showing up at the Oscars, the Olympics, Sundance, the Grammys, and primetime ESPN not as a sponsor, but as a storyteller.

She commissioned a landmark study with USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative on how disease is portrayed in popular media — and then took the findings somewhere meaningful. As an executive producer, she translated that research into real films, real partnerships, and real cultural moments — work designed to change how disease is represented in the stories that shape how millions of people understand health. From emerging filmmaker programs to primetime ESPN specials to National Geographic documentaries, the work lives where culture actually happens.

Her belief is simple and radical at the same time: Health shouldn’t only be discussed in moments of sickness. It belongs in every cultural conversation — in the stories people watch, the athletes they follow, the moments that shape how they think about their bodies, their families, and their lives.

That conviction has made her one of the most recognized voices in marketing — Ad Age Woman to Watch, MM+M Woman to Watch, Adweek Women Trailblazers,Fast Company Brand that Matters, Fierce Pharma’s Fiercest Women in Life Sciences and many more. She serves on the MMA Board, the ANA Media Committee, the Adweek Diversity and Inclusion Council, and the ColorComm Board.

Outside of Lilly, she is deeply passionate about raising the next generation of marketing leaders — paying forward the opportunities and sponsorship that shaped her own career. The door doesn’t close behind her. It never has.

She came to the United States from Italy with a university degree, a student visa, and a point to prove. What has followed has surprised even her.