Deliver a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year? Impossible. Meet Moncef Slaoui.

As science adviser of Operation Warp Speed, the veteran pharmaceutical executive helped usher a coronavirus vaccine to the US market in record time.

In 2009, a flu pandemic was racing across the world when a venture capital firm that backs health care companies held its annual retreat. The meeting was a who's who of pharmaceutical and biotechnology executives – the top leaders of the top companies in the world.

One man pulled together a group of his peers and issued a directive: "We are going to work together to make something happen here."

That scene came to mind when the Trump Administration asked Jeremy Levin, head of the industry's Biotechnology Innovation Organization, who should run America's COVID-19 vaccine development effort.

"Moncef Slaoui," he answered without hesitation.

Slaoui, 61, a Moroccan-born retired vaccine developer and drug company executive, brought his colleagues together once before, so it seemed logical to tap him again.

Slaoui's name came up repeatedly in the spring, when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was looking for someone from the private sector to help lead Operation Warp Speed – an unprecedented and audacious effort to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine by year's end.

The scientific community was among the skeptical. The fastest vaccine development on record was for the mumps, and it took four years. There was no way to make a safe, effective vaccine in seven months, many thought. Something would have to be compromised.