J&J’s Lisa LeCointe-Cephas Navigates Health Care on Her Terms

In a way, Lisa LeCointe-Cephas has come full circle working for a health care company.

Her parents, who came from the Caribbean island of Dominica, encouraged her to become a doctor. But she had other ideas.

“I went to Yale University, and I planned to pursue a career in medicine, but I absolutely did not see myself as a doctor,” she said. “I made, in hindsight, a good decision, but at the time, not well-informed decision, that I would simply go to law school because everyone else around me was going to law school.”

Luckily, it all worked out. She went to Columbia Law School and ended up loving being a lawyer.

LeCointe-Cephas, is now chief compliance officer at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, the health giant’s pharmaceutical division. She was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis before she moved to drugmaker Bristol Myers Squibb and then, Merck & Co. Later in 2024, she moved back to a law firm, working as a partner in compliance and investigations at DLA Piper, before starting at Johnson & Johnson.

In April, LeCointe-Cephas arrived at Johnson & Johnson, which employs about 138,000 people worldwide, with the world seemingly in flux. The Trump administration was rolling out tariffs and changing immigration rules making it particularly challenging for multinational companies.

“One of the things in being a senior leader in an in-house position is you’re not just a lawyer, you’re not just a compliance professional, you’re an executive at this company, and so you do have to be very mindful of how we play in the world as a global citizen,” LeCointe-Cephas said.

The Mission

Working as in house-counsel is just as exciting as working at a law firm, if not more so, she said.

“At the law firm, your clients are removed from you. At the company, you are part of the mission. You’re part of the focus, and you need to make very quick decisions,” LeCointe-Cephas said. “Not to say that law firms are entirely without missions, it is simply that the tone and tenor of those missions are a little bit different for me joining the life sciences industry.”

LeCointe-Cephas said she overcame an early fear of the unknown when she moved from a law firm to a corporate legal team.

“There was a belief that once you made the move, you couldn’t go back. I’ve obviously proven that wrong,” she said. “Having done it a few times, I don’t have a fear of doing it anymore, because I really have a strong understanding of my value proposition, what I add to each organization and my ability to be successful in a variety of environments.”

“I don’t think I would have that fearlessness if not for having worked at a company.”

Earning It

That fearlessness and willingness to take on challenges also comes from her parents who encouraged her to do her very best every time.

“There was a lot of pressure to make good on this promise for them of the American Dream, which they understood was something you had to earn through hard work and commitment,” LeCointe-Cephas said.

Growing up in Sag Harbor, New York, she saw how hard her parents strived: her mom, Julie, cleaned houses and worked nights serving food at parties while her dad, Kent, was a carpenter.

Once when she came home from high school with a perfect score on a physics test, her mother flipped the answer sheet over and discovered that there was an extra credit problem that she had failed to do. “So she said, ‘Well, you didn’t really get 100%, did you? Because it was out of 105 and you left five points on the table.’”

LeCointe-Cephas said she uses the incident to motivate here to give more than 100% in her job.

And she also gets to tell her parents now that although she is not a doctor, she helps educate doctors.

Mission Possible

And that’s not her only connection to health care. LeCointe-Cephas has volunteered as a member of the board of trustees at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, since April 2022.

“My responsibility is to provide business oversight to the organization so they can continue to meet their mission of empowering and educating doctors for unmet medical needs and communities of need, such as diverse communities, communities in and out of Georgia,” LeCointe-Cephas said.

Now, she is invested in the use of artificial intelligence, which she says will enable “future-ready compliance.”

“I deeply understand that AI won’t replace lawyers, but it will replace lawyers who don’t know how to use it,” LeCointe-Cephas said. “We need to find ways to use this technology to enhance business impact.”

Lillian Hardy, a partner at Hogan Lovells, who knows LeCointe-Cephas from her time at Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb, called her a flexible leader able to “appropriately adjust to the introduction of AI and advanced analytics in the field of compliance, because not everyone has been willing to accept that change, and she’s really been able to accept that.”

More than anything else, LeCointe-Cephas’ record speaks for itself, according to those who have worked with her.

Kip Ebel, EY Americas Health Assurance Advisory leader, said he observed her taking on new roles in her career again and again. “She’s always come in, understood the environment, gained consensus, while driving change, and really focused on incorporating technology where possible,” Ebel said.

“She was a college athlete at an Ivy League school, and I think that’s one of the best ways to encapsulate who she is. She moves fast. She ran track,” he said.

“I have met people who have very impressive pedigrees, and then when you know you start to scratch under the surface or speak to them about substance, I have found them to be surprisingly lacking,” said Cara Edwards, a partner at DLA Piper, who has worked with LeCointe-Cephas.

“Lisa is not that,” she said.