As Eli Lilly gears up to support its partnered athletes, Team USA and the Games themselves at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the company is drawing parallels between what the Olympics represent and its own work.
“The Olympic and Paralympic Games are among the most inspiring and visible stages in the world,” Jennifer Oleksiw, Lilly’s global chief customer officer, said in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing. “At each Olympic Games, we believe that athletes are pushing past their limits, and this aligns to Lilly’s pursuit of continuously advancing innovation in order to achieve holistic health for our patients and our communities.”
“Next year will actually be our 150-year anniversary of taking the most debilitating diseases in the world and aiming at really improving humanity,” Oleksiw continued. “For both athletes and for Lilly, we feel like our work is never over. So, we are aligned on our mission.”
Lilly previously lent its support to Team USA and rolled out corporate campaigns during the 2020 and 2024 Summer Games in Tokyo and Paris, respectively.
Its efforts around the 2026 event, set to kick off in Milan on Feb. 6, began in October, when the Big Pharma was named an official sponsor and also announced a roster of seven Team USA athlete partners for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Each partner athlete embodies “resilience and perseverance and the belief that whole-person health is what our patients and communities deserve,” according to Oleksiw.
As the Games draw nearer, she said, Lilly will be spotlighting their stories: “Each one of those seven Team USA members has a personal or family experience navigating health challenges. So, you’re going to see these incredible examples come up that show they’re not giving up, they’re pushing through adversity and they’re finding ways to put health first.”
Meanwhile, Lilly has also renewed the “Milestones into Meaning” program it launched during the 2024 Paris Games. For each medal, world record and Olympic or Paralympic record achieved by Team USA athletes, the company will donate $5,000, with the total distributed across 26 U.S.-based health equity-focused nonprofits.
After last summer’s event, Lilly ended up donating more than $2.6 million to 24 organizations, and it’s going into next year’s Games “with the hope of increasing that number,” Oleksiw said.
To commemorate the relaunch of the program, Lilly this month debuted a video in which Summer Olympian Gabby Thomas, a three-time gold medalist in track and field, describes Milestones into Meaning and then passes the metaphorical torch to Winter Olympian Elana Meyers Taylor, a bobsledder who is the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Olympics history.
“We chose Gabby to pass on the torch to Elana due to her passion for health equity, her continuous desire to push for access to healthcare and her willingness to educate people on how to build healthy habits as well,” Oleksiw said.
“And, of course, we chose Elana because we’ve been so inspired by her unique ability to really prioritize health while caring for two disabled children and training for the Olympics at the same time,” she continued. “I believe you’ll see from her story that she never stops searching for answers and building the habits that she needs to really prioritize her health and that of her family.”
Elsewhere, Oleksiw said Lilly is planning on-the-ground activations at the Games and the rollout of another corporate campaign tied to the tournament—plus, she hinted, “maybe a few additional guests helping us along the way to be able to communicate our values and our story and support Team USA.”
Overall, when it comes to Lilly’s work around the Olympics, the “most important thing,” according Oleksiw, lies in a shared tenacity toward achieving lofty goals.
“Just as we never stop fighting to advance our medicines, to change human health, the passion and commitment from our athletes both on and off the Olympic stage is really never over,” she said. “This aligned mission of working through adversity, training really hard, failing along the way, only to get back up again is what aligns and unites us.”
She added, “We believe that by sharing these athlete experiences, we’re going to be able to connect to audiences in a meaningful way and demonstrate how our focus on better health really aligns with the values of both Lilly and Team USA.”