after offered her a position in the quality control department of a factory in Morgantown, before eventually promoting her to the executive level. Government relations and advocacy From 2002 to 2005, Bresch served as Mylan's director of government relations. She contributed to the development of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, which created Medicare Part D, a prescription-drug benefit. In 2006, Bresch testified before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging to lobby for changes to the law that would prevent pharmaceutical companies from raising challenges to the introduction of generic competitors by filing citizen's petitions with the FDA, and that would prevent pharma companies from undercutting the profits of generic drug companies by making deals for authorized generics to be introduced. When Mylan expanded internationally, Bresch noticed that Mylan's U.S.-based pharmaceutical manufacturing plant had full-time staff from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) devoted to it, whereas facilities abroad had not been inspected by the FDA for more than a decade. Bresch persuaded several of Mylan's competitors to support what became the Generic Drug User Fee Act, which she proposed to lawmakers in 2010. Under the law the generics industry would pay the FDA fees of $300 million to get their drugs approved, and in return the FDA would inspect foreign drug manufacturing facilities at the same rate as U.S-based facilities. Economic analysis of the Act showed that it increased the cost of some generic drugs and benefitted the largest pharmaceutical companies at the expense of smaller companies. Mylan executive Bresch has served in several executive roles at Mylan, such as senior vice president of corporate strategic development, Head of North American Operations, chief operating officer, and chief integration officer. Bresch led the integration of Matrix Laboratories Limited and Merck KGaA's generics and specialty pharmaceutical businesses with Mylan's operations. She was chair of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) for two terms. Bresch was appointed president of Mylan in 2009 and joined Mylan's board of directors in March 2011. Bresch's appointment as chief executive officer (CEO) was announced in 2011, and she officially took the position in January 2012. Bresch was the first female CEO of a large pharmaceutical business. At the time, she was one of 18 female CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. After seeing how few female candidates were available for positions that require a background in science and math, she became more