Wilmington-headquartered PPD has been named one of the best employers in the state, according to Forbes magazine’s 2020 list of America’s Best Employers in North Carolina.

PPD, a contract research organization, ranked No. 32 on the list that includes 100 employers in the state.

“PPD is a great place to work because of our employees’ dedication to our shared mission of improving health,” Ron Garrow, PPD’s chief human resource officer, said in a news release. “PPD creates an environment in which our teams can concentrate on what’s important and do the right thing for our customers and patients. In these unprecedented times, our mission has never been more clearly in focus.”

The company, listed as having a total of about 20,000 employees, was founded in 1985 and began trading on the Nasdaq this year after previously going public in 1996 and remaining a public firm until 2011.

According to the release, PPD’s  corporate culture "is essential to driving high performance, and the company’s defining principle of being game-changers inspires employees to implement innovative strategies to address the challenges of drug development. 

"Today, this includes critical work to accelerate customers’ potential vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19."

PPD is one of three companies involved in Moderna Inc.'s phase 3 study of its mRNA vaccine candidate against COVID-19.

Other companies listed by Forbes, not headquartered in the region but with office locations and employees in the Wilmington area, include Corning, Novant Health, Hendrick Automotive Group, Verizon Communications and Enterprise Holdings, among others.

This is the third time PPD has ranked in Forbes’ list of best employers as well as ranking in Forbes’ list of America’s Best Employers for Diversity.

New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) and PPD were on Forbes' list of America’s Best Large Employers in 2019. NHRMC ranked No. 131 and PPD ranked No. 419 out of the 500 companies listed.

The list of “Americas Best Employers By State” was created by Forbes with a partnership with Statista, a market research company.

Forbes and Statista surveyed 80,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 500 employees.

The surveys were taken from October 2019 to May 2020, and responses regarding the same employers were compared throughout the process to account for any variations in the results collected before and after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, stated the Forbes list.

There were two criteria for the list: employees’ willingness to recommend their own employers to friends and family and employees’ opinions on a series of statements surrounding work-related topics such as working conditions, salary, potential for development and company image regarding their current employer, the release stated.

SAS Institute, a Cary-based developer of analytics software, was named the No.1 employer in North Carolina.