A Neurologist’s Experience and Progression to Senior Medical Director
Sana Syed, MD, MPH is a neurologist working at Sanofi as a Senior Medical Director and Clinical Lead.
She completed her neurology residency and two fellowships (Multiple Sclerosis and Cognitive Neurology), as well as a Masters in Public Health.
As she finished fellowship she realized she had diverse interests and was not exactly sure what she wanted to do with her career. She knew she enjoyed clinical research principles and even though she enjoyed seeing patients, she did not want to do so full-time.
This focus on clinical research led her to consider the pharmaceutical industry. She also evaluated working as a consultant in a consulting firm (such as Boston Consulting Group); however, after discussing this role with several consultants she decided this approach would not be the best fit for her.
She did apply to several roles in the pharmaceutical industry immediately after fellowship but admits to “not being savvy about the different roles such as clinical development and medical affairs” and she got rejections.
Upon reaching out to a neurologist at Tufts she learned about a collaboration Tufts had with Pfizer called a Clinical Translational Research Fellowship.
(Note – several pharmaceutical companies have these programs. They are usually for physicians coming out of fellowship and offer development opportunities to learn about the pharmaceutical industry)
This program included four days per week working at Pfizer and one day per week seeing patients at Tufts. She found this opportunity intriguing and relates saying “yes” before completely understanding all the details. She found a mentor in the program who helped her develop a program structure that allowed her to gain experience in areas where she wanted to expand her knowledge. This mentor continues to be a sounding board for Sana today.
When Sana reflected on her decision to continue her career in the pharmaceutical industry she talked about some of the tedious responsibilities in clinical development, such as “pages and pages of documents” to write and review. She shared advice she received from a neurosurgeon during residency…
“you need to like the worst part of the job; pick the most boring part of the job and decide if you like doing it, then you know the job is right for you”
Upon reflection on this advice, she enjoyed reviewing documents, random presentations, and tedious details maintained her excitment.
Sana’s first role after the Pfizer fellowship was at EMD Serono where she was involved in a Multiple Sclerosis program. After 3 ½ years she felt it was time to move and continue to evolve her career. She is now at Sanofi leading a larger Multiple Sclerosis program where she has 4 direct reports that she manages.
As a Senior Medical Director, she has Medical Directors working on her team leading specific clinical trials and her responsibilities include oversight of the overall clinical strategy for the program as a whole. She enjoys managing people. Although this is the first role where she has direct management experience, she gained experience managing people indirectly at EMD Serono as well.
As mentioned above, Sana completed a Masters in Public Health so I asked her whether that was a necessary factor in her success of breaking into the pharmaceutical industry.
She explained that during the Masters she completed some clinical trial design courses as electives. Additionally, she used the MPH as part of her personal marketing when she interviewed. She would explain to interviewers how her learnings during the MPH would help her in the role. One specific skill she focused on during the MPH was statistics.
However, she also explains that many companies offer courses such as statistics and many of these skills you can learn “on the job”. So, overall, the MPH may not have been critical but she does believe it helped her and she used it to best market herself.
Her advice to physicians that are considering a career shift to the pharmaceutical industry is “be honest with yourself about why you want to enter industry”