An Anesthesiologist Entrepreneur and Medical Affairs Executive

Marjorie Stiegler, MD is an anesthesiologist and entrenpreneur that transitioned to Medical Affairs at GlaxoSmithKline.

 Marjorie trained at Massachusetts General Hospital and then took a faculty role at UCLA for 5 years, followed by a move to North Carolina where she worked at UNC-Chapel Hill. After 13 years in academics, she began to feel “stale and stagnant” and not sure where she wanted to take her career. She did know she did not want to continue up the usual academic track to be a Chair, so she was feeling open to a change.

In 2016, she came across a facebook group focused on physicians transitioning to non-clinical careers and she started to learn more about the pharmaceutical industry as a career path for physicians.

 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is located in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina and has a strong focus in respiratory medicine.  Given this, Marjorie’s clinical experience as an anesthesiologist clearly fit well with the focus of GSK on medications for respiratory conditions such as COPD and asthma.

Although she did not have most of the specific qualifications mentioned in the job description (no prior pharma or clinical research experience) she did believe she had sufficient transferable skills and applied for the Medical Affairs, Medical Director position. Over approximately 4 years at GSK, she has steadily taken on more responsibility, promoted to Executive Medical Director and subsequently Senior Executive Medical Lead of Medical Affairs.

This experience inspired her to create Industry Insider, a program specifically to help physicians who wish to transition but think they aren’t qualified, don’t have any connections, or are worried about a pay cut.

In her Medical Affairs role she describes the following responsibilities:

• sharing medical evidence with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders – these are physician experts that are seen as leaders in their fields), physicians and other key stakeholders
• attending medical congresses to stay up to date on new science and developments
• seeking medical/clinical advice from KOLs, physicians, medical organizations
• providing disease education to internal personnel and also externally
• reviewing medical education materials for clinical accuracy
• interacting with patient advocacy organizations and professional societies
• providing support to Commercial organization including direct-to-consumer advertising, campaigns for physicians.  In this capacity, Medical Affairs provides medical/clinical input and approves materials from a medical accuracy perspective

In this role, her travel is ~10-20% and most of that travel is related to attending congresses and other internal company meetings.

Marjorie shared the following 3 hints related to landing your first fulfilling role in the pharmaceutical industry:

Hint #1: Believe in yourself, in your experience, and in your qualifications as a physician. Never say “I don’t know how to do anything else…I’m just a doctor” again!

Hint #2: You have more skills than you realize. You just need to learn how to identify them, and how to communicate your unique value in a way that speaks to the needs of your future employer.

Hint #3: Applying through a job portal is almost always a dead end. It’s highly worthwhile to connect with both recruiters and hiring managers – and this is easier than you think, even if you don’t know anyone in the industry yet. It does take time and effort, but a strategic networking plan will payoff tremendously.

Marjorie is an author, host of The Career Rx podcast, and offers courses for physicians on professional branding and speaking.  You can find her here.