Consulting as an Entry to the Pharmaceutical Industry
If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it! ~~ Jonathon Winters
Amama Sadiq, MD, MPH is an internist with an international background. She was raised in Dubai, attended medical school in Southeast Asia, moved to the UK for residency and ultimately landed in Boston. She entered the pharmaceutical industry after completing her MPH and spending 5 years at a boutique consulting firm.
Amama completed her residency in the UK and then moved to the US where she was a Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. During this time, her focus was on non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). She also completed her Masters in Public Health at Harvard.
While working in academic, clinical research she realized that in academics if a project was not funded by a pharmaceutical sponsor, the budget was more tenuous. Additionally, the pharma sponsored projects had faster timelines.
This exposure helped her to know that she was ultimately interested in the pharmaceutical industry as a career path.
Her MPH program was a recruiting ground for multiple consulting firms including the well-known larger firms, McKinsey, Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group; however, she describes these firms as more “generalist” meaning they work in a variety of industries.
Knowing she wanted to work in the Life Sciences, she focused on more “boutique” consulting firms and landed at Clarion in Boston.
Amama’s story is great because we get a great explanation
of a career in consulting…
She spent about 5 years at Clarion
consulting is “pharma on steroids”
- projects that lasted for 4-6 weeks
- 3-4 clients at a time in different therapeutic areas with unique projects
- clients were tiny biotech companies, to mid-size pharma companies, to large global, international pharma companies
- got to see the good, bad and ugly of different companies
- projects were not always clinical focused – commercial was also a focus
She realized that the value of Medical Affairs was to “bridge between commercial and R&D” and she enjoyed the external facing focus and the cross-functional work.
Consulting is not a typical path per Amama but the larger consulting firms do have physician “tracks” – at Clarion, she got to “pave her own path” as she was the only MD at the firm during her time there. In the larger firms, the pace is very fast and the lifestyle lends itself well to people coming right out of medical school or residency. These firms typically recruit from Ivy league schools because they have to have the gravitas of working with very senior, “C-suite” level executives.
She explains that her transition to pharma was ultimately faster given her consulting experience because she already knew what was expected, she knew where she could add value and how to communicate with different cross-functional team members such as marketing and managed care.
“I could already speak their language” coming from consulting
Amama’s transition to AMAG Pharmaceuticals came from being introduced to the Chief Medical Officer at the company during an event with a group called Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA). She was active with the Boston chapter of HBA and was asked to interview Dr. Julie Krop (AMAG’s former Chief Medical Officer) for a program on women’s path to the C-suite in the pharmaceutical industry. From this meeting and the multiple interactions with the AMAG team, Amama was asked to interview for the Executive Director, Medical Affairs for Women’s Health role. She joined the company at an exciting team, the phase 3 clinical trial was completing, they were filing for approval with the FDA and launching the drug Vyleesi for hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD).
As is common in all of the interviews I’ve done, it is clear that
networking is a critical component of finding a job in the pharmaceutical industry
Amama shared a learning and reflection about networking –
“initially it had a negative connotation; it felt slimy”
she realized networking doesn’t have to be about finding a job or asking for something – her networking with Julie was not about finding a job but about doing something she was passionate about – focusing on women’s leadership (via HBA program).
“baby steps create a pool of strong, professional, educated women that you from time to time still connect with”
“networking does not need to be transactional”
Amama and I discussed Medical Affairs in the pharmaceutical industry. Her explanation was one I also use when explaining what medical affairs is.
Physicians that work in medical affairs are a “bridge between R&D (research and development) and commercial”
What is her Medical Affairs job like?
Amama made sure to point out that any role depends on the company and size and the number of products or therapeutic areas that you support. In her role, she has two products to support and focuses in women’s health.
She had to determine what physician specialties were important to interact with given the focus on hypoactive sexual desire disorder in women. Many different physician specialties might be involved in speaking with women about this “taboo” subject – including internists, gynecologists, psychologists and psychiatrists are a few of these.
As a good medical affairs lead, she was highly engaged in speaking with the top-tier KOLs (key opinion leaders) – she had a field team to lean on for many of these interactions but she strongly believes in a high level of engagement and building “genuine relationships”; ones where you can “pick up the phone and speak to these MDs”. They “need to have your cell phone number”.
Regarding travel, pointing back to building strong relationships, she believes it is important to take the opportunity to travel to clinics and congresses to meet people in person. The Spring and Fall are busier for travel given the congress season.
She also has “headquarter” responsibilities focused on strategy – she is involved in building plans such as publication plans. Although she is always happy to do more tactical work such as writing manuscripts, given she has a senior role in Medical Affairs her focus is more on building strategic plans than actually completing the tactical work. Her role is more of a reviewer and approver. Despite this, she made sure to mention that in pharma we always need to be willing to “roll up our sleeves and do the work”.
Amama nicely summed up Medical Affairs key questions to answer and message externally:
what is the disease?
how is the disease diagnosed?
how is it managed?
how a therapy/drug fits into the clinical paradigm?
Her parting words of wisdom:
- be open to network
- be flexible, embrace and lead change
- look for opportunities
- be open to trying new things