To celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science, some of our brilliant women are sharing advice about achieving career goals, how they started their career in medcomms and their experience of being a woman of science.

“I’ve been in the medcomms industry for five years. I started off studying human sciences at university and had a passion for science, but I know I’m not the kind of person who can work in a lab and I really wasn’t sure about the career trajectories for someone who has done a science degree. All I knew was that I didn’t want to work in a lab!

So, I joined a graduate scheme and became a science teacher for a year, I guess that was my first experience of communicating scientific messages to GCSE pupils. I found it really fun looking at how to capture the attention of the pupils and how I could communicate things for them to absorb. However, I felt out of touch with new developments in science and data, so I wanted to re-direct myself.

I then started working at a medical journal in the Client Services department so we would have pharma and agency clients. That is when I got a better idea about medcomms and the kind of deliverable differences between agency work versus journal work and so it was a natural progression into medcomms…and I’m here now!”

Roma Patel, Senior Account Manager. See the full interview here.

“I work very closely with our teams to understand their strengths and career ambitions, helping define career paths and development plans to support our future leaders in medical communications!”

Cora Carolan, Group Managing Director. See Cora’s full interview here.

“I would say the most important qualities [for someone working in a medcomms digital team] would be attention to detail, strong organisational skills, and being a multi-tasker. You need to be someone who gets the job done with passion for all things digital.”

Kirsty Anderson, Digital Project Lead. Read Kirsty’s full interview here. 

“At Prime Global, I’ve never been afraid to have the kind of conversations about my career and future aspirations. We really do put people first, we want to give you the opportunities to develop. I feel I’ve had that in my own personal role, as well as being able to support other colleagues with those conversations as part of my role in PDD.”

Parveena Laskar, People Development Manager. Find out what else Parveena has to say here. 

“I went straight from my undergraduate in Natural Sciences to an MSc + PhD programme in metabolic disorders. When thinking about careers towards the end of my PhD, I decided academia was not for me, but I wanted to keep my link with science. After going to a few careers fairs, I stumbled across medcomms and it sounded right up my street. I had received good feedback from my thesis examiners on my writing style and I enjoyed science communication; a career in medcomms sounded like the perfect opportunity to marry my skills and passion. I didn’t know anyone within the industry when applying, so I researched online and came across MedComms Networking. I watched some of their webinars, went to a medcomms-specific careers fair and then got applying!”

Maria Alfaradhi, Scientific Team Lead.

“I’d have to say the key highlights from my time in med comms include having the opportunity to support cutting-edge, innovative and ground-breaking medicines, and knowing that these have made a difference to the lives of patients worldwide. Another highlight is the opportunity to work with many leading pharma companies and inspiring industry leaders.”

Liz, Client Services Director. Read Liz’s full story here.

“One thing I am really proud of is the account I have been working on since I started, which recently went from phase III to being approved; it’s so exciting! It’s so amazing to watch how this drug can help improve patients’ lives. Due to where this drug is in development at the moment, I have been involved in the scientific writing part but also the strategic planning part that I haven’t experienced before.”

Cindy Cheung, Senior Medical Writer at Prime Global. Find out what else Cindy has to say here.