Medical Strategist Goes from Ideas to Impact

Name: Christella Gordon-Kim (she/her)

PhD: Biomolecular Chemistry, Emory University, 2023

What is your current job?

I am a Medical Strategy Research Associate at IPG Health, based in New York, New York.

I research trends in healthcare professional preference to treat specific diseases and the various disease and treatment landscapes associated with them. I also perform competitive intelligence to scope out what our clients' competitors are up to - how they approach specific issues, how they communicate data in both patient- and clinician-facing media, and how they deliver these communications, all of which inform us on how to guide what our clients to further elevate their brand and differentiate their product.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

I love that the impact of my work is directly applicable and tangible - PowerPoint decks and scripts I wrote have turned into podcasts on Spotify and pamphlets at a doctor's office. My original ideas resulted in a real product, like a VR simulator that helps clinicians better understand what their patients experience during the height of their disease state.

What is the most important skill you developed or experience you had during your PhD that now helps you in your current position?

Communicating my data well and in a convincing manner, whether it is to apply for research grants or to draft a manuscript, is key to constantly furthering my scientific pursuit.

How did you build the skills necessary for your current role?

I didn't take any courses, but I was exposed to different forms of writing throughout my PhD that was beyond manuscript writing for journal articles or developing a poster for a conference. I taught at a nearby college, which allowed me to gain communication skills for an audience with little knowledge. I also helped edit and provided revisions for a book chapter alongside a professor, which helped me gain insight on how to construct a convincing narrative for experts of different fields.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

I cold emailed/LinkedIn connected. Being highly concise and specific about your skills and how you are looking to leverage them to accomplish something that would enrich a recruiter's company can do wonders.

PhD graduate ➡️ postdoctoral fellow ➡️ medical strategist

If someone is interested in a similar role, what would you recommend they start doing now to prepare?

Get into internships! So many medical communications agencies, like Havas and IPG Health recruit PhD students for their summer *paid* internships. Even if you don't end up liking it, you will have gained so much knowledge and skills that you otherwise would not have acquired in academia. More importantly, you may gain important connections to help launch you into whatever next best thing you want to try.

Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

There are simply not enough seats in academia. There is also a cultural shift that is desperately needed in academia to make it into a more sustainable way of working, like respecting work-life boundaries.

I thought it would be a difficult decision to leave because I wanted to stay in academia for my passion of pedagogy. It turns out that my current job does a LOT of medical education! The chance to teach and mentor is everywhere!

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

Don't be afraid to start networking with anyone and everyone. If you want to go into Wall Street, you don't have to just network with people in finance. You will never know who you bump into and what you might learn from them!

And for those interested, what was your main area of research?

During my PhD, I studied how short peptides and short strands of DNA interact when they self-assemble into various structures, and what roles salts and distinct DNA architecture may play in those interactions. I also studied prion-like proteins that I've extracted from post-mortem Alzheimer's Disease patients to see how they self-assemble outside of the brain, which may be different from how they otherwise naturally self-assemble in the diseased brain, creating neurotoxic protein-rich plaques.

During my postdoc, I wanted to learn more about Alzheimer's Disease from a different perspective - by inhibiting membrane proteins, called receptor tyrosine kinase, with small molecule drugs that I designed and synthesized myself. Today, as a medical writer, I get to write about and educate healthcare professionals on the latest and greatest of similar findings that are much closer to the market than to the lab benches!