(Music)

VOICE OVER: This is Alumni Aloud, a podcast by Graduate Center students for Graduate Center students. In each episode, we talk with a GC graduate about their career path, the ins and outs of their current position, and the career advice they have for students. This series is sponsored by the Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning & Professional Development.

(Music)

ANDERS WALLACE, HOST: I’m Anders Wallace, a PhD candidate in the Anthropology program at the Graduate Center. In this episode, I sit down with Avalon Garcia who is a senior medical writer for Evolution Medical Communications, a consulting firm that crafts communication and educational materials for pharmaceutical companies and the patients and healthcare staff they serve.

Avalon earned her PhD in 2008 in Biochemistry from Hunter College and the GC. In this episode, Avalon talks about the importance of inviting feedback on your work, the value of getting started early in your job search, and how to cultivate those all-important mindsets of lifelong learning and collaboration that will help you thrive in your new working life.

AVALON GARCIA, GUEST: My name is Avalon Garcia and I work in medical communications. I work as a medical writer, and basically what that means is I work for a consulting firm who is hired by pharmaceutical companies to help them create educational materials targeted to doctors or nurses or pharmacists or anyone else who’s involved in the care of a patient—so sometimes the materials might be tailored for patients themselves. And the goal is to educate the particular audience about a new drug or about a new indication for an existing drug—just educating them about how effective the drug is, what the safety considerations are, and maybe answer any questions people might have.

WALLACE: So you work on the writing side, writing materials for these different consumers or users about products or medicines. Can you tell me a little bit more about your academic background?

GARCIA: Well, I received my PhD in Biochemistry from Hunter College—working with David Foster—and my research was primarily involved in oncology, looking at cell signaling and trying to understand how a particular protein or enzyme played a role in conferring resistance to death when certain cancer cells were exposed to stressful conditions. So, for instance, if you removed the nutrients from the serum, there were certain cells that said, “I’m fine! I can grow! Actually, you know what, I’m gonna be more cancerous.” And we’ve shown that part of that response was because of high activity levels of this particular protein. And then I went off and did a postdoc at Mt. Sinai, still in oncology, but working in mouse models, looking at other cell signaling pathways that involve metabolism of Vitamin A.

WALLACE: That sounds like very cutting edge research and very important research. Can you tell me a bit more about how you got into Biochemistry, before your PhD?

GARCIA: I received my undergraduate degree at City College of New York—up in Harlem.  And I started off as a Biology major, and within three weeks of my program I changed to Biochemistry, and I think it’s because I love mathematics. And once I saw that the curriculum didn’t have a heavy focus on mathematics or physics courses—I know that sounds weird—I wanted a bigger challenge, and that’s why I pursued an undergraduate in Biochemistry. I just love the optics of looking at the math and the physics associated with biological processes.

WALLACE: What led you from the postdoc into technical writing?

GARCIA: Well, I loved research. There was a point in my life when I thought about what I enjoyed most out of my postdoc. And the best part for me was when I was assigned to students and I had to train them and teach them and get them excited about science. And it was just all about providing them with the right educational tools to help spark that interest. So that, to me, was the most fun in having scientific discourse. I enjoyed the research, but these things can take awhile before you hit something very interesting. So then I decided… well… before I started my postdoc I said to myself, “I’m going to set a milestone. I’m going to give myself a year, and within that year I should’ve done A, B, and C.” And I wasn’t getting certain things that I wanted out of my postdoc that I thought were important for my development if I were to stay in academia.

WALLACE: Could you say briefly what those were?

GARCIA: I guess, in retrospect, what I would’ve liked to have experienced was maybe even curriculum for postdocs where it says, “Within the first six months, this is what you’re going to be challenged with/ you have to show competency in A; after another 6 months, competency in B.” And that could be grant writing—so even if you have not received a grant, you need to have at least written two or three— submitted applications for at least two or three grants just to get experience in that. So that would be one milestone—practice in writing grants. The second would be leading meetings. If you’re having lab meetings, you should practice being the PI and asking certain questions, and challenging people and educating people and listening. So, in retrospect, if I were in charge of a postdoc program, I would have a curriculum built. Just like in graduate school when they say, “After a certain point, you’re supposed to defend your Master’s thesis; at another point, you’re supposed to publish something.” So, similarly, I think that’s what was lacking. I was in charge of setting those milestones and no one else was.

WALLACE: So it wasn’t structured and you weren’t learning as much as you wanted?

GARCIA: Yeah. A lot of the time, I felt like I had to push, like, okay. I want to go to this conference and I would apply for a grant so I could get funding for that. I’m going to apply for this grant to support my research. But it just all came from me internally and I felt like there might’ve been other parts I was missing. What’s important to run a lab? So that’s what I was missing. But thankfully at Mt. Sinai they have the Technology Transfer Office. They had an internship program and I applied for it. Because I was always interested in things beyond academia—I didn’t want to be in this little bubble. I really wanted to understand how the work we did impacted businesses and environments outside the academic institution. And I got a sense of that with the Technology Transfer internship. We were responsible for looking at patents as it relates to certain technologies; we were able to review documents from doctors who might have a procedure or new test they think is commercially viable. So that was interesting to me, and that’s really what sparked my interest in going outside of academia.

WALLACE: Fascinating. So you got to interface with this world of more applied chemistry and medicine, and helped to vet those procedures and research methods. And you found that it also had this mentoring or communicating or teaching component to it.

GARCIA: Absolutely. Because one of the projects we worked on was, okay, if there’s this new potential technology coming out of Mt. Sinai, what sort of presentation would you put together to explain the technique and the history of it to potential investors? So to me that was interesting—tailoring the story to a particular audience and not always assuming that everyone knows what an enzyme means etc., so that was fun for me.

WALLACE: I think a lot of students relate to the pleasures of teaching in that way. Could you tell me what a typical day looks like in the office, if there is such a thing?

GARCIA: There is no typical day. The only thing that always happens is deadlines. There’s always a deadline that you have to meet. There’s always meetings with colleagues to make sure we’re meeting our deadlines and that the product we’re going to deliver—the educational material—meets the requirements of the clients. So if they say they want a slide deck for a 30 min presentation, then we know we cannot have a slide deck that has 90 slides—that will not fit within a 30 minute time frame. So it’s just always being aware of deadlines and project management and hustling.

WALLACE: So what’s the atmosphere like in your workplace?

GARCIA: Imagine it to be a typical office with lots of scientists. So the medical writers—the folks who are on the scientific teams or the medical teams at medical communications agencies—usually have PhDs, MDs, PharmDs, there are some Masters; so basically they’re all desk scientists. A big part of our jobs involves doing research into published articles. So if we’re trying to tell a story about a particular drug and its impact on a particular population, we have to have literary support for that. So we’re either looking at a poster that was presented at a conference or we’re looking at a publication to see what key messages we can pull out of those materials. And also those materials serve as support for what we’re saying.

WALLACE: There’s that research—that secondhand synthesis work—and as far as the atmosphere, you mentioned it’s a typical office—is it social, collegial, or is it quite individual?

GARCIA: It’s both. So the office plans are usually very open. So your desk is usually right next to another person. You meet often with whoever is the lead for your team to make sure deliverables are being met. People are very social and collaborative. Usually I might be working on a project, but I might be collaborating with another medical writer or I might be consulting with someone who interfaces with the clients more often. I might be collaborating with them to address questions. But it’s an office environment. They’re usually very colorful and visually engaging, because you’re deep in black and white text all the time. People are typically collegiate at these offices because—here’s the gist—you have to be a team player. You do work as an individual for blocks of time to get work done, but it’s never done in a bubble. You’re always implementing changes based on other people’s opinions of something you put together—that you started. You have to be a team player.

WALLACE: So there’s that constant collaboration. Was that a struggle from an academic background to be in a more social space, or that felt natural?

GARCIA: That was very natural for me because, even during my graduate training and postdoctoral training, I was always involved in extracurricular activities that helped me develop interpersonal skills. I’m not saying I’m the best, but a big part of doing well in this field is knowing how to engage with people the right way… You’re not the lone scientist with a pipette or doing your own thing and not meeting anyone else. You have to know how to communicate to your team members and clients. And it’s not just verbally, but in writing. Because sometimes you might be working with team members who do not have a science background, and we have to explain the science to them in a manner that allows them to have an intelligent conversation with a client.

WALLACE: What do you enjoy the most about your work? You touched on this as far as the teaching and communication…

GARCIA: Collaborating with people. I don’t have an issue with other folks having constructive opinions about something I’ve created. I personally believe that I can create a platform or a starting product, and then with everyone else’s brains and input we can all collectively make it better. So if someone says to me, “This isn’t clear to me; I don’t understand it. I kind of see where you’re trying to go, but it’s still fuzzy to me,” I don’t feel insulted. My response is to ask certain questions: What is unclear? What exactly is making it hard for you to digest the information here? And then I see it as a challenge. Okay, my goal is to fix this so that it’s clear to that person. So that’s what I enjoy the most—the challenge of making something that’s complex simple.

WALLACE: I love it. And this touches into the next question: What are the keys to success in your field?

GARCIA: Always having the mindset of a learner. Because you might think you know something on Monday and then it’s different on Thursday. So that’s one thing. Always have the mindset of a learner. And two, being very flexible. You have to be flexible. Because sometimes you go into the office on Tuesday thinking, “These are the three things I’m going to do.” And at 9:02, things change. You have to do seven other things and still somehow figure out how to do the first three things you planned to do. Or you flag it to your team and say, “I know we’ve changed priorities. You want me to do these alternative things. But I’m not going to be able to finish these three things I was really supposed to do today. How can we work together to adjust? Can we adjust timelines or deadlines? Can we bring other team members in to chip in?” So being flexible, having a learner’s mindset, and just having tough skin. Because a lot of times you will take a complex principle and simplify it and you’re like, “This is awesome!” And then someone else reads it and they’re like, “No, I don’t like it.” And it’s either your team member or the client. And sometimes people are nice about saying they don’t like something or it’s unclear, and others are a little harsher. So you have to have tough skin and not take things personally.

WALLACE: What do you find the most frustrating about your work?

GARCIA: The switching of timelines and the expectations of a particular deliverable. So, we might start off with an assignment of “We need a 60-minute slide deck presentation at this particular conference,” and you’re creating the content with that in mind. And then close to the end of the project, you’re told we have to change it—it’s now 30 minutes and it’s about a completely different topic. And you still only have two more weeks. And sometimes my heart is pounding, thinking, “Oh my gosh, how am I gonna do this.” And the key is to, if you’re unsure of an approach, reach out to your team and say, “I’m unsure about this; I don’t know where to start; can someone give me some ideas?” Because sometimes when you’re in the midst of something—at least for me—I might find it hard to take a step back in that moment to figure out what the approach is. Sometimes it’s easy; sometimes for certain projects, it’s hard—if I have a lot of other things going on, I just can’t get my mind out of the other work to think strategically about an important project.

WALLACE: So that switching can be hard. Is it also hard to work on writing and then also have to constantly talk?

GARCIA: No, it’s not difficult. Because whenever we put our educational material together, we have to assume that someone will be presenting it to an audience—whether it’s a slide deck that’s being presented to a large audience or a printed piece. So when I actually put together materials, I practice reading them and I practice presenting them. Because a big part of what we do is, when we create our materials and are ready to share them with our client, we have to actually walk them through it. We have to present it to them. So I’m always practicing presenting while I’m writing.

WALLACE: Did you see yourself in academia when you were going through your PhD training? Did you think you’d have an academic career for the rest of your life?

GARCIA: I’ll tell you this much—when I was in my graduate training, and even before, I always wanted to be a teacher… whether that was being professor… I just wanted to teach; I wanted to educate; and that’s exactly what I’m doing in medical communications. I could’ve seen myself as a professor, but not as a research professor stuck in my office writing grants. That was not going to be me. I would’ve stayed in academia if I was presented with an opportunity to serve as a teacher or to have a lab where I would train students on different laboratory techniques and how to think and experiment. Because for me when I was doing research, what was fun was we had a question—we had to do a particular thing with cells—extract certain proteins—but the kits that were available didn’t do exactly what we wanted them to do. So I really enjoyed taking existing protocols and tweaking them to make them my own so they were suitable to my unique situation. So that’s something I wanted to be able to teach other people to do. But being a PI and writing grants… I knew it was not for me.

WALLACE: Yeah, and there’s a lot of pressure in academia to be that kind of an academic scholar.

GARCIA: And I’ve only known of one person in my environment whose primary job was to be a professor—a teacher, not someone who teaches as well as someone who runs a lab. And I didn’t know how that person got that position. I didn’t think there were more opportunities unless that person left. I would’ve stayed in academia if I could’ve focused primarily on teaching and engaging students and lighting that fire for them to stay in the sciences.

WALLACE: And then the postdoc—would it be accurate to say it was a bit of the experience where you realized, alright, this isn’t really for me, and there’s this better-suited role in terms of the communication design and the social side of work?

GARCIA: Absolutely.

WALLACE: Was it a hard decision to leave?

GARCIA: No, it wasn’t. It was almost at the year mark, and I had given myself a year.

WALLACE: So you knew in advance your goals and your own timeline, so that was a helpful thing for you. And so did you have any mentors or people who helped you in this career change?

GARCIA: No. Unfortunately, even to this day, I don’t think there is an appropriate forum to help support or educate those graduate students who know they’re not going to do research. They know “I’m getting into research because I’m going off into a non-academic career,” but they don’t know what that is. So I did not have anyone to talk to. When I applied for the medical writer position at my first agency, I really didn’t even know what was involved in that work.

So that leads me to talk about one of my own personal passions. Whenever I give talks at different places, I encourage students to reach out to me if you want to get a sense of what it’s like to work in medical communications. And part of that is I give them a little assignment to create a slide deck based on the product label for a particular drug—just to give them a sense of the things you have to look for, the ways you have to think. Because I wish that I had that to get a better understanding of the work that I’d be doing.

WALLACE: So you do still have a leg in academia in that way? Is that right?

GARCIA: A little bit. And I wish I had more; I wish I could give more. But the downside to medical communications is that it’s all-consuming. There’s really no downtime. The work that you do is billable. So every 15 minutes of your time has to be, for the most part, billable. So I can’t even say that I could take my lunch break to review something that a student sent me or I could leave work at 4:30 or 5. It’s tough. Because I’m also the mom of a toddler. So when I get home, that’s my other job. So in an ideal world, I would have a business where I give students or other folks who are trying to transition out of academia into medical communications… I would give them an opportunity to do real-world projects to build their portfolio so they’re stronger candidates for transitioning into that field. Not just stronger candidates, it would give them a sense of the kind of work they’re going to do. Because I’ve seen people transition into medical communications and they last three months and they’re done. So sometimes knowing ahead of time what the work really entails… depending on the agency you move to, you’re thrown into the deep end, sink or swim. Some people are able to swim and others are not. So that’s the biggest part. The type of training and mentorship you receive in the first three or six months in this job is important for your success and survival in the field.

WALLACE: But they do provide training?

GARCIA: Some agencies do. And I think those who may have not in the past are working hard to create programs to train people.

WALLACE: Are there any credentials or educational experiences that would help people adjust to or fit this role of medical writing?

GARCIA: A PhD is sufficient. Experience teaching and presenting. So if you’re going to a conference as a graduate student and you’re giving a 10-minute presentation of your research, that’s a big plus. That’s something that you have to put on your resume. If you’re teaching, describe some of the work you’re doing as an instructor. That’s important. So the credentials are already there as part of your training. Some people might say… I’ve heard folks tell me joining the American Medical Writers Association is also a good thing. So there are a couple of groups you could join that would be helpful.

But I’d say the big part is getting practice. Practice creating slide decks based on recently approved FDA drugs. So if you could set up a Google alert to get anything that says FDA or FDA.gov—if you could have that sent to your email and if you see XYZ drug was just approved for schizophrenia, go to the website for that drug, find the package insert, which is also known as the prescribing information, which is also known as the product label, find that document and try to see if you can put together a slide deck on the indications and safety and efficacy of this particular drug. That’s the bulk of what we do. Practice that. Create a visual slide deck—when I say visual: very few words, lots of images and figures. And use that as part of your portfolio.

WALLACE: That’s great advice—to create a portfolio, even if it’s a mock portfolio.

GARCIA: I mean, with LinkedIn you have the opportunity to have links to some of your work, so you could put the slide deck on there.

WALLACE: So the skills students need to succeed are largely already baked into their program. And are there other skills that someone could learn as far as becoming better at something like communication design? Teaching is one thing, does anything come to mind that would be helpful? Extracurriculars, for example?

GARCIA: Toastmasters. Join a toastmaster’s group because they can give you constructive feedback on the way that you communicate in front of an audience. Present as much as possible. And what you can do is have one of your colleagues or your mentor or someone in the audience who is responsible for critiquing your presentation, and give them a list of things to look for. You can find this on various websites online, sites that point out what’s important to be an effective communicator—it’s the umms, the uhhs, the eye contact, how loud your voice is. So have someone in the audience whose primary job is to give you some feedback in those areas. And there’s nothing wrong with putting that on your resume—that you’re so interested in being a better communicator that you’ve taken the step to have someone help you out with that.

Also, a key thing, too, to transition into this industry if you have a PhD in the sciences is to read articles—journal articles from medical journals. So when you’re in a PhD program, you’re used to looking at Science or Cell or Nature. You need to look at the New England Journal of Medicine so you can be familiar with how they present clinical trial data. That actually to me would be the most important thing. Learn how they organize their papers. They start with study design: This is how many patients we recruited. These are the various arms that they were split into. The arm on the left received this treatment for a certain period of time. The arm on the right, something similar, maybe the placebo. And then the next set of data would be the baseline characteristics. Who are these patients? What are their ages? What are some of the conditions they presented with? Look for that sort of readout. And then look at the efficacy. Look at how they’re presenting the efficacy of the drug versus the competitor. Then finally, look at how they present the safety—and safety is basically adverse events.

So being able to navigate a clinical trial paper to me is the most essential thing that someone would have to be able to do in medical communications, and you can do that now. Students have access to the library. So again, back to the FDA.gov alerts—if you see that there’s a new drug that was recently approved, try to find a clinical journal that explains the clinical trial that formed the basis of this drug approval. Practice navigating it.

WALLACE: It’s a bit like a case study.

GARCIA: Basically. Whatever your field is, whatever your interests. Look for the clinical journal associated with your field.

WALLACE: And then practice reading through these—digesting and synthesizing information for a different audience.

GARCIA: Yes, exactly.

WALLACE: Were there any other resources at the GC or experiences that helped you prepare for your career?

GARCIA: I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities. It was just engrained in me. I just didn’t want to be stuck in a lab. I wanted to branch out. So I was involved in a lot of student groups. I think it was the Biology Club or something at the Graduate Center. I was the student representative for the Biochemistry department at these meetings where there were discussions about creating new programs and curriculum. So I was listening to faculty members discuss how to make the Graduate Center better, and I was representing the Biochemistry students, so that was great.

Also, a lot of the work I did in terms of extracurricular activities was related to career options, and hosting events to bring students together to talk about alternative careers—to talk about training that they would need. So basically, hosting events, that’s great because it gives you experience planning in advance, because that’s what we do in medical communications. So if there’s a conferencing coming up on December 10^th, you need to plan: okay, six months in advance, we need to start the work. And we need to be at a certain point at month one, month two, etc. Similarly, when you’re planning an event as a student, you need to know: it’s happening on this date. That means we have to have the food ordered; we have to have the speakers confirmed by this point; what are the logistics the day of? That’s an important skill because it’s applying strategy. It’s not science, but you’re thinking ahead and you’re ready to respond to any unforeseen complications because that always happens and it’s good to practice.

And also, network. Once every two years, there’s a “What Could You Be with a PhD” event. Go to that and when you go to certain tables where company representative are posted—because I’ve been the representative a few times at this event—when you take their business card, reach out to them afterwards. Say, “I was really interested and I’m really happy we connected. I’m interested in this field. Do you have an opportunity for us to meet for coffee or over lunch to discuss what it’s like to work in this industry? If you’re not able to meet, is there another colleague of yours who would be interested?” Because I guarantee you that within every company there is that one person who is happy to talk about their experience so that someone else could be well-informed—so that they can decide whether that’s the right path for them or not.

The advice I’d give anyone… or if I could do this all over again… I wish I had thought about my career path within the first year of being in graduate school rather than waiting until, “Oh, I’m a year away from defending.” Make those connections early. Starting creating your portfolio early. So when it’s time to transition, if you’re not going into academia immediately after your graduate studies, you have people to reach out to and you have more options and you’ve had a chance to research. And also some companies allow you to intern if you’re a PhD student. So talk to your advisers or someone to see if you can take a month or two off in the summer—if that’s even possible, I don’t know—to do an internship with a particular company if you feel that strongly that academia is not for you.

(Music)

WALLACE: That’s a wrap for this episode of Alumni Aloud. I want to thank Avalon for coming on the show to share her experiences in medical writing with our listeners. Also, we’d love to hear from you. Tell us about your experience listening to Alumni Aloud by filling out our survey. Just click the Alumni Aloud link on our homepage. Remember to stay tuned for more episodes of Alumni Aloud, published every other week during the Fall and Spring semesters. Subscribe on iTunes and you’ll automatically be notified when new episodes are released. Also check out our Facebook, Twitter, and Career Planning website at cuny.is/careerplan for more updates from our office and to make appointments with our career counselors. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

(Music)

Back to Top