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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. 

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CARLY BATIST, EDITOR: In this episode, we sat down with Dr. Miguel Briones. Miguel earned his PhD in the Psychology program at the Graduate Center. When we spoke, Miguel was a Medical Writer at the BGB Group. In this episode, he tells us about his experiences in data science and medical writing, how medical writers work with other companies in the pharmaceutical industry, and the importance of leveraging your connections. 

MIGUEL BRIONES, GUEST: My name is Miguel Briones and I am a Medical Writer at BGB Communications.     

JONATHAN PERELMUTER, HOST: Can you tell me a little bit more about what that company is, what they do and then a little bit about what you do for them as a medical writer?  

BRIONES: Yeah, BGB Communications is a marketing strategy company where we take pharmaceutical companies’ content and try to make a creative, scientific spin on it. And so part of my job as a medical writer is to work with the pharmaceutical companies and align their goals of how they want to promote their drug and then see where we can fit our strategy and our expertise in the field. So part of the strategy is they want to promote their drug to patients. But how do they strategically promote their drug without getting in trouble with the FDA for medical related content or scientifically related content. Or how do they even align on promoting the correct scientific content so a patient doesn’t go to their doctor and the doctor says, “this is completely wrong.”  

So it’s a little bit of that and a little bit of marketing. So we do a lot of strategic components with the brand strategy team, which is what we call them. Not only do I have to wear a scientific hat, but I have to wear a marketer’s hat. I have to think about ok how does my background in science allow me to help them market their drug in a crowded field. Because they’re not the only company that’s promoting a drug for IBD [inflammatory bowel disease] but how do we make them stand out. What about the scientific process or what about the scientific mechanism of their drug allows them to stand out in a field crowded with other pharmaceutical companies. So it’s sort of part strategy, part marketing, part being a know it all in science. 

PERLEMUTER: And so you work as part of a team to do that. Can you kind of describe your role relative to like what other people are in?  

BRIONES: So my level is the entry-level medical writer. But the team is composed of… there’s a medical team, there’s a strategy team, there’s an art team, there’s a project management team and there’s an account team. And within all those teams you have different levels of roles. So I’ll give you an example of the medical team because that’s what I know best. In the medical team, you have a medical writer, senior medical writer, then you have an associate medical director, medical director, senior medical director up until the VP level. And so for the medical writer and the senior medical writer, it’s more client-facing and coming up with the content.  

When you get to the associate medical director level, now you’re overseeing all the medical writers and you’re overseeing the work that’s being done. But now you’re starting to get into a more strategic role. As a medical writer, I don’t necessarily have a role in playing with the strategy or you know saying, “how do we make a certain piece better.” But as an associate medical director you have more of a say in terms of, how can I use my expertise and my years in the field to tell this client, this is what you should be using. I don’t have the experience for that yet so therefore I’m in the medical writer role. It’s more of a someone tells me what I should be doing and can you create this content and I go and create it.  

PERLEMUTER: Ok. And the content you’re generating is mostly just like copyright, you’re writing stuff and the art team will create the… 

BRIONES: Yes and so the synergy behind every single team is that as medical writers, we own medical content and then we show it off to the art team. And they then create all the artistic effects. So for example, if you’re making a brochure the art team will make the you know mechanisms of action cell drawings or they would make all the copy in a way that looks promotional. In terms of the account team, they really handle the clients and they handle all the money right. So we have to get paid somehow. So the account team talks to the clients and says, “this is how much everything is going to cost, are you ok with that?” And they sort of deal with the logistics of…if you’re not going to pay that, here’s what we can offer if you pay more. So on and so forth. So in terms of the medical team, we really stay within the scientific bounds of the work. You know there are some other companies that allow you to be an accountant, sorry not an accountant, as part of the account team or part of the art team. At BGB, it’s more of a, “you focus on the science and the science only” you know. We really don’t try to overstep our boundaries.  

PERLEMUTER: Depending on the project or client you’re working with, does the target population kind of ever change? Or is it always usually the public or like doctors that may be prescribing? 

BRIONES: It does actually which is, what makes this job a little more fascinating. Someone thinks of medical writing, they just think, “oh you know you make content for patients or doctors.” And while that’s necessarily true, we also work with a medical team at a pharmaceutical company. So there are different ways, or different levels of medical writing that you can get into. I am in the promotional medical writing field so what we do is work with the company to promote their drug either to patients, to doctors or to other specialists in the field. So if you have an MSL for example, medical science liaison, we will create the content for the medical science liaison. There are other fields of medical writing where you write publications and that’s all you do. And then there’s others where you work in the regulatory field. And when a company wants to promote the drug or initially promote the drug or apply for an application from the FDA, you have to write this big document that says why this drug could be considered a potential marketable drug. So there is a field of medical writing that focuses solely on that. I’m more on the promotional side which I think is a bit more fun because you get to be a little more creative with your science. 

PERLEMUTER: I’d like to take a couple steps back and ask you what you did at CUNY, what your field of study and then, in a couple iterations like how you got from there to where you are today. Because I know it wasn’t just a clear path. 

BRIONES: Yeah definitely. So I got accepted into the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience program in the Psychology department. So my lab was based at Hunter and initially I thought I was going to study drugs and behavior. I ended up studying fear and fear memory and my project focused on looking at an organic compound called curcumin that you can find in turmeric and whether or not that can suppress a fear memory from being expressed in a rodent. So it was a lot of animal behavior research, a lot of pharmacology research and I remember thinking in my third year of grad school…that was the point where I told myself, maybe academia isn’t the way I want to go. Maybe it isn’t what I want to do for the rest of my life. But you’re right in that there wasn’t a clear-cut path as to what I wanted to do. I knew that medical writing existed because I had had friends who had gone into medical writing. I think like four people who were at Hunter College where my lab was based at, they had gone into medical writing. And I had asked them a couple questions about it and they told me about it and I was like ok maybe I’ll think about it. 

But I got really interested in data science. And so I taught myself how to code, taught myself Python, taught myself R, SQL, all the necessary things for data science. And then I took an internship at a data science company and I worked as a data scientist for a couple months. And then I realized data science isn’t where I want to be, it’s not what I want to do. It kind of dawned on me where I was waking up every day and thinking to myself, “yeah I like coding but I really don’t want to read math and computer science papers you know, to keep up with the field for the rest of my career. I kind of want to go back to the pharmacology, I kind of want to go back to the science I had started when I was in grad school. And then, it was my fourth or fifth year in grad school when I thought, well maybe I can give medical writing a shot. And so I just reached out to a couple friends who were in the field, the same friends who were in the field from Hunter. I asked them if they had any open positions available. And one of them said yes, I can recommend you, send me your resume. And that was basically how I got my start. I sort of just fell into it.  

PERLEMUTER: Yeah, so a contact you knew at the GC, is it through your lab or at Hunter? 

BRIONES: It was at Hunter. It was weird because our lab had shared space. 

PERLEMUTER: Right, right. 

BRIONES: So this person would come into the lab often and I would see them and knew them by name. But they weren’t technically in my lab. But I knew them and they knew me. And they knew my face and what I looked like so when I messaged them they were like, “oh I know you, how’s it going?”  

PERLEMUTER: And they work for the company you work for now? 

BRIONES: Correct, yes they work for the company that I work for now and at the time that I reached out to him, he was at a more senior level. And so he really gave me the inside scoop as to how the process worked. And I was interested and I just said, “why not.” Let me just try it. 

PERLEMUTER: Mhm. And so far? 

BRIONES: So far so good. It was actually surprising. I didn’t come into with any expectations. I didn’t think I was going to like, I didn’t think I was going to dislike it. I just thought, “well I need to do something and data science isn’t it, so what is it going to be.” And again medical writing was always in the back of my mind so I thought well let me try it out. I mean what could go wrong. If I hate it, I just do something else. But if I like it then just keep at it. And so far so good. I think I approached it with the thought that I was going to be writing most of the time. And that’s not necessarily the case. I think a lot of the time I found myself thinking strategy, I found myself thinking about marketing and I started to use a lot of my creativity in how to promote some of these drugs. Which I think is a really good thing about this field is that they allow you as a scientist to just sort of come up with an idea and say, “yeah I think it would be a good idea if you approached the strategy this way.” And having everyone say, “yeah I like that idea. It’s particularly for me, for this company, I think it’s a really good blend of people who one, are really passionate about the field but two, are just passionate about science in general. And when you get a group of people who are incredibly smart, passionate about science, passionate about anything really. It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s about who you’re working with, right. 

PERLEMUTER: Mhm. Do you have an example of a kind of creative idea that you’ve had or like something that you suggested that was taken up that you’re proud of? Just any example of that creative process. 

BRIONES: So a lot of the time, in order to win new business in this field you have to pitch to these pharmaceutical companies. So we were working on this drug for acute myeloid leukemia. It was a matter of they left it up to me as to how I want to create it, how I wanted to create the deck and how I wanted the story to flow. I approached it as, “here’s a drug, everyone else is marketing the drug as targeting a specific mutation. Your drug doesn’t cover a specific mutation, it covers a specific protein that’s expressed in almost all tumor cells. So why not take your approach instead of saying, “here we are we’re targeted for AML” and say, “this is a one-all approach, you know a one-stop shop for your cure.” And they really liked that, they really liked the messaging and I built a strategy behind that and they received it really well. And I think everyone was a bit surprised that that came about but also they were very encouraging about letting me run with it. They received it really well.  

PERLEMUTER: You’re describing this to me, this job, and the first thing that comes to mind is a medical version of like Mad Men.  

BRIONES: Yes, yes. 

PERLEMUTER: Do you ever feel like you’re living that life a little bit? 

BRIONES: For sure and it’s kind of like that. It’s not as glamorous as Mad Men *laughs* but it’s kind of like you are in an advertising agency. And it’s weird because when I first started the job, everyone was like, “well how do you like the advertising agency?” I didn’t really see myself as an advertiser or a marketer. I was sort of like well I’m in science. And as you keep going in this job you sort of realize like, yeah I sort of am like an ad person. I am like a Mad Man, or a “Med Man” as they like to call it which I hate. But still. 

PERLEMUTER: Med men? *laughs* 

BRIONES: Yeah, it’s also a company of a different sort. *laughs* Yeah I was like, I work in advertising. And when it dawned on me that that’s what I do, it’s just that the blanket on it was science, I thought, “I kind of like this.” It is kind of a glamorous, not glamorous but it is kind of like an advertising lifestyle. Because it’s an advertising agency, because it’s a client-based industry, some of the hours can be really long. But that’s something that you’re used to in grad school so.  

PERLEMUTER: Right. So would you say you’re working fewer or about the same or less hours? 

BRIONES: I would say I’m working more structured hours. But it’s about the same. Right like it’s not like I’m up at one in the morning working like I was in grad school. But I’m also not leaving at 5:30 right or like 6:30. Sometimes I leave at 7, sometimes I leave at 8. But they do a really god job at balancing work and life which is more than you can say for some of the circumstances in academia. But I think part of my reason for leaving academia was to find something that was more work-life balance. Or had more work-life balance. And I think I did find that with medical writing.  

PERLEMUTER: Is there anything about your job you don’t like? Any aspects about it that you find like frustrating? 

BRIONES: I think some of the frustrating aspects is sometimes working with individuals that don’t really see your vision or you don’t really see eye to eye. And of course you find it in academia, you find it everywhere. But also that it’s a structure. So you’re going to have to get used to being in structure. In academia you get used to, well I’m going to come in at 12 and leave at 7. And then the next day I’m going to come in at 10 and leave at 3. And if I get my work done, that’s it, I get to leave. Whereas in industry it doesn’t work that way, at least in the medical writing field. It’s sort of a 9-to-5 and you sort of have to be there. But you get used to that. That’s really the only downside of it. It was a process to get, to transition over and adjust to being at a desk eight hours a day, nine hours a day. But beyond that, there isn’t anything that I really dislike. I mean there are things that I could do away with, but it’s really a minor inconvenience compared to the positives that come from working in an industry where I can feel like I’m being valued.  

PERLEMUTER: What are the backgrounds of the people that you’re working with? And you mentioned that the person who kind of brought you into this company? The other people you work with, do they all come from like an academic background? 

BRIONES: So the people I work with on the medical team all come from an academic background for the most part.  

PERLEMUTER: Do they all have PhD’s? 

BRIONES: Yes.  

PERLEMUTER: So that’s like a requirement? 

BRIONES: Pretty much a requirement at this point. There are a few people, I can say that there are three people that have a Master’s degree in engineering, biomedical engineering. I think the medical team now consists of around 65 people, three of them have a Master’s in engineering, the rest have PhD’s in all sorts of biological or chemical sciences. Particularly the people I work with, they have a PhD in molecular biology, cell biology, neuroscience, I’m not the only one, or biochemistry. A lot of biologists, a lot of chemists. 

PERLEMUTER: Do you think kind of the independent study you did teaching yourself data science has come in handy at all? 

BRIONES: Yeah I think it came in handy in ways I didn’t think it would come in handy. When I was doing the data science internship I had to speak to clients and work with clients and be client-facing. And I think it helped me in finding my voice when it comes to speaking to clients. Finding my “business voice.” But also being able to take a lead and you know walking a client or someone through a project right. Being able to sort of read the client and being able to synthesize complicated information into something that’s very simple. Which is what we all do and what we train for. But you can get lost in the part of the world where you’re just speaking to someone in academic jargon. And then you’re put into industry and you’re put in front of a client that doesn’t really understand the jargon and you’re just like…you know how can you explain this to someone who comes from an English background or comes from a Psychology background. And believe it or not it can sometimes be tough because you’re so used to as a knee-jerk reaction going into, “oh yeah, you know this process and this process and this process.” And you’re sometimes taken aback by saying, “oh yeah you don’t know that process.” I have to explain that to you.  

And I think the data science internship taught me, especially because it wasn’t really a field I did my PhD in, and so not only learning about algorithms and models but taking all that information and trying to synthesize it really taught me one, how to unlearn complex information and two, how to really distinguish that in my mind as, “here’s how to talk about it with someone in the field and here’s how to talk about it with someone not in the field but wants to know about it. So that was really helpful for sure. I think the biggest piece of advice that I could give for someone going into industry is having the ability to do those two things in your mind. Is it still retain your academic background and be able to speak to someone in academic jargon. Because you will work with people from an academic background. But then also take that information and transfer that to people who are not from academic background. Because you do have to speak to, at least in my specific case, you have to speak to people in account or art or project management. They want to know what we’re working on and you have to sort of synthesize it in a way that they can understand it so that they don’t come away from it thinking, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Because then nothing gets done.  

PERLEMUTER: Do you think anything in your experience at CUNY prepared you for that kind of work? 

BRIONES: I would say the biggest thing that prepared me was teaching. And I do a lot, I do a fair amount of teaching in my line of work. Because whenever we have to do a pitch or onboard someone who isn’t, or even with a medical background, we have to give them what we call a “med buddy.” And it’s basically a backgrounder for whatever field that we’re working on. And we constantly win new business with new companies or we’re constantly pitching to new companies. And so a lot of the time I find myself learning a new field and then having to give a med buddy or a talk to people who come from completely different backgrounds. And so teaching at the undergraduate level really helped me because… I think I taught for two years and being able to synthesize information about your science in a way that an undergrad can digest it, really helped me to put that into perspective when I’m learning about acute myeloid leukemia or I think I just learned about something called gastrointestinal stromal tumors or GIST’s. And being able to take that info and then having to give a med buddy to a group of people who do not have a medical background. And so how do you tell someone, yeah you have a tumor that grows in your stomach and sometimes it can pop out of your stomach and sometimes it can stay in your stomach right. It’s like taking that information and putting it into a context that they can understand. 

PERLEMUTER: One question for clarification—so you did an internship in data science? 

BRIONES: Correct. 

PERLEMUTER: You were doing that while you were still in the graduate program? 

BRIONES: Yeah so that’s a very good point. I was doing this internship while I was still in the graduate program. While I was still in grad school finishing my experiments, I started to teach myself how to code. And I thought to myself, “I’m just going to go for it and see what happens.” And at the same time, I had finished enough of my work where I can write a complete dissertation without having to do additional experiments. And so I was really lucky in a sense that I had the time to do this internship. It was more of a, “you can work on whatever project you want to work on, on your time, and here’s your deadline, say two weeks.” But if you want to work on it during the night you can, if you want to work on it during the day it’s up to you. So I was able to get experience in a way that was on my schedule. Which I don’t think is normal to be honest with you. Normal internships are you have to be here from 9-to-5 and you have to report to someone.  

PERLEMUTER: And what was the name of the company? 

BRIONES: So that company was called, it was called ByteFlow Dynamics. And it was started by an alumna actually from the GC who graduated from the Physics program. And I met this person because they had come to Hunter to give a talk about data science. And at the time I was really interested in data science. And so I just approached him and said, “can I gain some experience and work for your company?” And he was like, “absolutely, we’re mostly remote so I have a couple of projects that I’m going to work on. I can give you whatever you want to work on, see where it goes.” And we were able to successfully complete a couple projects. 

PERLEMUTER: And was that as far as you went with data science? You said you had taken on some clients.  

BRIONES: I think I spoke to like three or four clients and I worked on a project with them. But I got to the end of that project’s life cycle and around September of last year where I was like, I really don’t like data science. I really don’t like the process of it. I’ve seen enough of it, I’ve gotten enough exposure to it where I was like, I like speaking to clients, I don’t like speaking to clients about data science. I knew from then I wasn’t going to apply for a data science position. It pays really well but I don’t think it’s worth it for my own happiness. 

PERLEMUTER: So you mentioned it pays really well. Was like compensation something you were thinking about when making a career choice.  

BRIONES: Absolutely! 

PERLEMUTER: Comparing like academia to data science to medical writing. 

BRIONES: Yeah absolutely. I mean it’s kind of like, if anyone says they aren’t they’re sort of lying to you right. 

PERLEMUTER: Yeah.  

BRIONES: You know as a postdoc you don’t really get paid that well and there isn’t a lot of job security. You get paid better as a medical writer and as a data scientist. And I think part of the allure of working in industry is that it can allow you to live a decent lifestyle right. You’re not living paycheck to paycheck as some grad students do. And at least you know, can you think about a situation where you’re not living with roommates because you can afford your own apartment. Like honestly, part of the drive of leaving academia is I want to start a life you know. I like the science and I like being an academic but at the same time, for me it wasn’t worth the struggle of not being financially compensated in the way that I should be and having to worry constantly. Because it is something that you should take into consideration.  

Transitioning into industry, I’m a lot happier in that regard. So for me it was more of a, “where can I find a common ground where I’m getting paid enough but at the same time doing something that I really like.” And you can get rewarded handsomely for data science but at the same time it wasn’t work that I was really interested in. And it wasn’t a work culture that I was interested in either. Because for lack of a better word, it is a tech culture and it is tech hours. And I wasn’t really interested in that. So I found a common ground with medical writing. It’s not so much tech as much as it’s an advertising world. But it also allowed me to work on content that I actually care about. I care about oncology, I care about neurology and I care about the medical field more so than the data science field to be honest. So for me it was a no-brainer. And I will admit that I took the internship for data science and I did consider data science because of the financial compensation that you get. But after being in it and realizing that it wasn’t for me, medical writing wasn’t a bad choice.  

PERLEMUTER: So walk me through briefly, just like the process of getting that job. 

BRIONES: So a lot of the times if you apply for a medical writing job, and I applied to two medical writing jobs. Sometimes they ask you to do a writing sample. So you have to take a paper and synthesize it into ten PowerPoint slides and then you get to go to the interview stage. Sometimes they don’t. For this other company that I applied for I had to do a writing test. For BGB I didn’t, and I think it’s because I had the recommendation of the person that I knew. And so the process was, well for BGB specifically, I had messaged this person and said, “hey I’m interested in being a medical writer, are there any open positions at BGB?” And he said, “yes absolutely, we’re hiring for a medical writer. Why don’t you send me your resume and I can submit it.” And I did and on his end he submitted it to HR and then HR reached out to me and said you know, “hey we got word you’re looking for a medical writing position. How would you like to come in for an interview?” And so I said absolutely sure, went in. I interviewed with four people. And the interview was a standard interview process. It was basically, tell me about yourself, tell me about a time when you rose up to a challenge and tell me about your ways of working with people that you generally do not like. And so standard interview questions. And then talking about what I did as a grad student and why I wanted to be in medical writing.  

And I thought that would be it but then they invited me to a second round of interviews which was a bit surprising for me. But I think now looking back in hindsight I know why. The way that they structure it is that BGB wants you to meet all the senior vice presidents of the medical side just so they can all come together and say whether they want to hire you or not. The first round I didn’t meet two of the SVP’s, I only met one. So the second round I had to meet the other two. And again, same questions, it generally went well. And two weeks later I got an offer like you know, “we really like you, would you want to accept a position here.” So that was pretty much it. So the whole process in total took about, I want to say a month. And then you can obviously tell them whether you want to start right away or you want to start in two weeks or in a month.  

PERLEMUTER: Does this job like involve any travel or could it? 

BRIONES: Oh so yes it does involve travel. And the reason being is because depending on who, what kind of company you work for, what body of work they want. Medical writing is more than just making a brochure or making a publication. Sometimes you can go to things called an ad-board and they’re basically advisory boards with a bunch of doctors. And pharmaceutical companies really like this because they bring all the doctors in and they say, “hey what do you like about our drug, what don’t you like about our drug, what do you like about our competitor’s.” A lot of these ad boards take place across the US. I usually travel to Chicago, Dallas, or Indiana. But they hold these advisory boards once a month. So once a month I’m traveling across the US to these advisory boards. And I basically sit there, the doctors talk, I take my notes and at the end we fly back and we give the company a summary of all the key takeaways from that ad board and ways that you can sort of use those key takeaways to advance their brand. So again that’s the strategy, marketing aspect of it.  

But then I also get to go to congresses. So I mentioned that I had gone to an oncology congress before and it was in Chicago. And it was called ASCO, which is like the biggest oncology conference, I think in the world. But there are a bunch of oncology conferences and depending on your pharmaceutical company they want you to go there for a—since all of the oncologists are there why not have an ad board there. So I did that for ASCO. I will be doing that for ESMO which is in Barcelona. And I will be doing that for, I think it’s called OAS, which is in Japan. So depending on who you work for, you can travel all over the world or you can just travel over the United States. But there is a lot of traveling involved. 

PERLEMUTER: Is that sometime you’re like required to do or is it something you opted in for? 

BRIONES: I think it’s required.  

PERLEMUTER: Ok. And did you know that at the beginning, at the outset? 

BRIONES: I did not know that before I applied. It was made aware to me during the interview process. With the, you know they asked me, “how do you feel about traveling?” And I was like, “I don’t mind it” and they were like good because you’re going to be doing a lot of it.  

PERLEMUTER: Do you see yourself staying with this company for the next five years, for the foreseeable future? 

BRIONES: I think for now I’m definitely staying with the company. I really like the culture, I really like my team. And I think they’ve been so good about allowing me to grow in the role, allowing me to understand the process and at the same time giving me the opportunity to develop the skills to become a senior medical writer and to become a medical director and so on. So I don’t see myself leaving for the foreseeable future. And to be honest it takes awhile to learn the process. It’s one thing you know, everyone’s competent in learning about science and learning about a field. You can read the papers and you know synthesize the information. But there’s also you know a process that happens within the medical writing field as to how exactly you do things so that everyone’s on board. And that’s what takes time getting used to. And everyone has to learn the ideal process so that everyone follows the same rules. So that if something goes wrong it’s easily amended. And I think when you teach someone that, that’s when you become really valuable to the company. At least particularly for BGB, once they cement the process to you and you understand how it works, it’s very hard to transfer that to somebody new. I think they do a really good job in keeping their employees and wanting to keep their employees.  

PERLEMUTER: Having seen sort of the other positions between your team and the broader team, you know if you’re going to stay at this company for let’s say the next ten years, where in the company do you want to be in ten years? 

BRIONES: Probably as a VP. And that’s more like, now you’re managing the strategy behind the company and what kind of business the company pursues. What’s interesting about the company is that no matter what level you’re at, if you’re an SVP or VP, if you’re a senior medical director, everyone works on content, everyone touches the content in some way or another. It’s never siloed, it’s never like, “oh you did this wrong, it’s your fault.” It’s like everyone is held accountable. But at the same time as a VP or an SVP you really do have a lot of discretion over where you think the company should move and where you think the company should expand in their business. You’re involved a lot in pitches, so you travel and you pitch and you talk about the company and you say, “this is what we offer and this is what we can do.” And I think at that level is sort of where I want to get into. The field is growing so there is a sense of job security so to speak. You learn skills that are very invaluable not only as a scientist but also as in business and pretty much working in the pharmaceutical world. It’s a big business and you develop skills that are going to be in demand probably ten, fifteen, twenty years from now.                         

BATIST, VOICE-OVER: That’s a wrap for this episode of Alumni Aloud. I want to thank Miguel for coming on the show to share his experiences as a medical writer. Remember to stay tuned for more episodes of Alumni Aloud, published every 2 weeks during the fall and spring semesters. Subscribe on iTunes and you’ll automatically be notified of new episodes. Also check out our Facebook, Twitter and career planning website at cuny.is/careerplan for more updates from our office or to make appointments with our career counselors. Thanks for listening and see you next time!   

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