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In the automotive sector, you get to tinker with the gears of dream machines. In the manufacturing sector, you get to tinker with the marvelous machinery that makes the world’s widgets. However, in the pharmaceutical and biomed sector, you get to tinker with the building blocks of life, thereby improving the quality of life and extending life.

Ivelisse Colon-Rivera, director, technical operations for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, leads a team of analytical chemists responsible for developing analytical methods and conducting chemical/ physical testing to ensure the quality and safety of medicines. She finds that Vertex doesn’t function as a hierarchy, and that within departments, despite titles, people recognize they can learn from all levels of the organization. “This is an incredibly refreshing environment to be a part of,” she says.

Colon-Rivera came to the sector because of a love of science. “I’ve always really liked science and it was when I was first introduced to chemistry that I realized how much I like numbers and analysis,” she says. “I’m intrigued that I can do an experiment today, repeat it tomorrow, and potentially get different results. The challenge of chemistry makes me feel like I’m contributing. The ultimate transition to the pharmaceutical industry has been a rewarding one, being able to design innovative solutions to help patients achieve a better quality of life.”

As much as she loves the work, it’s the people employed at Vertex that make the company so unique. “Vertex hires people who have an entrepreneurial way of thinking, who are self-motivated, and who are team-oriented,” Colon-Rivera says. “We are encouraged to be innovative and are expected to take initiative to solve problems. I find the environment to have a burst of energy that I haven’t experienced during any of my previous jobs. Additionally, people are given the opportunity to try something new—even though the task may fall outside the scope of their role.”

Before joining Vertex, Colon-Rivera spent 11 years working for a larger pharmaceutical company, mainly in research and development. “After spending most of my career on the pharmaceutical development side, I was very interested in the commercial experience and an opportunity came up at Vertex,” she says. “It was incredibly appealing to join Vertex at such an exciting time, just as the company was about to launch its first product—a medicine called INCIVEK (telaprevir) for the treatment of hepatitis C. Working now in the commercial organization, I can see first-hand the benefits that our medicines bring to patients and the major improvements in their quality of life.”

With the launch of its second medicine, KALYDECO (ivacaftor) for cystic fibrosis in January 2012, the first medicine Vertex commercialized globally, the company transitioned rapidly to a global enterprise. “It was a fast paced dynamic environment and we learned together as we went along in the process,” says Colon-Rivera. “This allowed for freedom to make decisions, no matter your seniority.”

Colon-Rivera advises college graduates to keep their options open as they embark on their career. “Don’t close doors just because a certain opportunity doesn’t seem to fit the direction you thought you were headed,” she states. “Whenever I’m presented with an opportunity, I always think to myself, ‘What can I learn? How will that help my career and future?’ Different experiences will help you be more well-rounded. Networking is also key. Take advantage of what’s available to you and take part in summer internships to get an idea of what focus areas interest you. Chemistry is very broad and you can take many different directions with a degree. I recommend getting as much hands-on experience as you can, and join different forums and conversations with individuals already in the field so you can learn about potential career paths and most importantly, ask questions.”

Esther Alegria, senior vice president of global manufacturing for Biogen Idec, knew in her initial interview with the company that she arrived at a true meritocracy, one where she was evaluated on the content of her character.

“From the moment I interviewed here, I felt like they were looking at me as a full person and at what I was bringing to the table,” says Alegria. “They didn’t care about my accent or how I look ed or if I was a woman. They looked at my technical skills and my people skills. I’ve had six positions in nine years here and all have brought increasing responsibility. What excites me the most about the company is that I don’t have to worry about how I look on the outside; it’s what I bring from the inside. I have been in other companies and industries for 25 years and I could not say the same thing.”

Her interest in the pharmaceutical sector dates back to her days as a high school student in her native Puerto Rico, when locally-based pharmaceutical company representatives visited her school to encourage the students to enter the field.

Today, Alegria oversees 900 of Biogen Idec’s 6,000 employees. When hiring, “we look at technical skills in the science and engineering fields, but we are not limited to just those fields; we also look for people with business skills, IT, law, and so on,” she notes. “When interviewing someone who has the necessary technical skills, we are also looking at their ‘soft’ skills, too. How do you navigate through working with people? How do you communicate? How do you work with others? Everything we do takes collaboration. How you communicate is just as important as your technical skills.”

Alegria urges students to broaden their skill sets while still in school and to embrace challenges. “Through your education, push yourself into extracurricular activities and volunteer work,,” she insists. “A lot of people stay in a narrow, comfortable path. If you have ambition, you should always look to improve at executing and performing while being challenged with the unknown. If you can capture that while being educated, that will be an asset for both you and your company.”

Alegria, who graduated with a doctorate degree in chemistry, advises “to have a dream about where you see yourself in the future. There will be roadblocks, there will be times when you think you can’t do it—find the ways to get past those moments. Be one of the people who make a legacy and make a difference.”

While Biogen Idec is a big company, it has a small company feel, says Alegria. “Everything and everyone is so accessible to you. You feel like part of the business and you know what’s happening. You will feel important and proud to work here.”

“I had a chance recently to train with the oncology therapeutic resource center,” recalls Tomala. “This is a group of pharmacists who specialize on patients with cancer. Every day these pharmacists counsel patients one-on-one through some of the most difficult times in their lives. It is both humbling and inspiring to watch these folks work and impact patients, one at a time.”

Express Scripts is guided by values of integrity, passion, and mutual respect. “We seek employees who value work with meaning and purpose,” Tomala says. “No matter what your position, we impact our members’s well-being and help them achieve healthier outcomes.

“It’s a very competitive world out there, so success demands a lot of very hard work,” he comments. “It’s incredibly draining to work hard on something you don’t love, but working on your passion can make time fly while having fun. It does your career no good to be excellent at something that no one knows you’re good at, hence the importance of network building.”

Tomala entered this sector by way of math—as opposed to biology. “I’ve always had a passion for math, computers, and algorithms,” he says. “I hate to admit the number of hours spent wrestling down geeky algorithmic problems. The choice of profession was thus pretty easy. The choice of sector was more of a journey for me. Almost by default, I started in financial services where there seems to be no satiation for analytics talent. After a decade in financial services, the opportunity to switch to healthcare presented itself. Because some of these techniques are fairly mature in financial services, I was kind of used to inheriting teams that others had built decades before and grown organically. The idea of building a team from scratch, with analysts I could hand pick, was just too irresistible.”

Moving from the financial sector five years ago to Express Scripts was a big transition for Tomala. “The idea was that I would help build out capabilities that were fairly mature in financial services, but not widely applied in healthcare,” he explains. “This was an exciting opportunity, but it came with no guarantees and was pretty risky. Maybe there was a reason why these methods had not taken off in healthcare? I’m not sure that there was a secret recipe to success here. Nurturing good relationships with executives at my new company, and getting their sponsorship and support definitely helped. So did a lot of hard work, but in the end I suspect that large doses of good luck helped as much.”

Tomala not only finds the work he does for Express Scripts rewarding, he also is proud of its diverse and inclusive culture. “I’m grateful to work with people of different faiths, nationalities, experiences, and abilities,” he says. “Diverse perspectives and skills strengthen our culture, which translates to our clients and members.”

If you are considering working for such a dynamic, diverse company, Tomala tenders some advice. “My advice for students can be compared to a three step cha-cha-cha,” he says. “First, find work you can be passionate about. Second, excel at it. And third, build a broad network of peers who know your talents.”

Although Express Scripts is a large company, Tomala emphasizes the personal impact of each employee. “We have a collaborative, high performance, inclusive culture where entrepreneurial spirit and forward thinking are welcomed and embraced,” he says.

Frances Sosa-Szarszewski, Pharm D., RPh, and pharmacist in charge at Omnicare, is based in a pharmacy with 113 colleagues, but she shares that Omnicare, with more than 14,000 employees, is a company with breadth and depth.

“I am the pharmacist- in-charge for an Omnicare pharmacy that delivers medications and other pharmacy services to approximately 8,000 residents of chronic care institutional settings throughout the state of New Jersey,” says Sosa- Szarszewski. “However, Omnicare is a much broader company that what I am exposed to where I work. For example, the company also has retail pharmacies, hospital-based pharmacies, and an entirely separate business that provides commercialization services to the bio-pharmaceutical industry. The company’s expansiveness provides for a very attractive platform to advance one’s career into various areas within the healthcare services industry while remaining in the same organization.”

Sosa-Szarszewski developed a respect for her profession when she was just a child. “I remember going to see the pharmacist with my dad as a child,” she recalls. “My dad would always go see the pharmacist to seek out medical or medication advice. He respected the pharmacist and told me that I too could do that one day. I chose long-term care specifically because it was new to me, and I was looking for a challenge; the sense of urgency and requirements from a pharmacist are significantly higher with the patient population we serve.”

Graduating with a bachelor’s of science in pharmacy in 1998, Sosa-Szarszewski worked in retail pharmacy for three years, and then decided to go back to pharmacy school to obtain her doctorate. She enrolled in the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston, her alma mater, since it offered a weekend program and she was working full-time and living in New Jersey. “There were times when I was so exhausted from working a 12- hour day, from commuting to Massachusetts, and then studying that I questioned if it was worth it, “recalls Sosa-Szarszewski. “When I began using what I was learning in school to provide my patients with the best care and advice, I knew that I had to finish what I started.”

“As the population ages, our focus on geriatric pharmacotherapy will become even more critical to ensure the country’s evolving health needs are met,” says Sosa-Szarszewski.

This evolving health need is why she urges students to focus on the clinical side of pharmacy. “Geriatric patients typically have multiple conditions that are being treated and have more complexities than patients of other age categories,” she explains. “Therefore, there is a high level of clinical knowledge required to effectively treat these frail and vulnerable patients.”

Omnicare, says Sosa-Szarszewski, is always seeking new and innovative ways to revolutionize the way that pharmacy is practiced today. “It is gratifying to be part of an organization that has a mission to improve health outcomes for the patients we serve every day,” she says.

“Lilly hires people with all sorts of backgrounds, from medical expertise to engineering, technical skills, and others,” says Ortuzar. “In my area, it’s important to have clinical trial expertise, great team work skills, and technical communication capabilities.”

Eli Lilly’s size doesn’t just mean diverse opportunities. It also means a diverse workforce. “Because Lilly is a large, global company, I have the opportunity to work with people with very diverse backgrounds and perspectives,” says Ortuzar. “That’s a great thing.”

Another great thing is Eli Lilly’s centuries of innovation. “We’ve been in business for 137 years, but it’s always been about innovation, even from the beginning,” he says.

Ortuzar chose first this profession to help sick people, and then to help find better drugs for cancer patients. At Eli Lilly, he leads a team that designs, executes, analyzes, and discloses late phase clinical trials in oncology. He also works with customers to answer their medical questions.

He also urges students to be tenacious. “Studying medicine is very demanding and stressful,” says Ortuzar. “You will quickly learn that not all patient outcomes are good, and failure will happen, even though you may have done everything right. The important thing to remember is to never give up, learn from your mistakes, and accept that there are things that require scientific advancement to change that are not necessarily in your control.”

“Leaving my home country of Panama to attend graduate school in the U.S. was an exciting, yet at the same time, scary time for me,” she says. “I prepared as much as I could for the transition by applying for a fellowship so that I could have the financial means to sponsor my studies and by partnering with two of my professors from Panama who had been trained in the U.S. to help identify schools they would recommend. These two steps gave me a much higher degree of confidence to what felt like an uncertain future at the time.”

In her current position, Villalobos heads the group responsible for conceiving potential new medicines to treat Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, addiction, and related diseases. The group has over 60 chemists.

The company seeks people with strong scientific skills who are excellent problem solvers, leaders, and team-oriented individuals. “These skills are very important since we work in multi-disciplinary teams which require the objective assessment of ideas, ability to influence, and receptivity to feedback,” she says.

“Pfizer’s purpose is compelling and highly motivating: Innovate to bring therapies to patients that significantly improve their lives. I also like the fact that we work with very talented and innovative people,” says Villalobos. “I am inspired by Pfizer’s ability to adapt and continue to grow within an evolving scientific, social, and economic environment.”

Jorge (Rodrigo) Mora, MD/PhD, associate scientific director, Disease Integrative Biology (DIB), Immunology Therapeutic Area, Janssen Research & Development, LLC, recently transitioned from academia to industry. For six years, he was a principal investigator and led a productive research lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. While he had the choice to continue in academia, he decided to take a position at Janssen.

“This was not an easy decision, in great part because I did not have prior pharmaceutical industry experience,” explains Mora. “However, I saw a unique opportunity in a newly created group at Janssen with the Disease Integrative Biology team, where I am able to fully use my academic experience and scientific expertise in mucosal immunology to tackle a very complex immunological problem, which is inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD. While this has been a steep learning curve for me, it has also been very exciting, with lots of new scientific intellectual challenges. Overall, I am very happy with my decision, and I look forward to continue making contributions in my fields of expertise.”

“My advice for students pursuing PhD degrees in biomedical sciences is that they open their minds to different career alternatives,” he says. “Universities usually provide a unilateral, academic-oriented view for the students, probably because most mentors in academia are not familiar with alternative career scenarios. I believe graduate students should have the chance to formally explore alternative careers, such as in industry.”

Janssen seeks scientific talent, and people with a strong desire and capacity to work in a collaborative environment, says Mora. “While Janssen has been very successful in developing drugs to treat IBD, the most effective therapies that are currently in use are immunosuppressive, and are unfortunately not effective in all patients,” he explains. Being new to industry, Mora was surprised by the broad range of scientific topics in which people are working at Janssen. “I have been very impressed by the research/science and by the many very talented colleagues I have met,” he says.

This former academic loves his new home at Janssen, just as he’s loved medicine and science. “I am privileged for being able to be at the cutting edge of the biomedical sciences,” says Mora.