I started at Oxford PharmaGenesis in January 2020 and my journey into medical communications is probably quite unusual. I certainly did not see myself in medical communications or project management when I graduated with a sport science degree in 2008. My degree and my passion for sport led to a career as a PE teacher, which I enjoyed thoroughly; inspiring the next generation and giving something back to society are values that I still regard as imperative.
However, I could not see how to progress or climb the career ladder in my role as a teacher, so I made the difficult decision to start a part-time master’s degree at Coventry Business School. I have always had a keen interest in business and project management, so I was excited to take on this challenge. My master’s degree took 2 years to complete and remains one of the most challenging things I have done, owing to balancing family, work and education. As part of the course, I completed some interesting project support work with Visa, Mastercard, HSBC and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which furthered my interest in project management.
Upon completion of my master’s degree, I was fortunate enough to be offered a 3-month contract with HSBC as part of the project management office that was supporting the global roll-out of a new digital banking application. After making the leap from teaching to project management, I never looked back. I spent over 6 years working on a range of global multimillion-pound projects covering digital advances, financial crime and Brexit.
After leaving teaching, I missed the feeling of giving something back to society and doing work that really made a difference to people every day. I wanted to work for a company that cared about its employees, as well as the outputs for the end users, stakeholders and clients. I can honestly say that I have found all this and more at Oxford PharmaGenesis. My role predominantly focuses on implementing internal projects to provide better support to client-facing teams in continuing the amazing work they do for our clients. Across the company, there is a real sense that the teams share similar values and work together to achieve a common objective: to help our clients bring evidence-based treatments to patients in areas of unmet medical need.
Oxford PharmaGenesis has a wide range of roles and I would encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. I feel that I have found an ambitious company that continues to do excellent work that is aligned with my own philosophy of giving something back to society.
