Prescribing a New Career - Navigating the Transition to Pharma with Nerissa Kreher MD, MBA

Transcript YouTube English auto-captions. [Music] hey guys Dr Mike boang welcome to another edition of bootstrap MD the podcast for physici and health here entrepreneurs have you ever thought about a different career outside of medicine we've discussed none clinical careers and one of the ways that you can Branch out into medicine that's not necessarily a non-clinical world is to go in through industry or big Pharma or work for a big biotech company and I have an expert who has done exactly that she's a chief medical officer of a biotech company and a pediatric endocrinologist her transition into the pharmacutical industry occurred earlier in her career and she has now ulated more than 18 years of experience working in biotech and Pharma started career in medical Affairs moved into clinical development and she's experienced including both small to large biotech and both private and public companies recently she's been involved in helping other Physicians to get into the industry into a brand new field that they may not have any experience may have little experience in and has been successfully helping other Physicians into this uh Arena so I'd like to bring to the table and you know what narissa I don't want to mess this up so I'm gonna edit this part make sure I pronounce your last name correctly because I always call you narissa I never call you by your last name yeah yeah it's crayer so rhymes with prayer all right and I want to welcome into the program Dr narissa crer narissa how are you doing I'm great Mike thanks so much for having me great and I've gotten to know you uh you're in our Mastermind physician Mastermind group and how you've been successfully helping other doctors get into this field so I always want to know because certainly I believe this maybe you weren't thinking of this as a career when you were back in medical school or maybe I'm mistaken so maybe just talk about your your you know your background and then what led you to getting into this type of Industry certainly so my understanding of the biotech and pharmaceutical industry really came when I was in my fellowship and there was uh an a pediatric endocrinologist who had actually completed her whole career so she had been a full professor at UCLA and then transitioned into Pharma so I was aware of her but she had a very different trajectory of course than I did so she was sort of a thought leader or key opinion leader and then transitioned so it was very unusual in my understanding at the time that Physicians could transition soon after they had finished their training um I came to the Biotech Industry because a role that I was planning on taking actually in an academic uh role was um eliminated at the time and so I started looking around and through my network one of the sales representatives from the biotech company passed my resume along and that's really how I stepped into that first role in medical Affairs 18 years ago so you actually started up in in Fellowship uh did you feel the need to do c some clinical experience before then I maybe maybe just discuss your feelings because this is often some feelings that I often hear from other phans who get into non-clinical careers yeah so during my fellowship I knew that I wanted to do academic clinical research so I did do a MERS in clinical research during my fellowship but that wasn't with the intent of going into the pharmaceutical industry it was really with the intent of doing academic clinical research um and so what I would say to other phys other Physicians who want to work in industry are considering that transition you don't necessarily need any other training than your medical training so there are people who might have mbas there are people who might have gotten a master's in clinical research like I did but that's not a prerequisite really what we need is that medical clinical knowledge and training to help people make that transition but what initially Drew you into going to this into this uh this field yeah so the original draw was it was a bit fortuitous because I was in this situation of the academic role fell through um I had young kids I needed a job and there weren't a lot of other opportunities for Pediatric endocrinologists where I am in the Boston area and so I really took a chance on going into Fara knowing that at the time I could reverse that decision and go back into academics a couple of years later if it didn't work out so I I think you know I I did take a chance and I think that that speaks to a mindset piece here of being able to take a chance and know that the decision doesn't have to be your final career decision what are some like myths that you think when because I know you work with a lot of doctors they're getting into this field what are some myths that or some misbeliefs that they they should know uh beforehand or or just be aware of before they decide to dip their toe into this yeah so one of the most common myths that Physicians come with is that they need to be of a specific specialty so I'll have people um get on the phone to talk to me and ask questions and they will say things like well I'm not an oncologist or well you know I'm not Fellowship trained and in fact I've been able to help a wide variety of Physicians land roles in the Pharma industry so from internal medicine with no Fellowship training Family Medicine would be another example General Pediatrics all the way through the hematologist and oncologist but if you think about drug development there is active drug development across a wide variety of Specialties and so if people will look at their training look at their expertise then they can help to sell if you will themselves in the interview process um another myth that I commonly hear people say is just misunderstanding job descriptions so they get on LinkedIn they start looking at job descriptions and they see that the companies are are asking for four years five years of Industry experience and they won't apply for those jobs but in fact what I counsel people to do is to apply for any job that's asking for five years or less of Industry experience because obviously if you don't have any experience you're not going to be able to apply for any job so you do have to take a leap of faith and apply for those roles and then when you get the interview again you're selling your experience and expertise and how you can use that in this role that you're applying for what are the benefits for physician to enter big Pharma Biotech Industry yeah so I think of the intellectual benefit being that you're always surrounded by new ideas new thinking lots of innovation you're also surrounded by people who aren't all Physicians so you're learning from biostatisticians you're learning from commercial colleagues you're learning from regulatory colleagues so there's this always ongoing learning opportunity that I think draws a lot of Physicians into medicine in the first place from more practical uh benefits there's typically not call so do have to work on some evenings and some weekends I do have to travel some but I'm not carrying a pager and I'm not on you know a rotating call situation so lots more time Freedom um we don't work on the weekends again I might have to go to a conference or travel but generally speaking our weekends are free to us and then the final thing I would say is in medicine most Physicians are jockeying for trading um Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday or another holiday and in this situation we have all of those holidays off typically um overall as a doctor I wasn't used to asking for help especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine but then I found physician coaches in an instant I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of Life on areas I was afraid to ask dealing with burnout starting a side gig money management even help with my marriage and the best part nearly all experts are Physicians themselves after reading their profile and a quick chat I knew I found the right Mentor for me at physician coaches.com help from [Music] away and then I also assume you're not having to carry some type of Mal practice or is there any type of liability that a a biotch physician should be aware of that's actually a great Point Mike um so we're not practicing medicine so we don't need to have malpractice insurance um there are other types of insurance that a company will have but nothing specific to The Physician necessarily um just because again we're not in charge of any specific patient care so we talked about the benefits but we also have to is there any drawbacks that we should be aware of I'm sure you've dealt with a lot of Physicians who are like I want to do something different they they come to you and you probably realize maybe they're not best prepared for this what are some things that they should be aware of right I'm smiling because there definitely are some things so going back to what I was saying about learning from all of these different kinds of people there is the necessity of recognizing that no longer are you the key decision maker and so I recognize that now with clinical practice there are other decision makers Administration insurance companies Etc but the Physicians still pretty much at the top of the totem pole about a lot of decisions for patients and their recommendations in Pharma and biotech there is cross functional decision making and there may be a time for example when maybe you want something specific in a clinical trial design but for Budget purposes or for timeline purposes you're not able to do that so it does require uh a personality where you can step away from it always being your decision to make and there is uh the requirements for some humility in that um I think the other thing is getting used to corporate um there are differing ways of communicating with people that are not necessarily negative and and actually a good learning experience but it is a different experience than working in a clinical Medical Practice situation now you have mentioned your first job it was basically someone knew you there was some networking involved it didn't sell like there was like an ad you know for this position it was either you knew someone or someone know knows you is that is that correct so that was true and I will say networking is very important when I'm working with uh physician clients we spend time thinking about networking and and that's actually a myth as well people get in their heads about not wanting to bother someone or not wanting to make a mistake networking and so we do spend a lot of time talking about the fact that generally people want to help one another and so networking is really critical but you're right in my situation my first role was part of my network um but I will say you know when this sales representative asked me for my resume I could have said this is crazy there's no way I'm going to get a job you know I'm not going to do that um but I didn't I said okay you know why not give it a try she has an opportunity to share my resume and so again that that mindset of putting yourself out there being willing to potentially fail um and taking a chance really is what helped me land that first role and then in line of networking uh you're in uh Massachusetts you're in Boston the Boston area you know obviously there's a lot of startups and you know Tech um so how is important is it to be in a location that's you know like a Silicon Valley or or something like that versus debuk Iowa and and no offense to any debuk Iowa residence but it's probably not known as a big biotech uh you know area how important is it to be in these fast moving tech tech uh friendly cities sure so I I do think it's beneficial but it's certainly not necessary especially with Co we have seen a real change to uh the ability to work in a remote situation or a hybrid situation so as an example uh a recent example I had a medical director who was living in completely different state and traveled into our offices in the Boston area you know once a month um or something like that so there certainly are more opportunities now for that remote type work um again you know being able to be in the office and be close some companies have gone back to a requirement but I think most have recognized that people can be effective in working from home and are moving more to those models so I guess in in in your experience uh did you have to go into an office every day or maybe since Co has there been more remote uh you know work done that you're able to do from your own home right certainly so in my early days um it was more more typical that you would go in four to five days a week there sometimes was some flexibility for example I would work from home on a Friday uh as an example especially given that I was doing a decent amount of travel in my medical Affairs role um now with covid um the typical situation for many Physicians is one one to two days in an office but flexibility for people who also enjoy working in the office um and you know opportunity if I wanted to be in the office three four days so that amount of flexibility I think is again one of the benefits so if I have a a doctor's appointment for myself or some you know thing I need to manage I don't necessarily have to go into the office every day now we're talking with ner at industry MD coach.com and in your bio you mentioned you also hold an MBA from Northeastern University so how important is it to get an MBA in this type of field yeah so it's not uh and certainly not a requirement um also worth mentioning that it's not a requirement to have a PhD either so sometimes people think you have to be an MD PhD or an MD MBA not at all necessary I actually chose to get my MBA after I was working in the industry I had an opportunity that uh one of my mentors had done this program and wanted me to do it and the company actually um pretty much covered the tuition for that MBA so I was in a a very good situation to have that um covered and I did it because I was very much interested in the business aspects so I wanted to learn more about Finance for example about accounting so that I could be a better partner to some of my colleagues makes a lot of sense now in Pharma of course it kind of runs the gamut you've got your stalwarts right your Merks your Johnson's and Johnson's and then you know there's probably some that are attracted by that hot startup that's that's coming out with some new anti-cancer drug with perhaps you know know uh they've got some Equity positions that they that they want to you know throw your away what what uh what do you recommend for like someone a doctor going in and and they're seeing it and they're deciding which way is there to go because I'm assume you you've dealt with with with both uh you know uh both ways that you can do this right so I started in a larger biotech Pharma company and then I've worked in companies as small as about 25 people um and not even public but still private what I recommend to most of my clients coming in with no experience is that they focus on the larger companies first a couple of reasons for that they're going to get more disciplined Technical Training at those companies where they really learn the we call them Sops right standard operating procedures and how to really do whatever the role is with all of the supporting people around you there are also just more positions in those bigger Pharma companies so your opportunity is better they're hiring more people generally speaking for the smaller companies startups you know the 40 50 100 people companies many of them are going to want Physicians with experience and the reason for that is maybe they only have one phys position higher to even bring on board in a particular year and it's very difficult when you're moving at such a fast pace in a startup to really train someone in all of the things that they need to learn so it's much more typical that someone transitions to that smaller biotech environment after having some larger Pharma experience it's not to say it can't be done but it's just I would say a a more straightforward path and better training ground now you had mentioned earlier uh that you helped you know doctors from different Specialties and I was surprised you mentioned primary care because I always thought that this is a specialty type of you know uh position that that there is are there certain types of Specialties that that uh more caters to uh to a pharmaceutical industry right so what I tell people to think about is um if you think about you know the drugs that are out there or um I'm I'm not a big fan of marketing Pharma products on TV but the drugs that are being advertised on TV right yeah um so oncology is certainly a hot area there's a lot of oncology drug development but there's also drug development in for example Endocrinology right think about all the drugs for type 2 diabetes as an example um obesity now as an example so that's endocrine uh gastroenterology so for UC and Crohn's would be an example right so if you think about those areas that can kind of help you match to the Specialties that are hot uh Immunology would be another one Rheumatology might be another one however the more Primary Care folks they also have some level of expert in these areas right they might not be the person that's getting referred the patient with crohn's but they're involved in diagnosing Crohn's for example so for the generalists they can get roles in medical Affairs they can land roles in what we call pharmaco vigilance or drug safety so drug safety is all about evaluating safety signals and so that really is our clinical and medical knowledge and who is better versed to even learn about a new disease than a physician right so you don't have to necessarily have that specialty training but there are times that it certainly can be helpful to land a specific role now it's always good to see uh you know have an idea uh you know what it what what it would be like to to be in your shoes you know most Physicians you know they're going to the hospital they're going to the the clinic they know they're going to be seeing patients all day working on their EMR and then hopefully going home later that day that's a typical you know day for a doctor what is it for a typical uh doctor in the pharmaceutical industry or is it right yeah right that's a great question um one of the fun things and I think one of the reasons that I've enjoyed working in industry for almost 20 years now is it is different every day uh and actually different every hour so I usually start my day around 8ish um finish my day around 5:30 maybe 6 depending on what's going on uh we do have a number of meetings so depending on the role and what you're doing you might be meeting with colleagues to talk about uh clinical trial design for example or something we call a Target product profile where we're trying to Define what are the characteristics of a drug that we would take forth in development so what kind of efficacy signals would we anticipate what kind of safety signals how much uh drug how often is it dose that those is that's just an example um so lots of meetings I do still travel uh I get to interact with patients in patient advocacy groups um and so that can be very rewarding a attending conferences and congresses so uh one of the perks is actually often you don't have to again kind of barter with people about I want to go to one specific conference and you go to another because we need to cover for each other but you have the opportunity to really stay up to date and attend all the congresses in that specialty area so some travel involved um and you know my meetings can go from working on something oneon-one just individually by myself like a clinical trial protocol to very big meetings where we're strategizing about what three years from now is going to look like so incredibly varied um and sometimes very detailed work and sometimes you know bigger picture type work that's great so I do have to talk about this because it comes up all the time anytime I talk about non-clinical careers and that's pay you know they want to do this but am I going to be making the same amount of of money as a doctor if if if it's less how much less what what's your answer because I'm sure you get this question quite a bit yes I do so I think for the Specialties that are procedural based that do get paid more than Specialties that aren't procedural based sometimes that tradeoff can be difficult to make even with the time save the lack of Call Etc um most of the packages in Industry include a base salary and then a percent bonus that's typically you know they you you make your bonus generally speaking unless there's something really quite catastrophic that's happened and then as you mentioned at the beginning there is equity um from a stock perspective so with that starting around the director level a typical starting salary ball Park would be in the high 200s and then a bonus on that a percentage is going to be probably in the 20% range maybe 25% range in a larger Pharma company so you can see you start to get up into the 300s quite quickly um and so for you know a pediatric endocrinologist for example that tradeoff is easily made for a general pediatrician perhaps that tradeoff is easily made for an orth iic surgeon different numbers we're talking about right and just like as anything you're trading away lifestyle you know you're trading way regular hours more time with the family there there there's always that so you know I I know there's some doctors who who may have like looked into industry and and and a question I I come up with is well you know I see these ads and they're always asking me for experience and I'm let's say my mid career or early mid career I've Just Seen patients what would you what would you answer them for saying you know I don't have any experience or how do they get experience if they're seeing patients all day what would you recommend right so so first I go through with them and highlight that they actually do have experience so their first experience is all of their medical and clinical knowledge about diseases and that's sort of that's what they bring to the table in many of these roles but Physicians also have leadership experience they have management experience because they're leading a team they're managing their team so they often discount that and for whatever reason you know many of us as Physicians we're perfectionists we don't give ourselves credit for all of our experience so I really have to tease that out of people and that's something we do from both a mindset perspective but also specifically get setting that down on their resume um now on the flip side of that what can they do to gain experience I often will suggest that people bring um or or take the opportunity to participate in an IRB for example if they're interested in clinical development that could be something um they could think about trying to participate at the academic level in clinical trials but again that is not necessary um their experience comes from taking care of patients and their clinical knowledge it's very again it's question that that I see come up quite a bit and then finally uh you decided to help other Physicians and you you you now coach Physicians to get into this industry what led you to launch launching industry MD coach right so it was in the thick of covid and it was the way I could help my physician colleagues that I saw in other coaching programs that were hurting that were burnt out that were feeling um scared and I thought that this was a way I could share with them a different opportunity to to use their training and so I put it out into the universe and actually have over the past three years been able to help you know upwards of 75 physicians in some way shape or form with resumés with interview prep um and so I'm I'm really glad that I did that because I have had an opportunity to help my colleagues you share some of maybe perhaps some one or two success stories for people who work with you ah sure I actually this is um I have two favorites one just I got an email from a colleague uh from a client excuse me that um she was she contacted me for interview prep so she was partway through the process and had landed some interviews and so we worked together on interview preparation and in that she wrote recently to say she had landed the role that we were preparing her for and what she learned was that the people she was competing for the role three of them of the four had in industry experience and so she was the physician who actually didn't have industry experience but was successful in getting the offer so I'm super excited for her about that this is a drug safety role um and she'll be working in her area of expertise so um just a a great story um the other story to point out to people how your specialty really really does not matter is a pediatric child abuse specialist so General pediatrician and then did Fellowship training and child abuse so no drug development there right I mean you're really not prescribing anything and she wanted to make a transition um so she has successfully transitioned to a drug safety role uh in contract research organization so I think those are just great stories about how you don't have to have experience and your specialty really uh can be quite agnostic narissa I think this has been very eye openening so if somebody wanted to contact you uh what's the best way for them to get to do that sure so you can find a lot of information on my website which is industry MD coach.com uh I have some free downloads I publish a Blog on a weekly basis I've been doing that for three years years so there's a wealth of information there podcasts like this one Mike that I've participated in um and you can find an email there to uh contact us as well again I think it's G be so helpful so again we're going to end the call right now it's been lots of great information that you've been able to share with our audience uh any last minute advice or or tip that you'd like to give to to our listeners I would just say how important mindset is is in this process and so being confident being able to go in and understand the value you bring is really critical to your success in this process all right well again uh narissa crer thank you for joining us on this give us shedding some light into this big farmer world that many of us are still you know don't know a lot about but uh slowly but surely many Physicians are learning about the benefits about about going into this thank you again and uh thank you for everyone for listening as always you're going to have your ups and downs whether being an entrepreneur or go getting into a new career that you're not aware of do something every single day little day that keep you closer to your goals and [Music] Nissa