Career transition Q&A: From academia to Medical Affairs at J&J
Earning a Ph.D. in medicine is usually a path to making research, rather than clinical practice, the focus of your career. But Erica M. had other ideas. She hoped to not only “drive positive outcomes,” in her words, but directly impact the lives of patients worldwide.
Find out why the Senior Medical Advisor, Medical & Scientific Affairs made the jump from academia to industry in the following Q&A. Her story hints at what’s possible when you join our team at J&J.
Q: How has J&J supported your learning and growth?
A: J&J provides you with an individualized development plan tailored to your career goals and aspirations. You’ll also be empowered with amazing resources, tools, mentors, managers and what we call “GROW Gigs”—short-term stretch assignments—that can help you grow, learn and evolve at every stage of your career.
Q: What skills do you think have contributed the most to your success since joining?
A: I’ve made multiple career transitions during my time with J&J, working across a variety of functions and therapeutic areas. But I think three core competencies have consistently served me well.
- Leadership: You have to be able to motivate and lead teams. When you foster a collaborative culture, people feel empowered and tend to step up and do their best work.
- Collaboration: Strategies tend to be more robust when you have many different perspectives in the room. In these kinds of trusting and collaborative environments, it's easier to debate and exchange bold ideas.
- Adaptability: The ability to adjust to changing circumstances, and to quickly acquire new skills, is crucial in such a fast-moving industry. In your career, as in life generally, you have to be persistent, adaptable and resilient to overcome obstacles and forge ahead.
Q: What stands out to you about workplace culture at J&J?
A: It’s a culture that upholds authenticity, trust and integrity. We’re all about collaborating and leveraging diverse skill sets and perspectives to solve complex problems. We use this approach because it’s good for our patients, on the one hand—it enhances our collective capabilities. But on the other, it also benefits us individually, because everyone on the team feels valued and heard.
Q: Do you have any advice for people who, like you, might be interested in transitioning from academia to industry?
A: First, identify and leverage your transferable skills. In my interview and on my resume, I was able to effectively highlight knowledge—of medicine and science, for example—and skills—communication, project management, critical thinking and so on—that tied my postdoctoral research experience to what I’d be doing at J&J.
Second, make use of your professional network. It's an open door to opportunity, and people with experience in the field can typically have valuable perspectives, not to mention more nuanced insights, to offer. Personally, I reached out to many people in the industry before I decided to make the transition. And now that I’m at J&J, I try to serve as a touchpoint for people in academia who are considering similar moves of their own.
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