I develop programs that life sciences audiences care about. Sometimes, I get up to speed on a topic where I am not the primary SME and translate that understanding into questions that connect the presenter’s expertise with the audience’s curiosity. To make that connection, I identify the topics, recruit speakers, and shape each event’s flow from end to end.
All seven programs, in order.
Researched six panelists’ backgrounds to develop moderator questions tailored to three topics: science commercialization, fundraising, and founder perspectives.
Researched the speaker, coordinated event logistics, and hosted the full session, from opening remarks and introduction through Q&A and closing.
Defined the event scope, prepared chapter documentation for national submission, and managed logistics, tech checks, and breakout rooms as host.
Developed the program.
Developed moderator questions for the panel.
Conceived the event concept with the speaker, hosted the session, and delivered the introduction.
Developing the program: agenda and discussion questions underway.
Developing and delivering these seven programs has been genuinely rewarding. Selected examples in more depth: the process behind them and the skills I employed.
Women in Bio’s Lunch & Learn series covers a topic of interest to working scientists. This session’s topic, validating next-generation sequencing assays for adventitious agent testing, overlapped with my professional experience scaling up an NGS program. The chapter needed a moderator who could keep a technical presentation accessible and accurate, and who could ask questions to engage a room of scientists through Q&A.
Ahead of the event, I researched the speaker’s technical background, including a published document she contributed to on NGS-based sequencing methods, to prepare well-informed questions grounded in her actual work. I have direct experience in clinical laboratory validation and NGS. This was a subject I already knew firsthand, not one I needed to translate for the first time. I connected with the speaker directly, coordinated logistics for the virtual format, and led a pre-event tech check with the full team to confirm audio, video, and recording consent. I wrote the complete run of show, including my own welcome and introduction scripts, the session’s timing, and prepared discussion prompts to keep Q&A moving if the audience was slow to engage. My clinical background let me prepare a specific comparative question, asking how clinical NGS workflows differ from the biopharmaceutical assay development the speaker now leads. This gave attendees with similar backgrounds a concrete point of connection to the material.
A complete, timed run of show covering the pre-event tech check, welcome and speaker introduction scripts, prepared Q&A prompts, and closing remarks, along with the coordination that aligned the speaker, co-moderator, and session content beforehand.
Event registration page: Women in Bio’s public description of the December 12 Lunch & Learn. (Event page no longer live following Women in Bio National’s CRM migration.)
Run of show: the complete script and planning document I wrote for the session.
I kept seeing the same tension surface in Medical Affairs conversations: MSLs gathering real field insight, documenting it carefully, and hearing nothing back, no sign it shaped a decision or was even reviewed. It was not one person’s complaint, it was a pattern, showing up often enough. Some began to question their purpose in Medical Affairs. The activity was visible while the value it created was not. That was the specific gap I set out to address: not whether Medical Affairs is valuable, but how to make what it changes visible enough to trace.
I conceived of this program as part of a series I created on making impact in Medical Affairs and program management. I developed a place for people to work through those aspirations together. I chose Nicole Krupp, PhD, BCMAS specifically because she had made the same argument publicly, that impact isn’t defined by activity metrics. I reached out to her to frame my proposed event, and she agreed to speak virtually to our WIB group.
I produced a complete run of show for the session, including prepared questions built around the impact-versus-activity tension, and the agenda, which was shared on the registration page. Nicole spoke for 10 minutes and participated in a Q&A and breakout rooms where professional connections were made.
Event registration page: Women in Bio’s public description of the July 9 event, showing the agenda I developed. (Event page no longer live following Women in Bio National’s CRM migration.)
Run of show: the complete script and prepared questions for the session.
LinkedIn recap: my public recap of the session.
Program management spans a real range, from administrative coordination to leading strategic direction. For a scientist evaluating this path, the strategic end of that range runs on exactly the technical judgment a PhD represents, understanding a complex project well enough to make real calls about it, not just track it. This panel was built to make that range visible, and to explore what it takes to move toward the version of the role that keeps scientists engaged with the science.
I built this as the second session in the series I created on making impact in Medical Affairs and program management, and instead of booking one speaker, I assembled a panel spanning a range of paths into the role: Nadia Abdullah, who came into program management through on-the-job experience and a governance focus rather than a formal PMP credential; Savanah Shumaker, trained formally as a PMP; and Theresa Cassino, a PhD who has led senior R&D and portfolio work. Putting people from different points on that range in the same room was deliberate, so the tension could surface in the conversation itself rather than being asserted by a single perspective.
In development.
In development.