Expertly Said

Sara Noonan on When a Life Sciences Communicator Becomes the Patient

How might your approach to pharma communications shift if you suddenly found yourself on the patient side? Sara Noonan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraknoonan] has dedicated nearly two decades to building patient communications in rare disease and oncology,  holding roles as the Senior Director of Product and Pipeline Communications for Servier Pharmaceuticals [https://servier.us/] and Director of Public Relations and Investor Relations in the oncology business unit at Takeda [https://www.takeda.com/en-us/]. In this episode, Sara joins Kristen to reflect on how becoming a rare disease patient herself has reshaped her thinking about patient education, advocacy, and what it really means to be "patient-centered."

DeeDee Fisher on Moving Beyond the Reaction in Communication

What if the biggest barrier to effective communication is how quickly we react?  DeeDee Fisher [https://www.linkedin.com/in/deedee-fisher/], founder of Discover Response [https://discoverresponse.com/about/], is a strategic communication leader, executive coach, and entrepreneur with three decades of experience guiding executives and teams to communicate with compassion and clarity. Her speaking and coaching work centers on teaching people to move communication beyond the reaction.  In this episode, DeeDee joins Kristen Sweeney to explain how her Compassion Process Learning framework helps people communicate more effectively.

Kristen Oeltjen-Bruns on Building Culture in a Fully Remote Agency

In a fully remote organization, the hallway doesn't exist. Neither does the break room, the impromptu lunch, or the moment you sit next to someone new in a meeting. So how do you actually build a culture? Kristen Oeltjen-Bruns [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-oeltjen-bruns-bbaa88b] is the US President of Ashfield Medical Communications [https://ashfieldmedcomms.com/], where she leads a 160-person organization working across 20 to 30 client teams. With more than 25 years in medical communications, Kristen has held senior leadership roles at global organizations, where she's overseen large multidisciplinary teams and led organizational transformations. She's passionate about building organizations where teams feel seen, valued, and inspired. In this episode, Kristen joins Kristen to discuss what it really takes to build a strong culture in a fully remote agency.

Sara Zelkovic on Building Patient-Centric Communications Strategies

How can pharma companies build marketing and communications strategies that truly put patients first?  Sara Zelkovic [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-zelkovic-b012648] is a communications leader with more than a decade of experience supporting life sciences and biotech organizations through critical growth milestones. As Associate Director of Research and Development Communications at Astellas [https://www.astellas.com/en/], she leads global scientific communication strategy and drives engagement across the company's gene and cell therapy portfolios. In this episode, Sara joins Kristen to talk about what patient-centricity actually looks like in the day-to-day work of communications.

Eileen Habelow on Curiosity as a Superpower

The best leaders aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones still asking questions. Eileen Habelow, PhD [https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileenhabelow], is the CEO and founder of Leadership-Link [https://www.leadershiplink.com/] and co-founder of Know 2 Grow [https://www.know2grow.com/]. With over 30 years of experience improving the performance of people managers, teams, and leaders across more than 110 companies—most in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries—Eileen helps smart professionals build people expertise grounded in empirical research.  In this episode, Eileen joins Kristen to unpack why curiosity is a leadership superpower and how leaders can model it in the workplace.