1. Can you provide a brief overview of your background?
I grew up in Canada, where my family was the health care provider for 100 miles in rural Reston, Manitoba, a town of a thousand souls: my uncle was the doctor, my aunt the nurse, and my mom and I worked in the clinic. I headed to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Molecular Biology. I had no idea that being a fan of Seinfeld and Law & Order would attract me to the controlled chaos of New York City, and I ended up moving here to work in science publishing and data analytics at Springer-Nature, then at Elsevier, holding product development and management positions, as well as sales and consulting positions in data analytics. My interests also include mindfulness, coaching, acting and improvisation, playwriting and surfing in the Jersey Shore.
2. What has inspired you to take on your current role here at Mount Sinai?
The mix of biomedical science and business was a big draw for me. Being at the cutting edge of innovation where discoveries are made that can vastly improve health on a global scale and translate inventions from the bench to the clinic strongly resonated. It’s purposeful to help foster novel inventions into the health care marketplace where they can make a difference as products that patients and society can use.
3. What impact do you hope to make through your work?
Our team hopes to i) educate our internal and external health care teams and startups on innovation and commercialization best practices, ii) increase the visibility of our innovation ecosystem to facilitate partnerships with academia, industry and investors, and iii) brand and positions new ventures spun out of Mount Sinai. Our outcomes include an expanded technology pipeline, collaborations and sponsored research as well as revenue resulting from new ventures and economic development initiatives.
4. Is there any specific message that you’d like to share with our readers?
Focus on the nexus where your interests, skills and the demands of the workforce or market meet. There were a few jobs I was considering early on, such as research in the industry setting that, looking back, would not have been a good fit for me. Pursue informational interviews with people who have the positions you are interested in. Learn about what they did to get there, how they feel in their current role and what future growth opportunities they see in their industry. Network outside of your department and industry to get an objective perspective of where growth opportunities might lie and discover new horizons that you may not even know exist.
ConduITS is supported by NCATS of the NIH’s CTSA Program. Any use of CTSA-supported resources requires citation of grant number UL1TR004419 awarded to ISMMS in the acknowledgment section of every publication resulting from this support. Adherence to the NIH Public Access Policy is also required.
