Her Story
About Amy
These days it's Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. When I'm working on the events, which is what I'm doing now, I do everything kind of soup to nuts to organize these leadership innovation forums. That's everything from scouting out ideas of what's up and coming in the med tech world, and in particular in what we call closed-loop systems, which is the hardware-software technology for diabetes management, to interviewing and talking to potential speakers. I do actually a lot of the presentations myself around updates on what's happening in this world. I interface a lot with this DIY community, so there is a whole community of makers out there, people who have sort of taken the diabetes technology into their own hands and are kind of tinkering with it and building better solutions. People say my job is as a convener, basically, to bring these people together and have these sort of candid conversations and interactions that really spur change. What's been really exciting coming out of these events, which I've been doing since 2011, is that there are very tangible results from these meetings, like people getting hired, advisory boards getting put together, pilot projects, different collaborations. After every single event, I get amazing feedback from some of the startups saying they are now found partners to collaborate with, or they found investors through the connections made at these events that I do.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Amy
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I guess, I'm trying to remember who told it to me, but it's sort of become my mantra, is, like, whatever you're doing, be a troubleshooter. Like, just be in troubleshoot mindset all the time, because that's kind of how life is, and that's certainly how your career's gonna be. There's always gonna be things that need to be fixed and tweaked, and you kind of need to be ready with this sort of fix-it mentality of, okay, how can we make this work?
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The most important thing to do is, like, keep connected to the patients. I don't care whether you end up working in a research position or in marketing for some company that does medical devices. You have to keep your mindset aligned with the people who are out there in the real world, suffering from these conditions, and wearing these devices, and trying to use this software on a day-to-day basis. You cannot get sucked up into, sort of, corporate speak and thinking about these products like you would consumer products that you just want to market to people. You have to remember that people's lives are on the line when you're talking healthcare, and you need to have an understanding of their mentality.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Big companies have big company issues, they get very insulated from the end user experience, and that's sort of been a soapbox of mine over the years. In my presentations, I used to often show the marketing photos of some of these diabetes devices, and then the actual photos of them, people wearing them on their skin. Believe me, it's quite different. I think it's very easy to get kind of wrapped up in the organization and the business priorities and kind of lose sight of the end goal, and of what the real-world experiences are with these treatments and devices. Social media has absolutely exploded, and taking that, being a social media native and bringing that into the corporate world is a really powerful thing these days. The companies I'm aware of, whether they're startups or more established med tech companies, they are looking for people who are really savvy with social media. It's all about authenticity, too, making sure that whatever you're putting out there is really speaking to the community.
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