Anna Gardell

I've been in the pharmaceutical field for about 10 years now, and I've only been in my current role at Cardinal Health for about 6 months. I'm managing a team of 9 people and helping build a pharmaceutical lab from the ground up. I'm doing a lot of work figuring out regulations and GMP, FDA guidelines, and figuring out how to make sure that we are running efficiently and effectively, and being able to ideally be operational to test stability samples that are on the market currently and being given to patients. I started my career as an analyst in the lab, working hands-on to help scientists test products to prove safety and effectiveness and make sure that they were safe for patients. I was very hands-on and would run a lot of these tests myself. I learned a lot in my former years right out of school, and I was mostly doing analytical development testing. Then I moved into quality control after that, where I started being at a supervisor level and manager level. I was working on medical devices and looking for defects before they would go into patients, so also making sure everything was safe before patient care. I love being hands-on - that's something I've always valued. I was never someone who could just sit at a desk, so I loved being in the lab with my team, learning from them and getting the opportunity to learn. What I loved most about my last job was we were directly trying to treat and cure type 1 diabetes. It was really amazing that my company could take such a problem that people were dealing with, and that we were able to try to help them. That was something I loved most about what I was doing - being able to see this effect on helping other people, listening to their stories, and just being involved and making lives better.