Avantika Pathak, PharmD, MS

I attribute my success 110% to my support system. I don't think my successes are just by myself. I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for my parents, my husband, and the folks that believe in you. When you do hit those moments of self-doubt or imposter syndrome or whatever it is, having people who believe in you makes all the difference. My support system has been absolutely essential to everything I've achieved.

The best career advice I've ever received is that if you miss an opportunity, it's not going to define you. It's not going to limit you and what you can achieve. It's not like you missed the boat and that's it, that's who you are now. Instead, believe that a missed opportunity might actually open doors to paths you don't even know existed. That perspective completely changed how I view setbacks and has allowed me to see challenges as opportunities rather than failures.

The advice I would give to a young woman entering my industry, which at the highest rungs is still quite male-dominated, is just believe in yourself. Seek out mentors that can guide you. And if you don't see mentors or don't see people like you in those positions, don't think that it's not a path you can't go on. Become that mentor. Become that person who sets that path for others. You have to have enough confidence in being who you are and standing up for yourself to be able to mentor somebody else.

The biggest challenge we're seeing right now is how to tackle the AI situation. In the strategy consulting world, we're grappling with where AI adds value and where it cannot really replace a human being. The question is how do you partner with AI so that maybe you can get more work done, but you still really need the value of human insight and the human experience in what you're doing and what you're trying to solve for. That's not easily replaceable by AI. I fear that in trying to make healthcare systems more efficient and take burden away from providers, we might negatively impact patients. There's a risk of mistakes happening or things being missed because we're relying too heavily on AI. For example, if AI medical scribes are documenting every word in a patient encounter, insurance companies might deny coverage for things mentioned casually, and the patient ends up suffering with higher out-of-pocket costs. We need to be careful that at the end of the day, we do what's right by the patient, and they shouldn't get caught up in billing scenarios between hospitals and insurance companies.

Communication, being honest, and speaking up for what you believe in are the values most important to me. Standing by what you believe in is something I value quite a lot. Keeping open lines of communication is the best way to go about things. I also believe strongly in advocating for your teammates, especially when you see someone maybe not being supported. That's something we should speak up about, especially as women. Even though I haven't always been able to uphold that because it's intimidating sometimes to be in environments where a lot of the senior folks are men and a lot of the junior ones are women, and you question whether they're doing the right thing. But the more we can advocate for each other, the more we can speak up when we see someone being spoken over or not being heard, the better. A colleague of mine really inspired me to speak up even when you might doubt yourself, and that's become a core value for me.