Influential Woman · Clinical Research Organization (CRO)

Deborah Thomas

HR Consultant, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

Chapel Hill, NC

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Associate's Degree in Business Administration (1988-1989) Degree Robert Morris College (1.5 years) Degree Central Carolina Community College - Pharmacy Technician Program Degree UNC Accounting Courses Degree Programming Courses Cert Medical Terminology Certification Cert ICD-9 Coding Certification Cert Pharmacy Technician Certificate Cert UNC Accounting Certifications Cert Programming Certifications

Her Story

About Deborah

My journey in clinical research started over 20 years ago when I moved to North Carolina and took a position as an accounting tech at UNC. I honestly just fell into this field - I had no idea what clinical research was at the time. I was doing accounting for physicians, handling their labs and drug studies, and that's how I got introduced to the CRO industry. From there, I worked my way through various roles including project coordinator, safety admin, and doc specialist, always learning new databases and processes because every pharmaceutical company was different. I worked at Duke doing clinical research, and my last position was with Syneos (we were Inventiv before being acquired), where I spent almost 10 years managing patient information for drug studies globally. The work involved everything from ensuring HIPAA compliance to tracking patient safety across oncology, cardiac, and other therapeutic areas. I also worked with IRBs, which are governed by the federal government, making sure everything was documented correctly and that physicians were certified. The biggest challenges were learning all the different databases and working with people globally with language barriers, but I had an amazing team and great management that made it work. I trained a lot of new co-workers, giving them the guidance I didn't get when I started. Currently, I'm working at Cole Haan after being laid off, but I still carry all that knowledge about how drugs go from clinical trials to the commercials you see on TV.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Deborah

01What do you attribute your success to?

I think the people that I worked with, you know. This last job, we started out with, I think, 23, 24 people, and we were all global, and we were all connected over Teams, and we just worked together. I think a lot of us, when we all started, we all taught each other what we were doing, because there was a big shift in the processes, and nobody knew what they were doing, so we all worked together to come up with processes. Really, a lot of it was just our team, and just good management. I had a really good manager and a director, so a lot of it was just really our team and just good, just good management.

02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

I don't know that I was ever given any advice, but I think I had to learn patience. I would have to say it would really have to be patience, because I also trained a lot of the new co-workers that came onto our team, giving them a lot of the things that I didn't get when I first started in the role that I was in. I was just sort of thrown in, and you had to figure it out by yourself, but just being patient with the people that you were training, because a lot of times they had no idea what they were doing, the databases, what their processes were, and they were all new, and I can remember being new coming in. So just having patience with people, and guiding them and just being there for people.

03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

It's so different now from what it was when I first started. They don't have - they've got a lot more to work with than I did. They do things so differently now. A lot of their processes are cut short, and a lot of the processes that we had and we had to go through are being followed now. They have AI and all of these other databases and things in place that we didn't have, so it's really hard for me to give them any advice, because they have so much more available to them. But I would say, just do well. Just take in, really, all the information that you can get, just take it and run with it.

04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

I think, for me, friendship is the most important thing. Being close with people and caring about people. That's the biggest thing, I think, for me. You have to have relationships with the people that you work with, and the people that you live with, so I would just think relationships are really important.

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