Her Story
About Leslie
I've been in pharmaceutical marketing for nearly 20 years now. I didn't set out to work in this field - it was really one of those fate or happenstance scenarios. After college, I wanted to focus on marketing and agency work, and I took a job that just happened to be in the pharmaceutical and life science space. I'm not the most science-y person, and I wasn't in school, but the connection to patients and how these drugs are changing their life for the better has really continued to motivate me through the years. That's my why - the end impact on the patients and how it changes their life. I find pharmaceutical marketing to be so strategic and challenging and impactful overall. I'm just starting a new role now where I'm working to stand up a centralized marketing capability for content and media, so that we can essentially streamline our content and media expertise and help our brands to move forward in the right way. Throughout my career, I've worked at places like Hill Holiday, an advertising agency in Boston, where I did pro bono work for organizations like Boston Healthcare for the Homeless.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Leslie
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice I ever received is go with your heart. Over the course of my career, I've made very strategic decisions about my next steps and my growth and development, and oftentimes you have mentors or leaders who tell you, this is what you should do next, this is what you should do next, and really kind of prescribe that pathway for you. But the best advice was to go with your heart, and sometimes that's not going to be what someone suggests that you do next, but find the things that you love, and the opportunities that excite you, and use your heart to drive yourself forward, and you will always be happy with your decision, and happy with where you are.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The changing marketing landscape over the years is more exciting than anything, though it's not really a challenge. We have to continue to change and evolve in order to keep up with the changing marketing landscape, and what that involves for me is just never being set in the way that we do things. It's being open to evolving and changing and growing how we're thinking about marketing, and how we're thinking about our audiences, and our patients, and the messages that we deliver to them.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Honesty, fairness, and reliability are my core values. I truly value others' opinions, and I don't work in a tunnel. I like to involve other people in what I'm building and what I'm doing, so it's really important to me to make sure that everybody's heard and their feedback is taken into account in terms of shaping something. I think making sure that others' voices are heard and their feedback is taken into account every day is central to how I work.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Massachusetts
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.