Amy C. Moore, Director of Patient Engagement and Advocacy at Summit Therapeutics, Inc., shared a post on LinkedIn:
“A lot of people come to me seeking career advice. They want to understand the path I took from getting my PhD to building a career in advocacy.
First, I say my path is not reproducible. While I have had moments of strategy, there have been plenty of moments of serendipity. But I also have strengths in identifying gaps where I can add value and am adaptable.
Originally, like most graduate students, I saw myself going into academia. Along the way, I met my spouse while both of us were pursuing PhDs in virology.
My first strategic moment was going into cancer research as a postdoc to try to create some diversity between us scientifically to increase our chances of staying in academia. The second was cultivating an additional set of skills as a postdoc by becoming president of the postdoc association.
Through that role, I gained experience sitting on different committees at an academic medical center, seeing behind the curtain of research administration.
By the time my husband and I were interviewing for faculty positions, the economy was in decline, and it was the classic ‘two-body problem‘ – one of us would get an offer that would be terrible for the other and vice versa. Eventually he received an offer for a faculty position we couldn’t refuse – it was perfect scientifically and geographically, close to family.
That left me to sort out – ‘what now?’
I searched Google until I found an organization that was seeking to improve cancer outcomes in GA by recruiting leading cancer researchers across the state’s academic institutions. It was a small team, and none of them had a formal science background.
That was the gap I knew I could fill – as a PhD-trained scientist I could ‘speak the language‘ to fellow researchers while also translating their work for the funders (in this case state legislators and leaders in the business community).
For a decade, I helped oversee this statewide cancer initiative that was ultimately absorbed by a related organization that sought to grow the state’s economy through technology-based development using a similar strategy of recruiting leading scientists to the state’s universities.
Along the way, my husband launched a startup company that took our family to CA. There was no equivalent organization to the one where I had been in GA, so I once again had to be adaptable. That was where the serendipity happened. I stumbled upon an opportunity with what at the time was the Bonnie J. Addario, Lung Cancer Foundation (now known as GO2 for Lung Cancer) to oversee their science and research portfolio.
I knew I could bring the skills I learned in GA translating science for non-scientists to this work, and it turns out the role filled a gap in me: I could see the immediate and tangible value of the work, helping people impacted by a lung cancer diagnosis. The role became my North Star: science in service of people.”
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