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October 13, 2004.
Moderator: Ruth Shoemaker

PRESENTERS
Ms. Deborah D. Goldberg - Senior Sales Specialist, Eli Lilly and Company.
B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania (1993).  M.S.Ed in Higher Education Administration from the University of Pennsylvania (2001)
Mr. Derek B. Brown - Health Promotions Coordinator, the SafeGuards Project LGBT Health Resource Center
M.S.W. (Master’s degree in Social Work) from the University of Pennsylvania (2001) with a concentration in Macro Social Work.
Dr. Amelia R. Klein - Division Director, JFK CMH/MR Center.
B.A. in Pre-Med and Biology from Temple University (1978).  M.A. of Family Therapy from Hahnemann University (1984).  M.S.W. and D.S.W. (Doctorate in Social Work) from the University of Pennsylvania (1996).
Ms. Sharon Patent -Director, Consulting Strategy, NDC Health
B.A. in Biological Basis of Behavior with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania (1987).  M.A. in Applied Statistics from the University of Michigan (1989).

Concluded with Q & A

PRESENTATIONS

Ms. Deborah D. Goldberg

DECIDING TO WORK IN SALES

• My husband, a medical student, gave me the idea.  It turned out to be a cross-section of what I enjoy doing.

GETTING A POSITION IN SALES

• Sales and education are the two parts of the job.  I interviewed with several companies and ended up with Lilly.  There were 250 applicants for one job. 
• It helps to come from a good school, be gregarious and outgoing and have good grades.  They are not looking for science experience.  They want to know if you can talk to other human beings.
• College students tend to not know how to convey or express their desires.  Practice with your friends until you are confident in interviews.  Required GPA is 3.0+ and a bachelor’s degree.  Exhibiting a competitive nature and/or humanistic interest through extracurricular activities is also good.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF A SALES POSITION

• You are best friends with your car.  Usually I get into my car at 8 AM and drive around doctor’s offices and health centers educating people about mental health, how pervasive it is, and what resources are available to help it.  I do not call on the same people every day. 
• I have quotas, so it is like owning your own small business.  It is a cross between business and healthcare.

PERKS

• They give you a car, laptop and cell phone, for work only though.
• I’ve been with Lilly for 4 years, and they are paying for my doctoral degree in Psychology.  Doing sales will help you get into medical school because the doctors you know will write you a recommendation.
• The pharmaceutical industry in general is great for women.  You can do part-time work during pregnancy while keeping your benefits, car and cell phone.  It does not cut you off from earning commission.  Managers can job-share during pregnancy. 
• 401(k) and pension plans are usually adequate.  What that means is that you can retire at 55.
• You take clients out to wine and dine often, but it is still hard work.  On Tuesday, for example, I left at 7:30 AM and got back home at 10:30 PM.  I got to eat at good restaurants, but it is a non-traditional lifestyle.  You’re home every night, which is a welcome difference from consulting.

Mr. Derek B. Brown

BACKGROUND

• When I graduated, I had bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Japanese studies.  So the question became, “what are you going to do with that?” 
• I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.  I took time off to figure it out, working odd jobs and traveling.  I applied for a PhD in Clinical Psychology after a year and dropped out after a month because the ideology behind Clinical Psychology wasn’t for me.

NON-PROFIT JOB

• After graduating from Penn, I worked for a non-profit in Philadelphia called the Mazzoni Center helping people who were possibly HIV-positive but didn’t know it.  I did this for 6-8 months.

GOVERNMENT JOB

• I worked with the city of Philadelphia for the past two and a half years.  I assisted planning groups responsible for directing funding that comes into the city from the federal government.  I did literature reviews and monitored the quality of the agencies implementing the service, along with some other responsibilities.

SECOND NON-PROFIT JOB

• I just started a month ago as a manager with the Family Planning Council (FPC), so I went from non-profit to government to non-profit, and I like the non-profits better. 
• For the FPC, I test and pilot new models for behavior change and go out to train organizations to use the successful ones.  I also run a training center for providers in the area to teach culturally competent care.  I am also a consultant for the Health Federation of Philadelphia working specifically with HIV/AIDS issues.

WHAT TO DO OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS

• Talk to parents’ friends or whoever has the job that you’re looking for. 
• Find out what it is about that field that interests you.  I spent the past five years figuring out what that is for me and figuring that eventually I’ll go for a PhD. 
• Take the time to figure out what you want to do with your life so that you don’t make rash decisions.

Dr. Amelia Klein

BACKGROUND

• I was a pre-med undergraduate from Temple who wanted to be a doctor since childhood. 
• After not getting into med school, I taught for two years in Philadelphia.  I enjoyed the job, but it made me sad that after my students left the classroom, I wasn’t changing their lives.  So I began to think about working with families. 
• I decided to start my M.A. in Family Therapy at Hahnemann University.  I had no social work or psychology background, but I graduated and got the job that I am doing now, working with heroin and cocaine addicts.  My thesis work was done with that population.

CAREER

• I got a Psychiatric Service Coordinator position, combining my academic knowledge with first-hand experience in the emergency room. 
• I was in charge of programs that enhance access to psychiatric care.  The job grew into supervising senior case managers who were on individual cases. 
• That job grew into the Division Director’s job, which targets seriously mentally ill people in their residences, helping people who were in hospitals come into the community and develop independent living skills.

THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL WORK

• Social work provides the opportunity to help the healing process and facilitate change in a more holistic fashion. 
• Follow your passion, look inward and ask yourself what it is about medicine that attracts you.  Once you decide that, you can do it in a number of different ways. 

Ms. Sharon Patent

 BACKGROUND

• I had no idea what to do after March of senior year.  I had ruled out medical school after sophomore year.  I sat down with a mentor and worked out what I wanted to do.

DECIDING ON A PLAN

• I liked pharmaceuticals, but not pharmacology. 
• I had a part-time job in a market research company that I didn’t think was relevant, but I took a full-time job there at the recommendation of my mentor to find out what I wanted to do.  I learned that data analysis was my favorite part of the job. 

FURTHER EDUCATION

• I wanted to work with data more often, so I got a master’s in Applied Statistics.  I got a job straight out of my masters with a pharmaceutical company.  I had Biology and Statistics degrees, and I was hired into marketing. 
• I worked in internal consulting for the marketing department.  I am now in consulting.  I went from Programmer to a Sales position.  We are the connection between managed care companies and pharmacies, and we collect data from all of them and work with that data.

SUGGESTIONS

I have been a hiring manager before, and here are my suggestions to job-seekers:

1. Be prepared.
2. Be proactive.
3. Know exactly what you’re going to do on the job.
4. Be interested in learning something new from the job.

Q&A

Key

D: Deborah Goldberg

B: Derek Brown

A: Amelia Klein

S: Sharon Patent

Q: What’s the public health aspect of the School of Social Work?

B: Academically I’m a social worker but experientially I do public health.  One of my plans is to attend a social welfare school that has a public health school in it.  If you’re considering two different fields without doing a dual degree, pick a school that lets you take courses outside of your school.

D: The Fels Center and the Wharton School have public health courses.  Undergraduates can take master’s degree courses if they have an interest.

Q: What’s the timeline of your (Amelia Klein) work?

A: After getting my B.A., I taught for two years, then attended Hahnemann, then attended Penn in 1992 for a M.S.W. (Master’s of Social Work) and D.S.W. (Doctor of Social Work)  I got a D.S.W. because I saw a three-pronged career for me: community mental health, teaching and having a private practice.  The most marketable degree in social services is M.S.W.  You don’t need a D.S.W. unless you want to teach. 

Q: I want to go to med school, but I want to take time off beforehand.  In terms of your jobs, what’s the time commitment you have to make?

D: There’s no contract in pharmaceutical sales, but on average pharmaceutical companies spend $250,000 to train you in the first three months so they aren’t looking for people who plan to leave in two or three years.  There are people who come into pharmaceutical sales planning to go to med school, and a good chunk of them don’t end up going. 

B: In my experience, you really get out what you put in.

A: Strategically, going to med school directly is important.  Once you do business, you’ll be less likely to want to give it up.  But if you still want work experience, choose a job that enhances your med school application.  Try to do something that makes you feel that you will be a better doctor.

D: Having my job won’t make it easier to get in to med school, other than your doctors writing you recommendations.  Pharmaceutical sales is not good to do for just eight months. 

Q: Which employers pay for grad school?

All: Almost all major pharmaceutical companies will, but mostly based on the grades you get in class and your performance at work.

A: We have a union at my place and the union kicks in a certain amount of money.

P: A lot of non-profits will pay you for education because they can’t pay you in salary.  It’ll say so in the benefits package.

S: You could also work for a university to get free classes.  At Penn, for instance, employees get access to 6 classes a year.

D: And starting at Penn doing research is a great way to get into research at a major pharmaceuticals company.

Q: What’re some examples of clinical work in the pharmaceutical field?  How do you go about getting there?

S: It depends on which field.  Pharmaceuticals will have every piece of science somewhere in the building.  Many biotech, big pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organizations provide research experience.  Getting in isn’t hard, so it’s just a matter of knowing what job you want and going after it.  Having Penn on your resume will get you into a lot of places.

D: Deciding between science and sales is important.  That’ll tell you about the importance of going to grad school, because in sales you don’t necessarily need a degree but you do in research.

Q: Do you train your staff in Spanish?

A: No, but that’s a good idea…

B: There’s a critical shortage of bilingual people in public health.

D: There’s only one mental health center in the whole of Philadelphia that does Asian foreign languages.  They have one therapist and one physician and they have an enormous population to serve.  They’re always trying to find people with Asian language background.

Q: Is research experience easy to cross over into business?

S: Market research was easy to use in business.  In grad school, I worked in market research and that experience opened up more doors than I expected.

D: It’s all about marketing yourself, really.

Q: What can I do with a Psychology B.A.?  I’m bilingual.

A: At my organization, you would probably come in as a Mental Health Worker One at a salary that you probably wouldn’t be interested in, maybe around $20,000/yr.  You may be running groups or doing intensive case management for $31,000/yr, but they’re on call 24/7 and they are among the highest paid people at my center.  With a B.A. in Psychology, you could do intensive case management and that would entail engaging people who are severely challenged and linking them to services in the community.  After a time (6 months), the union does tuition reimbursement for a master’s degree.

B: It’s about the same in the non-profit field.  You could work on demonstration projects as outreach worker, making around the same salary ($31,000/yr).  Being bilingual is a huge plus, though.

A: Being bilingual won’t help your pay at my place because it’s unionized and the jobs are all ategorized and salaried.  But you’d be more desirable than a non-bilingual person in the hiring process.

B: Some non-profits will take people into a coordinator position, managing some field workers.

Q: What do you do in healthcare consulting?  Did you like it?

S: There are a lot of different kinds of consulting.  There is traditional consulting, such as what McKinsey does.  It’s good because consulting is applicable to any kind of job you’ll do later in life.  I do similar things within the healthcare field.  It’s a very broad field.

D: A master’s is required for traditional consulting.  Specialized degrees are required after a certain point in the consulting field.  Look at which consulting firms have specialized branches.

S: Part of my master’s degree was consulting classes.  There are programs that offer training in consulting.

Q: My experience has been that the difference between academe and industry is that industry has less job security.  Is that always the case?

D: It depends on what company you work for.  I, for instance, wouldn’t work for Pfizer because they are a great marketing firm but not a research firm.  A company with a good R&D department gives you higher job security if you are a researcher.

S: Don’t underestimate what you can find out from a company’s annual report.  The percentage of money they plow back into Research and Development (R&D) and things like that tell a lot.  Pharmaceutical companies have a tough time firing, because R&D is usually not downsized.  Checking out clinical research organizations is not a bad idea either.

D: The National Institute of Health is good to grow in, and their jobs for people with bachelor’s degrees are good.  They fund tons of projects all the time.  Although the pay is not great, it’ll open doors for you.

Q: What are the advantages of government employment?

B: The availability of resources.  Access to intelligent people, lots of funding, job security.  Disadvantages are how political it can be, and sometimes others’ agendas could supercede yours.

Ruth Shoemaker: Penn Career Network is also a good way to network with Penn alums that are in the field that you are interested in.