My ISPE Annual Experience

By Ivana Vukancic, Assoc. AIA, LEED Green Assoc. Architectural Designer, Blue Bell, PA

The IPS Emerging Professionals group was fortunate to get the chance to go to the ISPE Annual Meeting this year. Our goal was to learn from the experience, network, gain some knowledge on the latest updates in the biopharma industry and to share our experience with IPS and our emerging professionals. To get the most out of our experience, every member of our group that went was partnered with a mentor to shadow during the conference.

It is events like these that give us a chance to grow as emerging professionals through networking, learning from educational sessions and by just talking to our more experienced peers. It is the goal as the Emerging Professionals group to encourage more participation in future events in hopes to create more connections between our emerging and experienced professionals.

From my experience at the Annual Meeting, not only did I learn about the latest in biopharma, but I got a glimpse of the professional world as a whole. As I was talking with my mentor, Jason Collins, at the conference, I learned what to expect and take away from these experiences, what to focus on, and how to approach certain things. I attended as many sessions as possible at the conference to gain more knowledge of our industry, but what really took me by surprise were the presentations by the keynote speakers.

"It wasn’t only knowledge, that I took away from those presentations, it was something much more than that. My motivation and passion towards  what we do as a company grew every minute throughout those presentations."

One presentation in particular that captivated me the most was from Amicus Therapeutics CEO, John Crowley. As Mr. Crowley shared his personal story about the drug company he founded through his struggles and his determination to save his children’s lives, who were diagnosed with Pompe disease, it made me realize the importance of the work we do at IPS. At the end of the day, it is the patients that we are doing all this work for, the people who are struggling with various diseases and are waiting to be cured by a drug that our clients produce. We don’t get the direct contact or connection with the patients at our work, so sometimes we forget what we do all this work really for. We need to be reminded that the work we do helps get medicine to cure, and even save, many people’s lives.

After being so captivated by the heartfelt presentation by John Crowley, our Emerging Professionals group is planning to work on something to roll out to the company to remind everyone regularly of those important reasons why we do what we do at IPS. Mr. Crowley’s life story and how he was able to help save his and other children’s lives, was chronicled in the movie “Extraordinary Measures.” It is a moving, motivational and captivating movie that tells the whole story. It will give you a different perspective on the work you do.

"I am very grateful that I got a chance to sit at the table with our own CEO, Dave Goswami and some of the other great leaders of our company, like Mark Butler and Sterling Kline, during Crowley’s presentation. As we talked about the presentation afterward and about the work we do at IPS, I can confidently say that I feel fortunate to work for a company where I know our leaders really care about the work we do."

On the more educational side of things, something I learned more about that really interests me, was cell and gene therapy. It is a growing field and after talking to some of our peers from IPS, it seems that we will be paying good attention and trying to gain more insight and knowledge in this field, which is very exciting. There are a lot more exciting new things coming our way in our industry as technology progresses, such as Pharma 4.0 and we need to keep an open mind and be willing to learn and adapt to those new changes.

What I took away from my experience at this conference from a emerging professional perspective, is that it is very important to know and gain as much knowledge as possible in the field I work in and to find ways to do it better any way I can. It is also very important to create connections with people that you know can bring value to your work and the company, which is why networking at any event is very important. This is why I would like to encourage all our emerging and experienced professionals to participate in as many events as possible. The IPS Emerging Professionals group will be working to organize some of those events.

At the end of it all we always need to be reminded of the main reason why we do what we do, to keep asking ourselves who we are helping and know that with passion and determination, we can make a difference in people’s lives.