Q&A: Anita Vila, Sr Mgr. Product Management with Amazon Pharmacy

After working at Dell Computers, @Anita Vila never anticipated she would go into healthcare. Anita found the space of healthcare advanced analytics and technology during her PhD in Industrial & System Engineering (ISE) at NC State University when she met Dr. Julie Ivy. Anita was amazed at the work being done at the intersection of engineering and healthcare and the opportunity to partner directly with clinicians. For the last 15 years she has been fortunate to work in areas critical to healthcare delivery including pharmacy, oncology, value-based care, and clinical trials. While varied, the mission has been the same - to improve patient outcomes at scale. Anita joined Amazon Pharmacy at the end of 2021 where she is a Senior Manager of Product Management responsible for prescription acquisition, processing, and customer service.?

What brings you passion/excitement to your role and team??I have been at Amazon for almost 6 months and am truly excited about being here.?My team has a tremendous opportunity to build products that help our customers transfer their prescriptions, get their medications safely, and provide excellent customer service.?We not only serve Amazon customers but our internal operations teams who use our products every day to do their critical jobs.?In my role, I am passionate about building partnerships across our teams of product, engineers, designers, pharmacists and operations to pioneer new capabilities that will make healthcare more accessible and transparent to all.

What do you do for fun/ work-life balance??We now live in Raleigh, NC and have two kids, ages 9 and 13.?As the pictures show our family has the travel bug.?Since the pandemic we rediscovered the North Carolina mountains and spent a lot of time hiking, finding breweries, and exploring. In Raleigh I have an amazing running group that for ~12 years, with the exception of when we lived in San Francisco, see each other 2-3 mornings a week for a pre-work run.?This might not be everyone’s definition of fun :) But for me being active is a key piece to feeling balanced.??

????* What is your favorite leadership principle and why??“Earns Trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team's body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best. “ In complex, highly cross functional areas like healthcare Earns Trust is one of my favorite leadership principles.?It relates back to how as a leader you must create the partnerships that are required to be successful in our business.?It is also intertwined with being able to demonstrate so many of the other LPs like ownership and delivers results.???

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are reflective of employee personal experiences