Apr 2, 2018
In this episode, Jackie Boyle of ThePharmacyGirl.com blog interviews Becky Winslow, PharmD, CEO of GENEious Rx, LLC. Dr. Winslow has her Bachelor of Science in Biology and her Doctor of Clinical Pharmacy degrees at Campbell University and a graduate certification in pharmacogenomics as well as her pharmacogenomics educator certification from the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Pharmacy. For over 20 years, Dr. Winslow has directed clinical pharmacy programs and pharmacy operations in retail, hospital, public health, and long-term care pharmacies. As well, she is a serial entrepreneur having owned several businesses. She now works both in the US and internationally as a pharmacogenomics educator and a business strategy consultant for businesses seeking to integrate and/ or scale a pharmacogenomics program. Dr. Winslow describes her passion for helping patients by using precision medicine and her story of being a pioneer in the field of pharmacogenomics.
inGENEious RX provides pharmaceutical business strategic planning and implementation for organizations operating within the healthcare delivery industry. We specialize in designing customer specific clinical and financial workflow models which incorporate genomics testing actionable data. We provide our clients with comparative market analysis, risk analysis/mitigation strategy, go-to-market strategy and operational best practice consulting essential to establishing a scalable framework of processes, tools, data, and quality that are a catalyst for sustainability and growth in the emerging precision medicine industry. We are committed to utilizing evidence based and results driven innovation in pharmaceutical care delivery to provide proven optimal health outcomes while achieving proven high return on financial investment. inGENEious RX maintains the highest standards in quality, ethics and transparency in genomic medicine by utilizing only certified and reputable vendors for the provision of services.
Full Transcript:
welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast with your host Tony Guerra the pharmacy leaders podcast is a member of the pharmacy podcast network with interviews and advice on building your professional network brand and a purposeful second income from students residents and innovative professionals alright so welcome everyone to the next episode of the pharmacy leaders podcast my name is Jackie Boyle from the pharmacy girl and today I'm so excited to have dr. Becky Winslow with us dr. Winslow has her Bachelor of Science in biology and her doctor of clinical pharmacy from Campbell University she also has graduate certification in pharmacogenomics as well as a pharmacogenomics educator certification from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy for over 20 years she has directed clinical programs and pharmacy operations in retail hospital Public Health and long-term care pharmacies as well she is a serial entrepreneur and has owned several businesses which is really exciting she now works both in the US and internationally the pharmacogenomics educator and a business strategy consultant for businesses seeking to integrate pharmacogenomics into their business so Becky we are so excited to have you with us on the pharmacy leaders podcast welcome thank you so much for having me on today I'm excited about this also great well Becky really want our readers to get to our listeners to get to know you a little bit better so can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are in such a great area of pharmacogenomics absolutely you know no path to leadership and influence and your ultimate career goal no path is a straight linear shot so my story is the same I've always had an upward climb in mind but you know I've always incorporated whatever the situation was at the moment did the best with what I was in and was still having my end goal in mind so I actually started working in a pharmacy in my rural hometown in North Carolina when I was 15 and I learned the value of providing medical and pharmaceutical health information for patients in the community right where they live so I went on to get my graduate degree in pharmacy from Campbell and having to pay off graduation loans I did go straight into retail and the one thing there is that the person that was looking to employ me wanted me to be a floater within their pharmacy chain and I started standing up for myself then I'm just letting right then and there let them know that I wanted to have a relationship with my patients so I was able to successfully negotiate actually being the pharmacy manager at a store near my hometown and really this was a great experience because I knew people and so they came to see me in that place and from there I started working with the local health department as you mentioned I went into hospital pharmacy long-term care and in the background I had my own consulting business going on and five years ago I decided to expand my career and an innovative build a pharmacy that I felt was up-and-coming and really gave me the challenge that I typically seek to learn something new and be able to apply it so that's how I got to the point I am right now well I love hearing about everyone's different career paths and I know yours is an especially cool one in my opinion in front Oh genomics I feel like we're just at the beginnings of of it but you're you were kind of pioneering the way her for the rest of us so so it sounds like your leadership journey has been a very interesting and exciting one can you tell us has it been any different as a woman leader or have you faced anything challenging throughout that pathway that you've overcome well absolutely like I mentioned you know I didn't have a straight well in my mind I had a straight path but getting there hasn't always been straight I feel like as a woman I've just had to maybe stand up for myself a little bit more or just maybe have myself heard so that I have been able to push my career forward and be able to basically sell myself as capable and someone to go to someone that would serve an organization will and while I have been in competition with males like yeah I guess you would call it competition you know I've just had a great rapport with people and that starts with you know believing in myself and believing that I can do the job so you know I don't feel like I've ever been turned down for a job because I was female or anything quite that blatant but I do feel like as a woman I recognized that I needed to be maybe more aggressive in seeking out the positions in the places that I wanted to be so having the confidence in yourself but then also taking that initiative to maybe step into a different roller and new and exciting pathway that pushed you to that next level exactly so as I was discussing with one of my girlfriend just yesterday in reference to this podcast you know um I applied for jobs that I didn't always meet all the ticks on the list or what they were looking for you know no one is perfect and what I was able to relate to my interviewer or the job the person post another job was that I may not have exactly all the experience that you've listed here but what I am is determined I'm dedicated and when I put my mind to it I can I can do what I want to do and so you know basically repurposing skills from jobs that it may not have had the same title but being able to repurpose those skills and experiences I head into the new position has been has been a key to obtaining the positions that I've gotten I'm so glad you brought up that that interesting aspect of you know maybe we don't always meet and this is for any candidate really we don't always meet exactly what is on the you know wish list of a job description but certainly other experiences could apply to certain situations and I know we brought this up early on another episode but women are actually you're going against the statistics of women waiting to apply usually wait to apply until we meet 110 percent of all or 120 percent of all of the requirements but what we really need to start applying when maybe you know this is gonna stretch us a little bit out of our comfort zone and that's okay mm-hmm so thank you for being a great example yes I mean I love a new challenge so to me it's I guess you know given excitement in helping me to you know continue to use the skills I have but apply it maybe in a little bit different situation so yeah that's definitely important when you're moving up in leadership absolutely so Becky what do you think are some misconceptions about leadership or what makes a great leader I feel like some people may may not think of themselves as a leader or maybe they don't want their maybe think that it's more responsibility but I think what you have to realize is that as a leader you don't one of the misconceptions is that you're gonna have to do all the work absolutely all the responsibility is on your shoulders but you know part of being a good leader is having a good team and shaping and molding their team and you know a misconception about leadership is that you're going to deal out what each person does and maybe there may be some misconceptions about having to micromanage people and such to make sure that the roles are being fulfilled but you know a true leader recognizes people for their talents puts them in the correct positions and sells them that they can do the job and really leading through encouraging and building people up to know and empower them with the knowledge that they can do the job and they can do it well and with a team effort we'll all be great and you know part of that is not wanting all the recognition for what may be the people that are working with you're doing but definitely letting the people surrounding you that we work with you know making them shine and pointing them out and saying you know I can't do this without a great team around me so absolutely I think sometimes perhaps as pharmacist we might you'll be I know I'm not a type-a I kind of wish I was but I'm not and we might be hanging on to all of the you know we might not feel okay with letting go of the control but trusting in others that they they can do it and maybe even helping them build new skills yes they didn't have before it's certainly a sign of great leadership in my opinion too well for instance when I was the hospital pharmacy director for a rural hospital in Eastern North Carolina I was the one and only pharmacist so I was the pharmacy director I was the South pharmacist I was the PMT committee lead I were so many hats so it was critical that I was able to recognize the skills that my team a head that could make me be or free me up to be able to do the job that I needed to do so you know this thing up my technicians recognizing what skills they have and you know not feeling like I need to control every minute because they've proven that they are good at their job and if they can do the job so that's been very important as I've gotten into larger organizations really and that's certainly an interesting perspective to have were you a critical access hospital we were something almost all rural hospitals are we we weren't designated as such but we really were a transition hospital you know we basically patched people up and sent them on to larger facilities and such and you know handled regular common chronic conditions so yes that was the reason for the low staff rate and the purpose of wearing multiple hats and yeah really I learned really fast to count on those in my team when I was in that situation wonderful things for sharing that with us so we've talked a little bit about challenges and misconceptions but what about the positive aspects of leadership where do you see opportunities for growth or some really great things about leadership that you wanted to share with others I feel like as women leaders especially we have an innate emotional you know we can lead with just the comfort that we can offer to people and you know being the emotional creatures that we are having those having the relationships with the people that seek guidance from you having those relationships with your network where they know that you know someone in your network knows that they can contact you and I feel like this is a this puts women ahead of the game because we are able to think of maybe others on a deeper level and you know just offer that I guess that support and that connection with people and the natural nurturing tendencies yeah totally feel like yes so thinking back when you were young what are some things you wish you would have told yourself about your career or leadership or some big things that you wish you would have known I feel like if I had realized a long time ago that I don't have to be perfect to be successful I don't have to be perfect to help others that it you know it's okay for me to define what perfect is and maybe it's not the same perfect as everyone else's that perfection is really something that can would hold me back from really being able to achieve what I wanted to achieve and being able to I guess maybe accept that you know I can not have the what I've considered the perfect path or it didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it to or saw how it was going to happen but that it still turned out well and I was still effective and I still contributed to what I was assigned to do I love that message and I know in my faculty role I try to bring it back to students because sometimes it seems like well oh there's this checklist that here's how my career is gonna go and I'm gonna do pgy 1 and then 2 and then I'm gonna in this first job and this is what the job is going to be just trust you know just in the process but what it wasn't interesting an awesome career path that each person has and that most of it they could have never I know even I have been in practice for six years now and I couldn't even have predicted these six years exactly you know you know if I had have known back then to accept and accept what's happening today and just know that and have the confidence and myself to know that I can handle it and it's going to turn out okay and heck it may lead me to something better or a better path or you know closed closed doors are not always a bad thing they can send you in another direction that just turns out better than you could have ever imagined absolutely so I want to dive a little bit deeper into pharmacogenomics so how did you get into this career path or where did you first get exposed can you tell us a little bit more about how he started in this area of Pharmacy sure about five years ago I what honestly was at a point in my pharmacy career where I had a left long term care I was doing consulting on my own and I was really I decided to take some time to do some soul-searching and think about what I wanted you know why did I originally go into pharmacy what were my goals I wanted to help people get better be healthy and I felt like at that time and I still feel some today that our health system in the u.s. is really concentrated on sick care and only treating people once they're sick or after they've had an event an adverse drug reaction or such and so I really sought out a science something that I felt like I could invest my time and energy into that would really make positive impacts to pharmacy healthcare and people having the best medication experiences and and that's how I I came into pharmaco Genomics it five years ago I could Google pharmacogenomics and you could find little about it um yeah and I was thinking well you know I kind of doubted myself I said well gosh you know nobody I don't think anybody's really doing this yes I don't think anybody's really applying this yet but I really saw and understood the science and how it I could see the goal I could see the end results and that you know we weren't there then but that I might be able to make a positive impact in making it making people more aware of how useful this tool is so I started educating myself and during that time period I actually had a physician come to me and asked me to he also owned a pharmacogenomics lab and he asked me would I give some talks to the providers that they were trying to implement pharmacogenomic testing with to give them the clinical perspective and to help communicate clinician the clinician how important it was so that's where I started and what I soon realized five years ago was that I could do this these providers can provide the testing but when they got the information but when they got the data back from the labs they just really weren't able to handle the information as in you know they would look at me and say this I know this is valuable data and this is awesome but I really need you to explain this to me and help me with this you know they were really good translator yes translator yeah because they you know they didn't learn pharmacogenomics when they were in medical school and pharmacy schools are you know now teaching pharmacogenomics but it just you know it was not widely the education wasn't where it needed to be so that's really how I came into being was being the source for these provider to help them apply this variable that excuse me very important data and so that's that was a great springboard it was really a great springboard hey I think and please tell me otherwise because I know you know tons about pharmacogenomics I believe we're still really at the infancy stage right like there's still so much coming out about where this fits into therapy which therapies are most affected and probably tons that we just don't know yet yes there I I've had the pleasure of people pharmacists coming to me and asking me you know how can I do this and I've really had the pleasure of telling them this is an awesome absolutely awesome time to learn this information to branch out into pharmacogenomics and make it part of the clinical mainstream because we are in the infancy and I'm so excited with where it can go oh gosh yes I'll get on the soapbox about where it can go for medicine so I try to just you know I'm trying to focus myself on how much I can accomplish right now with what we have so yes it's a great field to get into and as far as I'm concerned it's absolutely necessary if you want to be successful in pharmacy going forward precision medicine yeah I was just gonna mention I know with a s HP pharmacy forecast 2018 2022 referred a whole portion of their estimations and predictions around precision medicine so it'll be really exciting to to see what happens and I know you'll be one of the pioneers leading the way for us so much can you doing that yes so I know we're gonna wrap up soon but can you leave us with a few thoughts about how you think women can best help support each other in pharmacy or in general absolutely it's been critical to my success to recognize trailblazers recognize the women who whose lives I would take the place of to recognize these women to surround myself with women such as this and to learn from them and to basically copy what they're doing you know if they're successful and I would trade my life even my position in life with theirs then I need to learn what they do and and how they did what they did to get there so I think that is very critical and also for you know five years ago when I was talking about pharmacogenomics I got a lot of strange looks and people said are you sure because I don't hear of a lot of people doing this so you really have to surround yourself with people that can see the see into the future can understand innovation and who will encourage you that you know maybe even when no one else is believing that they believe in you and that if you believe enough and what you're doing then then you can accomplish this so I think that's critical yes thank you so much I know I can't remember who said this one quote but it's something like when everyone's doing one thing you go the other way or something like that and I feel like that's what your message was was saying there and also that we we do learn so much from each other and I know today I have learned so much from you dr. Winslow so thank you so much for being the pharmacy leaders podcast absolutely thanks for having me support for this episode comes from the audio book memorizing pharmacology a relaxed approach with over 9,000 sales in the United States United Kingdom and Australia it's the go-to resource to ease the pharmacology challenge available on audible iTunes and amazon.com in print ebook and audiobook thank you for listening to the pharmacy leaders podcast with your host Tony Guerra be sure to share the show with the hash tag hash pharmacy leaders