MERIT Executive Spotlight is a series featuring executive team members introducing themselves and explaining why they chose to work in the clinical trials industry and at MERIT.
Julia leads MERIT’s teams dedicated to marketing, contract management and partnership management activities. She collaborates with CROs and sponsors to ensure MERIT services align with clients’ needs. Julia sat down for an interview to discuss her team’s role at MERIT and her passion for clinical research.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF PARTNERSHIP MANAGEMENT AT MERIT?
At MERIT, we recognize that every client holds a unique position of importance, with distinct studies, approaches, and endpoints. Our dedicated team ensures that this individuality is acknowledged and leveraged to deliver exceptional services tailored to our clients’ specific wants and needs.
Our team’s primary objective is to foster a deep understanding of our clients, effectively translating their requirements into the appropriate suite of services offered by MERIT. We are dedicated to establishing seamless communication channels that enable the smooth transition of these services to other departments within our organization. For instance, we prioritize relaying early client discussions to our project management team, ensuring they don’t have to start from scratch. This conveyance of information throughout the company acts as a conduit for optimal collaboration, fostering robust relationships with our clients and making their professional journeys more streamlined and hassle-free.
We take pride in being proactive in both providing and obtaining vital information, positioning ourselves as an indispensable extension of our clients’ teams. While our team may not possess all the answers, we have the privilege of tapping into a vast pool of experts within MERIT, readily available to contribute their insights to client conversations. From the CEO down to each team member, everyone at MERIT is committed to engaging with clients, demonstrating our unwavering dedication, and emphasizing the immense value we place on these relationships. We strive to ensure that our clients and partners truly understand their significance to us.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO DEDICATE YOUR CAREER TO CLINICAL RESEARCH?
There’s an altruistic aspect to clinical research that gives you an understanding of how what you do fits into the bigger picture. It includes everything from putting patients first, to understanding how what you’re doing impacts science, to increasing drug availability for patients. That aspect explains how I’ve spent 20 years in a single industry.
There’s enormous appeal in knowing that the role I play in my current position contributes not only to new drugs getting approved and out on the market, but also supports the expansion of generics. Seeing how expensive drugs have become, helping companies produce generic drugs to make them more affordable to patients is very rewarding. It’s also great to be contributing to new treatments that help make patients’ lives easier. So many of the advances in science and medicine that help patients on a daily basis stem from research. Clinical research is a passion for many people, and leadership can play an integral role in fostering new employees who want to carry on that legacy and tradition.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK.
My life outside of work revolves around my family. With two young children, our evenings are filled with everything from gymnastics to swimming to girl scouts. I want to be present with them as many hours as possible, of course, so I love working from home at an amazing company that offers me the flexibility to do that. We enjoy all our kids’ activities and also love to travel as a family.