How To Rule the World – Twice Over

Darshan Hey, everyone. So we, as you guys know, on this podcast, we land up talking a lot about the life sciences. And we talk about things that impact on life sciences, including clinical trials. today's podcast is going to be talking about what is what are clinical trials, like, from the perspective of a site, who is doing oncology? It's a multi multi location site, if you will. And we have with us, Kathleen ritardo. Kathy, I believe I know you're a pharmacist, but is it PharmD or is it RPh? Kathleen RPh. Darshan Okay. So we have Kathleen with us and Kathleen is unusually a pharmacist, which I know for me at least that for something when I was going to pharmacy school, I always wanted to ask to talk to people who've done the goi ng down that pathway of being a pharmacist and clinical research. I've never found one. And the ones that I did find really ended up being more people who mix up the drugs as opposed to people who actually administer the site. So a Kathleen is what I think of as a unicorn. So welcome, thank you. And this is my name is Darshan Kulkarni, this is Darshan talks. This is Kathleen Hurtado. Happy to introduce yourself, please. Kathleen So thank you, Darshan. Really nice to be here with you today. So you kind of already did it. My name is Kathleen Hurtado, and I am the VP of research administration for Cancer Treatment Centers of America. And I've had a very, you know, blessed career very varied career, but started started out as a oncology pharmacist at MD Anderson, my first job out of pharmacy school. So, and I've had lots of different things all the way around and kind of ended up serendipitously here. So Darshan I'm not gonna let you go that or that easily. Okay, go from pharmacy school to run your clinical research site. Because, personally, like I said, You're the unicorn. How did you even think, did you think you'd land up here? Kathleen Oh, no, never. I love being a pharmacist and thought that's what you know, I would, I would, you know, do for the rest of my life, but it was just very serendipitous. So I am working at MD Anderson, we, I was worked in pediatrics, and we had a lot of, you know, sales reps come and call on us. And so one of them was we I got to be, you know, friends with her. And she kept saying, Oh, you should come into sales, you should come to sales. And I was like, no way. So I'm, I'm really pretty much an introvert by nature. And so it was something I could just never see myself doing. And so at the time, they were starting, that company was starting in oncology, Salesforce. And so they were looking for people that knew oncology, oncology, pharmacist, psychology nurses, because they knew that to go out to doctors, you had to be able to speak the science speak to the science. So I thought, Well, you know what, I'm going to go interview because what's the worst possible thing that can happen? The worst possible thing that can happen is I go, I tried to do it. I don't like it. I go back to being a pharmacist. You know, I knew I could I love that. I could always go back and do that. And as it turns out, I was actually good at it. Yeah, I wish I would never ever, ever have expected. And I think I was I started out as a surprise, I started out carrying the bag. So yeah, in fact, I had a five state territory. So I had Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And so yeah, and so for somebody who had never driven in snow in their entire life, it was kind of a rude awakening. And I used to scare my district manager half to death. Because I was a little bit crazy, it was like, as a company car, let's, you know, spin it and see what happens. So but, um, but it was great,