Leveraging soft skills for career advancement

You have what some would consider a non-traditional career in the sciences. Tell us your career story. 

When I was at Youngstown State University getting my bachelor’s degree in Biology I had at first thought I wanted to go into physical therapy (PT). However, I interned at two different PT clinics (one being a large Medicare-patient-based clinic, and the other a small, private clinic) and I realized that what my day-to-day work would look like wasn’t what I had anticipated, and that my personality and temperament would not be a good fit for PT. Physical therapy requires a whole lot of “tough love” to the elderly that are in pain and are transitioning in their day-to-day physical functioning, and I frankly didn’t have the personality to give that tough love day in and day out. One of my major pieces of advice for anyone still in school, having decided upon a career path, is to intern in the career role they’ve chosen if ever given the chance to do so. It proved to be invaluable in my journey towards my dream career.

After finishing my bachelor’s degree, I knew immediately that I wanted to continue towards either a master’s degree or PhD. I decided to pursue my master’s degree in Neuroscience/Biochemistry at the University of Cincinnati (UC). While finishing that degree I actually wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my new MS, but I did know that I did not want to work in a traditional laboratory environment as my long-term career. I was extremely fortunate to be able to intern for a third time, this time at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, an internship that was facilitated by UC’s career services office. I interned there for one year in a group called Corporate New Ventures (CNV), a multi-disciplinary group that helped evaluate both internally and externally developed technologies on behalf of the entire company. As an example, just before I started my internship in CNV the prior iteration of that group had conducted a majority of the due diligence behind P&G’s acquisition of the IAMS dog food brand. This internship was truly a career-defining experience for me. I got to collaborate with professionals from all areas of the company (R&D, business teams, product managers, and intellectual property (IP) attorneys, just to name a few). Even though nothing I worked on during my internship made it to actual P&G products or named acquisitions like IAMS, I met two IP attorneys and learned so much from them about the creation of IP. This was truly my “a-ha” moment for my career. I immediately became truly hooked on IP and never looked back.

After my internship at P&G ended (which I admit I was very sad about) I moved just across the street to the law firm Dinsmore & Shohl in downtown Cincinnati, the firm of the two IP attorneys I had met while interning in P&G’s CNV. While at Dinsmore my role was that of Technical Assistant, where I helped with patent application prior art searching, patent application figures drafting, expert witness identification and patent infringement litigation assistance. A major highlight of my time at Dinsmore was when I got to sit in on an entire patent infringement trial at the federal courthouse in downtown Cincinnati, even assisting both the judge and his clerk in identifying and keeping track of the exhibits being used by both the plaintiff and the defense. A big struggle I had while at Dinsmore was that I really had no upward career path there unless I wanted to go to law school and become an attorney at law. I had no desire to go to law school or become an attorney so after a year at Dinsmore I moved on.

My next role in my career took me from Cincinnati to Columbus, Ohio. After one year at Dinsmore and realizing I was already at my career ceiling there, I took on a role at Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a wholly owned, nonprofit subsidiary of the American Chemical Society. A relative of mine saw an open role in their Editorial Team and immediately thought of me due to my time conducting patent application prior art searching at Dinsmore. CAS databases both scientific journal publications, as well as published patent applications and grants that relate to specific areas of biology, biochemistry and chemistry. Their editorial group takes in newly OCR-ed journal articles and patents and human-curates those publications adding in technical term synonyms, assigning Registry Numbers to new chemical compounds and including value-added indexing that searchers of CAS databases rely upon to ensure they quickly and efficiently find the articles and patent publications they’re really looking for.

While I was at CAS I decided to get my MBA at Capital University in Columbus. I focused on consumer behavior and statistics while pursuing my MBA. After spending two years in CAS’ editorial team (indexing articles and patents related to the Mammalian Hormones group under the Biology Division) I moved to the Sales & Marketing Team of CAS, becoming what’s called an Applications Specialist. Application Specialists become experts in the CAS search software and the databases underlying the search tools, assisting both CAS’ established client base regarding new enhancements, as well as CAS’ sales representatives in new software sales. My territory as an Application Specialist was from mid-Indiana (Eli Lilly) all the way to the West Coast (Pfizer La Jolla, Promega Biosciences, Zymogentics, etc.). I really enjoyed this role, meeting all kinds of information professionals and scientists from all different industries, and getting to travel extensively around the US while I was in my mid-20s!

After finishing my MBA I knew I wanted to transition from being an Application Specialist to a role that was a bit more business focused. I interviewed at two different companies:  a small contract laboratory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that wanted to expand their product offerings and client base, and oilfield services company Halliburton in Houston, Texas, which was looking to fill roles in a brand new group they had created, called Intellectual Asset Management (IAM; I met my eventual boss through my role at CAS as they were an established corporate customer of CAS). In the end I decided to take the job at Halliburton and moved from Ohio (for the first time; I was born and raised in Ohio) to Texas in 2004. My first role at Halliburton was that of Business Planning Advisor, where I used technical literature to evaluate the R&D and technology direction of Halliburton’s competitors, customers and suppliers. After holding that role for five years I moved to managing some chemistry-related IP sub-portfolios related to downhole cementing and contamination mitigation chemistries. In this role I worked with the patent committees made up of subject matter experts, business managers, IP attorneys and others to help with invention disclosures disposition, patent application prosecution, international filing strategies, and granted patent maintenance payment decisions. Towards the end of my tenure at Halliburton I also was named the Manager of IP Competitive Intelligence within IAM, continuing to standardize and automate technical competitive intelligence for the entire organization.

During the height of COVID-19, I was laid off from Halliburton (after 16 total years there) and am now working as the Director of Analytics Solutions at Anaqua. Anaqua is a company that makes patent and trademark management software, as well as patent search and analytics software. I work with both established customers and prospects on complex use cases of Anaqua’s software, especially as it relates to technology-based competitive intelligence initiatives. So, in my career I’ve found myself on the vendor side while at CAS (in my 20s at the beginning of my career), then on the in-house side (while at Halliburton), and now back on the vendor side (with Anaqua). But boy oh boy, have I learned so much between my time at CAS and my time now at Anaqua! My team at Anaqua and many of our clients and prospects (and externally with industry validation through the IAM Top 300 Lists I’ve been named to more than once) now look to me as a thought leader in patent and technical literature searching and analytics.

What skills have helped you the most through your different career moves?

People skills and the ability to get my point across (no matter how complex or vague those points may be) were absolutely critical to me advancing in my career. Presentation skills and figuring out what data or visuals will resonate with my audience are skills I work very hard on and continue to hone even after almost 25 years into my career.

Describe your leadership style.

My leadership style is very collaborative. In my entire career I’ve only managed one other colleague, who was a data analyst working in the IAM team with me at Halliburton. We both kept ourselves very abreast of the data R&D, Business Management, the Executive C-Suite, and the Legal Department needed and relied upon to make good business and spend decisions regarding Halliburton’s entire IP Portfolio. Quite often we had to pivot quickly with the projects we were working on and the work product we were producing as the company changed direction or focus at a rapid pace. Therefore, in order to support my employee, I worked hard at making sure I understood why we were being asked for the data and the analysis initiatives that we were, so that burnout and “work whiplash” didn’t occur and take its toll on my data analyst. Sometimes it’s hard, being at such a huge company, to see the bigger picture when you’re working down in the “trenches.”

How do your personal and professional passions complement each other?

One of my personal passions is singing. When I was little, I wanted to be a famous singer. (In my mind today I imagine myself being a singer like Adele, even though when I was little she wasn’t famous — or maybe not even born yet!) I was a part of both the larger choir and the competition chamber choir in high school and was a part of a choral group while at the University of Cincinnati as well. I think where my passion for singing complements my professional passions is in presenting to audiences as an overarching part of my career. I conducted a lot of large classroom training sessions while I was at both CAS and at Halliburton (Halliburton IAM trained the R&D inventors on literature searching and other IP-related best practices). Now I find myself at Anaqua conducting monthly and ad-hoc webinars and training sessions on very complex topics related to prior art searching, freedom to operate determination, the use of new AI capabilities for assisting in scientific literature searching, etc

What career advice would you give your younger self? 

I would say to my younger self not to be afraid to try new things, to intern or figure out ways to try out potential careers before diving all-in on one pathway before you know it’s really the right thing for you, and to always, always work on your interpersonal skills.

What does personal growth look like for you in the next five years? 10 years? 

In the next five years I would like to really make a big impact in the use of AI technology for enhancing and improving data analytics and corporate intelligence when it comes to analyzing technical and patent literature, allowing this new technology to become the gold standard (reliable, repeatable, actionable) in competitive intelligence initiatives. In 10 years, I know I’ll be winding down my career, so I hope to further influence and mentor the next generation of analysts that will carry on the role after I retire.