Jonathan Bowen left clinical medicine in 2016 for a role in the pharmaceutical industry and is now drug company Sanofi’s medical lead for haemato-oncology, in Reading, UK. In 2020, he and a colleague founded, an online mentoring resource that helps scientists and clinicians to navigate moving from academia, medicine and health professions into pharma.
I have always enjoyed the challenge of learning something new, and you get that motivation in the pharmaceutical industry, because you’re always learning and applying your knowledge.After that, I took my first role in industry: I worked in medical affairs at a leading pharmaceutical company, where I spent three years as a medical adviser in haemato-oncology.
In my current team, are two academics who have PhDs — their experience is very different from mine, but there are a lot of parallels. Before getting into pharma, they were also used to working very hard for comparatively low pay, and academics experience the same culture shock and guilt that medics do: they can feel that they’re turning their back on their career and the institutions that trained them.
The NHS is a taxpayer-funded non-profit organization. Does it feel strange to work for one that is driven by profit?