I had a biology degree, and right out of college I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it. I stumbled upon the cellular immunotherapy company Dendreon. I started working there in 2011, going through their training program as an operator. However, shortly after I started, we received news that the company was having layoffs. I started researching other opportunities in cell therapy and learned of Minaris RM (called PCT at the time), which I learned had previously provided manufacturing for Dendreon. I interviewed at PCT and started soon after, in October 2011 as a Manufacturing Associate.
I was hired as a dedicated operator for an in-house client and my training was fast-tracked as I started working on that process. I became the lead on that project, so I was doing everything from scheduling apheresis coming in to working with clinical sites. This was a fresh in, fresh out product so it was very difficult to plan for. I worked a lot on the logistics of getting the patient's cells to us, shipping the product back out, and facilitating all the scheduling for operators.
Minaris RM was smaller at that time (ten years ago) so we didn't have all the support functions in place that we do now. I was ordering materials, building all the kits, writing all of the batch records, protocols, reports, and doing all the training. There was no separate production support or MSAT functions at the time. Operations at that time was also performing QC micro and QC analytics, and I was doing a little project management as well. I had the opportunity to become very well-rounded through all of this experience.
Because of my exposure at Dendreon and this further experience, it helped me progress very quickly at Minaris RM. In time I was promoted to an Associate II and then an Associate III. As an Associate, I became a lead on several other clients that were doing much different processing. Soon, I was pretty much working on every client that we had at the time.
As an Associate III, I took on a lot of managerial responsibilities. Our operations manager took a maternity leave, and I stepped into that role during that leave, managing all of operations including scheduling the other operators. This, as well as being a lead on a project, allowed me to get management experience while still an associate. Soon after that receiving a promotion to Associate Manager in March 2016.
I became a strategic manager for one of our groups. That meant dealing with technology transfers, client services and training. The strategic manager role involved more forward-thinking about what's coming and how we plan for that, including training plans and capacity models. Rather than focusing on the day-to-day I was looking more at what is coming three to six months from now and how we prepare for that.
In January 2021, I took the role of Associate Director, Manufacturing Operations. I focus not so much on day-to-day operations, but on leading the support roles within operations - compliance investigators, quality engineers, scheduling and technical trainers.
As a manager it has helped me greatly to have the well-rounded experience I received as an operator. I've done the long hours in the cleanrooms, going through our training programs, pushing to meet deadlines, and working on deviations. Having those experiences has built me up for the role that I'm in now where I'm overseeing this, but can still empathize with the people on the floor.
I think that, as a manager, one of the most important things is to lead by example. I would never ask someone to do something that I wouldn't do myself, or expect something of them that I wouldn't expect of myself.
I always try to look for answers, ask questions and challenge our procedures to see if there are better ways we can do things. By asking questions, and then taking the initiative to go out and look for the answers, I learned so much about our scheduling, logistics, and our documents. When I'm tasked with doing something that I don't yet know anything about, it doesn't stop me - I go out and find the answers and figure out how I can help.
What was intriguing to me about Minaris was that, as a CDMO, it wasn't all about one project or process. That has been what has kept me here and engaged. Working for a developer you could be working on the same process every day. Here, every day is different. The experience and knowledge I gained in one year here was probably equivalent to five to ten year's experience someplace else, both because it was a small company at the time and because we aren't limited to one product or type of therapy or technology. These are constantly changing, and we have the opportunity to streamline our and our client's processes, to optimize and automate.
It’s a fast-paced environment with a lot of challenges, but something that has kept me here is what I experienced early on - the patient impact. We were doing a lot of GTP stem cell processing early on and, at that time, the operators would pack up the product and drive them to the hospital and deliver them to the bedside. For every product there was a chart with a person's name. That has really stuck with me. As chaotic as it can be, it is extremely rewarding and I'm happy I experienced this connection so directly early on in my career.