You Can Pivot Your Career Without Changing Companies! Here’s How I Did That and Found Rewarding Work
When Jackie Mosca started working at Pfizer, she was part of their finance team. “I was a finance major and have always enjoyed working with numbers and letting those numbers tell a story and create a strategic blueprint,” she shares.
But, as any career pivoter will let you know, your professional past does not define you — you can direct your own future! In Mosca’s case, her initial role at Pfizer was actively expanding her vision of what she wanted her career to be.
“I was supporting sales and other external-facing colleagues and started to learn about their capabilities and job descriptions,” she tells us. “I admired the work they were doing to really create a positive impact on Pfizer as well as on an overall patient health perspective.”
It became clear to Mosca that she wanted to take her career in a new direction. But how did she manage this? Well, the answer comes down to the wonderful support she found at her company. “Pfizer has been extraordinarily helpful and actually pushed me to build a network and create a plan to achieve my goal,” Mosca explains.
For instance, Pfizer helps employees who want to make a career shift by providing them with individual development plans (IDPs). These keep employees and managers aligned when working toward a common goal. And, Mosca shares that “Pfizer also offers various development programs to further hone the skills required for your next role.”
Reflecting on this support, Mosca tells us that she loves working for a company where the “leadership is constantly pushing you to think outside the box and grow your professional career.”
It is with the help of resources like these that Mosca was able to make the pivot to her current role as a Patient Affairs Liaison. In her current work, Mosca is able to do her dream work. “I engage directly with patients and caregivers across five therapeutic areas within the rare disease community to identify challenges they are experiencing in their healthcare journey,” Mosca notes. “Understanding these gaps, I work with a multitude of cross-functional peers both internal and external to Pfizer to develop resources that meet the needs of these patients within their community.”
In this interview, Mosca reveals her top tips for taking charge of your career and making a successful career pivot, as well as more about her current job.
What do you find most rewarding and challenging about your current work?
The most rewarding aspect is easily the positive impact you have on patients. Given that I work with rare diseases (affecting less than 200,000 people), most of the general population doesn't know about these diagnoses. It's incredibly difficult to have a life-long condition where your doctors, friends and even family members cannot relate and don't understand the challenges you are facing.
On the other end, the most challenging piece is eliminating the red tape to help patients in their space at their pace. Because Pfizer is a pharmaceutical company, there are many compliance guidelines when it comes to interacting with patients. Because of this, I am very limited in the ways I can interact and engage with community members.
How have you benefited from the skills/experience you’ve gained in your career journey?
I've learned an incredible amount about myself, such as what my skillsets are and what my short-term and long-term career goals are. It's difficult to know exactly what you want to do when you don't know all the roles that are out there and how they would pertain to your strengths as an individual.
What is your best piece(s) of advice for other women who are thinking about making a career pivot?
Don't wait. It's never too late to make the move, but the earlier you make the move the better.
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