I just got a nice surprise, my husband came home early, so had the crazy idea to run here quickly to sit down with you for an impromptu chat, but now my 1 year old, (who I just had to intercept from drinking toilet water for the umpteenth time), is having a super-human strength moment, spinning me around on my chair........I will prevail...
So, I had planned on my next post being about how I got into the pharmaceutical industry, but #BREXIT derailed me slightly......so we'll come back to that another day.
One of the greatest, most unanticipated side effects of having a career in the pharmaceutical industry for me, has been the opportunity I've been afforded to meet, work closely, collaboratively and successfully with so many fascinating people from around the world. I started my career as a Clinical Research Associate, (CRA), in the UK, travelling Europe. I then moved to the U.S continuing my CRA career, (more details to come in my 'how I got into the industry' post). My education about the world and its people has been first class because I have been lucky enough to experience and indulge in different cultures first hand.
Something that has always, (and continues), to fascinate me during my career in clinical research has been the amazing skill and ability of teams that I work with to all understand, speak, read and write English! Perfectly!!!!
You see, clinical research, (like many other industries I'm sure), is completely global and luckily for me, (because sadly I'm only fluent in 2 languages,UK English and American English), English is the primary language used by international teams.
A single team can consist of members from every continent across multiple time zones. Rarely is English the first language of the majority of these fascinating people, (and actually English often ranks 3rd, 4th on their list of languages spoken). I've often heard from my colleagues, ' I'm so sorry, my English isn't so good' and all I'm thinking is, 'I can't even start to make an apology in anything other than English!'
Through work, I have made life long friends, from around the world, (one of the many perks: great savings on hotels come vacation time :). Yes, we've worked together, but more importantly for me, I've got to learn, understand and appreciate more than any geography class could every teach me. I can't think of a downside of getting to know and being able to interact freely with any of my international colleagues. Yes, social media, the internet etc., make the world smaller, but nothing beats shaking the hand of that person you've been tirelessly working with for months, sometimes years, who up until that moment you could only recognize by voice through a polycom.
Like everybody else I'm waiting to see what's going to happen now that the vote to leave prevailed. The pharmaceutical industry is going to be hit and maybe clinical research in the UK is going to look very different. However, what I do know definitively is that I'm going to hold on even tighter to my personal global community, with the intention of continued expansion, because it works for me.
