Leveraging the Graduate Experience to Pursue an Alternative Career

By Sonja Elsaid

While having a degree in the field that you want to work in is helpful, there are other ways to gain the skills required. In fact, it is common for many professionals to develop new goals as their career progresses. Often, these goals can involve switching fields entirely. The desire to pursue a new career path may happen right after graduating, while other times, the transition can happen even sooner— halfway through the training. Helen Liu, a recent graduate of the Master of Health Science (MHSc) program at the Institute of Medical Science (IMS), is a perfect example of a student who transitioned her professional interests from neurocognitive science to finance during her graduate training. IMS Magazine recently interviewed Helen to learn about the steps she took to transform her career.

Helen started her course-based MHSc program in 2017. However, shortly after, she realized that a career in scientific research was not the right fit for her. “I did not see myself in basic science. I was more interested in what happens after you publish a paper,” Helen said. Indeed, Helen wanted to help scientists advance their research and innovations by securing the necessary funding to conduct additional studies. For instance, imagine a scientist who has conducted animal studies and discovered a small molecule with therapeutic properties. If the scientist has an entrepreneurial mindset, they will approach technology transfer offices at their university or hospital to protect their innovation by applying for patent protection. Then, the technology transfer office teams at these academic institutions will leverage the research and the patent to look for business opportunities. They could do so by partnering with an investment management organization, such as MaRS Innovations. MaRS Innovations will, then, investigate how many more animal studies are needed before moving to clinical trials and how much funding is needed to complete the pre-clinical studies. If it is determined that the product is worth developing, the scientist could either set up a start-up company and keep developing the molecule or sell it to a larger pharmaceutical organization. Often, companies such as MaRS Innovations help find larger investors eager to see start-ups grow and small molecules develop into profitable products.

“I was interested in learning how a molecule becomes a profitable product.” Helen echoed, and this exciting process made her pursue the field of finance. Once Helen decided to become a healthcare investor, she started taking elective MBA courses at the Rotman School of Management to gain the necessary skillset for her future career. These courses provided her with invaluable training. For instance, in the portfolio management and security analysis course, she learned how to perform financial analysis on publicly traded companies to decide whether their shares should be bought or sold. A business law class taught her basic areas of law that typically affect a business’s operations, including how corporate contracts are structured and what happens when contract agreement provisions are violated. A pharmaceutical strategy course taught her about drug life cycle management. In all her jobs so far, she has been able to leverage something different from each class and apply these skills to her different roles.

With these qualifications in hand, after finishing her MHSc degree, Helen was ready to embrace her first position as an Analyst on the Life Science Technology and Venture Development team at MaRS Innovation. Within this role, Helen was constantly looking for investment opportunities for biopharmaceutical products at their early development stage, as she was part of a team that was responsible for determining whether the biopharmaceuticals were worth investing in. Following this role, Helen worked as an Associate on the Active Equities team at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, where she invested future retirement funds in healthcare companies.

Today, Helen is employed as an Associate at Sagard and focused on investing in healthcare royalties and credit opportunities. Royalty investments are upfront payments to purchase the rights to use or profit from biopharmaceutical products that could generate future revenues. At Sagard, Helen performs financial forecasting of pharmaceutical products and evaluates if investing in their future product sales would be profitable. This includes understanding and predicting the drug’s pricing, reimbursement, competition, and other variables. Proceeds from these investments help biopharmaceutical companies continue to advance their research and development.

One of the things that Helen likes most about working at Sagard is that her position provides endless growth opportunities. “I very much enjoy that I am constantly learning about pharmaceutical innovation,” Helen noted. “Because my organization invests in new pharmaceutical products, I am always learning about new types of diseases and how these diseases can be treated and cured. Also, I am learning more about how to invest in healthcare products and complete deals with multibilliondollar pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.” However, working in this field does not come without its challenges.

Working in a high-paced investment firm has its drawbacks, too. “You must learn a lot on the job, such as building financial models and conducting analysis. This can be stressful when you are simultaneously managing multiple investments.” Helen said. Even after acquiring that one skill, there is always the next level of learning that must be conquered. Moreover, the expectation is to meet tight deadlines. This means that Helen sometimes works overtime on the weekends and even pulls all-nighters. The unpredictability of her work schedule will always keep Helen on her toes and require her to keep her schedule flexible.

Since IMS is trying to implement good equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) practices, we asked Helen to share what kind of EDI policies are practiced in her professional field. “Finance has been a male-dominant industry,” Helen mentioned. However, she also pointed out that in recent years, sanctions have been implemented to hire and promote females into financial roles. For example, by 2025, a stock exchange based in New York City will make it a requirement that all publicly listed companies have at least two diverse directors (one who self-identifies as female, and another who self-identifies as an underrepresented minority). Sagard, where Helen is currently employed, also emphasizes diversity. Thus, EDI is highly prioritized, which would benefit the demographically diverse IMS students looking to pursue careers in finance.

Helen offered advice to the IMS students finishing their graduate training and wishing to follow in her footsteps. “It is never too early to think about what you want to do after graduation,” she stated. She pointed out that, at the end of their training, students often focus too much on completing their studies and writing and defending their theses. Yet, talking to people about potential work opportunities and looking for a job while still in school is essential. “Get involved with the Graduate Consulting Association at the University of Toronto,” Helen said. “Through the association, you could learn about organizations ready to hire students after graduating.” She also explained that building faculty networks is a way to explore job opportunities because the professors may know about available employment vacancies. They could even connect their current students with alumni working in the field. “So, every month, make a point of meeting one of these former students for a coffee,” Helen said. “IMS has such a professionally diverse faculty; you never know whom you will meet next, and that person may be your future colleague in the job you are looking for.”