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IMAGE Smurfit Scholar Lucy Chadwick shares how an MBA is setting her up to make real change in the animal pharmaceutical industry
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Global Partnerships Manager at Forte Healthcare and current IMAGE Smurfit Scholar, Lucy Chadwick, shares how the Executive MBA is preparing her to make further strides in her already impressive career.
For the last 16 years, IMAGE Media has been proud to partner with UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School to offer one female candidate a 100% scholarship to join the Full-Time MBA or Executive MBA.
This year’s scholar is Lucy Chadwick, who is undertaking the Executive MBA. Currently Global Partnerships Manager at Forte Healthcare, an Irish-owned animal health SME, she initially qualified and worked as a veterinary surgeon, but realised she wanted a role that would have a wider impact.
Having qualified from UCD in 2009, she initially worked in the UK as the recession meant jobs were hard to find. “I was considering what the options might be outside clinical practice for someone with a vet degree,” Lucy explains, “and really wanted to have a bigger impact on the overall animal health picture.”
Her next steps were inspired by a chance encounter she had whilst at veterinary school. “I undertook two summers of research projects whilst a student, but it wasn’t for me – I like people too much and found the lab a little lonely! I was fortunate that one of my summer projects was sponsored by MSD Animal Health and through this I met Dr Ciara Reid – a veterinary advisor with MSD. Over the course of lunch she told me what her job entailed – and quite frankly that conversation changed the trajectory of my career. She very kindly let me spend a week shadowing her at MSD and after that I was hooked – I knew the veterinary pharmaceutical industry was where I wanted to be!”
Remembering this crucial experience, Lucy moved into the non-clinical side of the industry, working first for the e-commerce division of a large corporate veterinary group, before moving to Boehringer Ingelheim, to take up a role as a Brand Veterinary Advisor.
She spent four years in this role in the UK, but was delighted to be offered a role back in Ireland, as Head of Technical Services & Marketing with Forte Healthcare Ltd, an Irish-owned Animal Health SME.
“I’ve now been there nearly seven years, and in this time the business has continued to grow and change rapidly. I am extremely proud to have been responsible for launching Reconcile (the first ever veterinary licensed fluoxetine for dogs) to the European market, helping to change the lives of thousands of dogs suffering from separation-related anxiety, which is at an all time high following the COVID-19 pandemic,” Lucy says.
