Finding Your Higher Purpose

You have been at Varian for more than two decades—pretty much almost your entire professional career. What attracted you to regulatory affairs? Is there a higher or greater purpose that keeps you in the profession?

No, if I’m honest with you, I just happened to land in this field. I actually have a political science background. And I worked for congressmen and county supervisors in the past, have more of a political background, but I wanted to really go into government affairs, that was my end goal.
I did some informational interviews and somehow there was an opening in regulatory affairs. And they figured since I had some sort of government background, I could deal with the FDA. This was over 20 years ago. It’s way more sophisticated today.
And I took the job and I have just been in this field ever since and it has been just a really, really fulfilling opportunity for me to learn how to provide access to care to all of the countries around the world. I mean, in order to provide the type of technology that we provide, we’re regulated, and that makes sense.
Our products could kill someone. So, it makes sense that we are heavily regulated and therefore in order to take it through the regulatory process and get approval, you are then opening up the doors to access to care, especially in parts of the world that don’t have this access to care. So, that’s what has made this field and this profession so fulfilling to me.