International market development manager for a medical device company that is a division of a major healthcare company
New Jersey, USA
What I Do
I am responsible for international marketing within four business units, but my primary focus is on the women's health unit. I represent all the marketing interests of our company's affiliate markets in Asia-Pacific, Australia, and Canada. This role is more market development (product development, logistics, and working with the regulatory side) than pure brand marketing. I support three product platforms in these markets; by comparison, in the U.S. division, a dedicated brand manager is assigned to each of these product platforms.
Typically, a product is first launched in our company's direct markets (United States or Europe), then we apply their learning before we go into the affiliate markets. I help country managers with marketing and facilitate information sharing among the U.S. team and the affiliate teams abroad.
I spend about 50% of my time dealing with regulatory compliance and supply-chain structure—making sure the right systems are in place to send the right product to the right country. The balance of my time is in marketing support, which in my industry is less related to advertising and more related to education (physician training and patient awareness). I travel about 20% of the time, including international travel and trips to training events or major medical congresses within the United States to represent international interests.
What I Enjoy Most
I feel passionate about what we do, knowing that women have a better life and that their families will benefit. I especially like knowing that it's not just U.S. women but women around the world who have the same access to minimally invasive and innovative healthcare through our products. One of the visions we have is to empower women to have superior health by giving them knowledge, choice, and access. That's where the patient awareness education comes in, and I love that role.
What I Enjoy Least
Doing business among so many time zones. I might need to make a decision very quickly, and I don’t necessarily have immediate access because of time differences with the countries I support. Consequently, I send a lot of emails and have conference calls at odd hours. I also tend to make a lot of decisions with less-than-complete information [because of] the fact that we often need to move ahead quickly and may not be able to wait for someone else's business day to start.
Why I Chose This Career
I knew I wanted to do marketing and wanted to find something I could feel good about. The typical consumer companies didn't offer that to me.
I initially leaned toward services marketing, thinking I could influence people and the experience they have by being a change agent so that consumers have good experiences, not bad ones.
This company found me through a career fair with the National Society of Hispanic MBAs. I researched the company carefully and decided to pursue the opportunity. The educational aspect of this product line and its goals appealed to me, and I saw this as a different way to be a change agent.
Desirable Traits to Be Successful in This Career
You must be quantitative—if you can back up your ideas with numbers, people will be more likely to support what you want to do.
Consider whether you are well organized. There is one of me, but I have 16 markets/countries I support. Success becomes a matter of processes and prioritization and putting my finger on what I need when I need it. I've learned to consolidate efforts where I can so that I do have time to give individual attention where it's most needed.
Remain open-minded. I realize regularly that I don’t know everything and that first instincts in an international context are more often wrong than right. Every country-market is different. There may be more than one way, so I constantly consider the best course of action in a specific country-market.
Words of Advice If You Are Considering This Career Path
When exploring different marketing careers, I needed to be able to put into words what I wanted to do (being a change agent in a marketing role), and stay open-minded to different opportunities. Having those words enabled me to evaluate and recognize the right opportunity.
Most people coming out of an MBA in marketing don't want to go into sales, and I didn't either. Now I consider it the best thing I could've done to start out understanding this industry. Sales enabled me to learn the marketplace and the needs of the customers firsthand and to earn the respect of my peers in corporate roles. Most pharmaceutical and medical products companies put a high priority on sales experience, regardless of whether you have an MBA. When I look at executives here and see what their paths have been, most of them have gone through certain phases and have been exposed to many parts of the business, including sales, and I consider it potentially career limiting not to have that same experience. You need to understand the customer and why you are in business; sales truly does help you do that.
In my position doing marketing internationally, that international sales experience is critical; for people I am supporting out there, I can say, "I know, I’ve done that too." There is instant credibility that comes from the shared experience.
What I Did Before This (Including Pre-MBA and Post-MBA Jobs)
I started my international exposure with an undergraduate internship in the U.S. Department of Commerce in Atlanta, Georgia. In this regional office, I helped plan international trade missions to increase U.S. exports.
After graduation from my undergraduate program, I spent a year teaching English as a second language in preparation for my position in the Peace Corps. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guyana, South America, for two years prior to business school.
An MBA internship with UPS in their international marketing group in Atlanta helped me build my financial and analytical skills. Marketing ideas are great only if you can back them up with numbers to show expected results of marketing options. I worked throughout the MBA program as a graduate associate in Thunderbird's Career Management Center, doing résumé reviews, workshops, etc. This helped me personally because I got very picky about making my messages and my goals clear. I also learned the importance of researching not only functions and companies but also identifying my own experiential gaps and where I could use further development.
Out of business school, I was placed in my current company in a developmental position to have time in an international market. I went to Chile and served as a sales representative for nine months, and I helped launch the business in that market where we were a new presence. Then I came back to the United States and, through a corporate restructuring, I now focus on Asia-Pacific, Australia, and Canada.
Educational Background (Undergraduate, MBA, Other)
MBA, Thunderbird—The American Graduate School of International Management, 2000
Bachelor of arts, Emory University, international and Latin American studies, 1995
In MBA Programs, I'd Suggest You Look For...
Strong finance or quantitative orientation, even if you are focused on marketing. You need to build your strength in finance to put numbers behind ideas and get things done. One exceptional course I took at Thunderbird was strategic services marketing, with intense casework. Every test forced [me] toward quantitative outcomes and measures. This is how I approach any marketing concept I want to garner support for in my current job.
Fill in the gaps through extracurricular activities. Evaluating what I had and didn't have, I took stock and saw I had gaps. I had international experiences but not specific marketing experience. The MBA internship in marketing was crucial. Beyond that, I participated in many school clubs—Marketing Club, Hispanic MBA Club, Toastmasters International—looking for opportunities to take on leadership anywhere I could. We planned events, brought in marketing leaders, and held roundtable discussions to learn. In planning some of these events, I did promotional work and practiced basic project management skills.
Don't expect all your learning to be in the classroom. You learn from students, so pay attention to the typical student body. At Thunderbird, more than 50% of the student body is international, which is what I wanted. There is a focus not just on coursework but on the diversity of the program. My out-of-classroom experiences taught me as much as I learned in class. For example, thinking about business cases and looking at the accepted practices in other countries helped me learn more about what's normal and what's not. I think about that in the context of current news events and corporate scandals. My MBA experience through the eyes of internationally diverse classmates gave me a truer perspective on the realities of how business is done in countries outside the United States.
