Scott Conry Has Kept Learning, Ever Since UIC

At UIC, Dr. Scott Conry, PharmD ’93, learned to stretch his limits, always striving to learn more, he said. That growth mentality gave him a big advantage, Conry said, as he adapted to and mastered the business side of pharmacy. Combined with the clinical-pharmacy knowledge he gained at UIC, that’s made for a long, successful career leading everything from medical-liaison training to drug-launch meetings.

Today, Conry heads the hematology field-medical team for Novartis Oncology, managing four executive directors across the country, who in turn lead about 40 field medical liaisons. Those liaisons are “responsible for medical research in the field of both malignant and benign hematology,” he said.

“Our teams work in the field with researchers and physicians helping to not only bring research or ideas into the organization, but also working with them on research that’s company-sponsored,” Conry said. That includes working with researchers on leukemia, lymphoma and sickle cell disease, as well as benign hematology.

Conry’s current position caps 20 years of work in the pharmaceutical industry, with the last three at Novartis, where he initially served as executive director of the rare-disease medical-liaison team. His first job in the industry came at Sanofi- Aventis, with Conry working seven years, first as a medical liaison, then as a director of medical training. After Sanofi, Conry spent five years at Schering-Plough, managing cardiovascular medical liaisons and research nurses, then another five years at Novo Nordisk, where he directed hematology medical liaisons.

Before moving into the pharmaceutical industry, Conry worked in retail pharmacy for about four years, before spending two years in managed care at CareMark.

In moving from his clinical pharmacy degree, and his work in the retail and managed-care worlds, into the pharmaceutical industry, Conry said he’s constantly mastered new skills. And this affinity for perpetual improvement began at UIC, he said.

“One thing that I learned at UIC was really the concept of continual learning. And I’ve always continued that mindset of the next opportunity that comes my way, I want to hop right into it and learn it, whether I have those skills today or not.”

DR. SCOTT CONRY

And in his most recent move, to Novartis Oncology, Conry has now paired those hard-earned skills with a more personally meaningful mission. Cancer has touched many people in Conry’s family, as he lost his mother to lung cancer, who’d lost all three of her sisters to lung or breast cancer. Conry’s father lost a brother to lung cancer and a sister to breast cancer, and has another brother with leukemia. Conry’s sister survived thyroid cancer.

“So, needless to say, there’s been so much cancer in our family,” he said, “I wanted to really make a difference in that therapeutic area.”

With a long, and personally rewarding, career, Conry said he’s thankful for the advantages the UIC College of Pharmacy initially gave him — particularly the school’s professors.

“When I look back at the professors who taught us, at that time, they were truly the who’s who of professors in the pharmacy profession,” Conry said. �