Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with Nathalie Gosset, Head of Marketing and Business Development of the Alfred Mann Institute (AMI) at USC. AMI was founded in 1998 when Alfred Mann, CEO of MannKind Corporation and a pioneer in the medical device industry, made his first $100 million gift to USC to develop an institute that supports research, development and commercialization of biomedical devices and other technologies.
I found out about AMI through a friend recently and wanted to learn more about AMI’s role at USC since we don’t necessarily get a lot of exposure to healthcare at Marshall. Through a couple Google searches, I stumbled upon Nathalie’s personal website and besides her credentials as a marketing and business development expert in the biomedical industry, I realized she was also a guru in career development with her own eBook – How to Find Jobs that Do Not Exist Yet. In her book, she talked about “developing a reason for which this person would like to meet you” so I decided to do just that by “identifying my own uniqueness” and reached out to Nathalie. It worked-
First, a bit of background: Nathalie joined AMI in 2002 and created and implemented the new Business Development and Marketing function at AMI after leading the Engineering Department at the Institute for several years. At AMI, she is responsible for establishing the value of each innovation and for developing product specific business plans for each one of the new inventions. In 2007, she took one of them to full commercialization with nationwide mass market distribution.
The institute reviews and establishes the value of about 50 medical ideas submitted each year. Approximately six ideas are being accelerated toward commercialization at the institute at any given time. The institute selects the most promising inventions and provides patent management, business and marketing expertise, engineering services, regulatory know-how and financing of clinical studies. AMI is currently working on licensing a new minimally invasive Cardiac Output System technology potentially for hemodialysis and critical care settings.
I asked Nathalie about how she got started in career development and helping current professionals find jobs in this particular market. She told me about her own career path in switching from the telecom to biomedical industry by focusing on her specific uniqueness – the interests, passions, knowledge, skills, and connections that made her one of kind. Nathalie knew her passion was working with people and people development and she started coaching individuals in building their own skill sets and uniqueness. Eventually she put together all her ‘wisdoms’ into an eBook and developed presentations and speaking engagements on the topic.
We then talked about personal branding and some tips and tricks to create additional buzz for my personal website. She gave me some advice about building more depth and focus on my own ‘wisdoms’ that I can offer to others. She also pointed out some key biomedical associations in Southern California I should look into for professional networking – Southern California Biomedical Council and the IEEE Buenaventura Chapter
We had a wonderful conversation and I learned a lot about career development and networking opportunities in the biomedical field. After our conversation, I decided to take her advice and had an extreme blog makeover. Now I need to spend some time inventorying my ‘wisdoms’ before school starts again.
Read the full article: Meeting Nathalie Gosset, USC Alfred Mann Institute