Pam has held senior leadership roles spanning large pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechs, giving her a unique perspective on how innovation is developed and deployed.
“Patients and their parents or caregivers want to feel connected, engaged, and heard. As an industry, we invest heavily in answering critical scientific questions, but it’s equally important to invest in the experience of clinical trial participants—how they feel about their experience.
Patients and their support networks are not passive participants; we should strengthen bi-directional learning pathways, make information digestible, and act on feedback. When personalized connections are solidified with patients and their families, the benefits of research extend far beyond the scientific endpoints we measure.”
Pam’s passion for patient engagement is also personal. As the parent of twins with chronic health conditions, she has seen first-hand how critical it is to empower families and integrate their voices into every stage of care and research.
Reflecting on her career across both established pharma and fast-growing biotech, Pam said:
“Emerging biotechs and medtech startups understand the urgency of distinctive, ‘sticky’ innovation, often born of a fight-or-flight necessity. Large pharma brings scale and reach, but size and complexity can sometimes constrain their ability to innovate quickly. That’s why partnerships between the two are so vital—combining perspectives, flexibility, and resources to deliver much-needed innovation to all patients, especially the most vulnerable and medically underserved.”
Looking specifically at pediatrics, Pam sees technology and data as underused levers for transformation.
“Pediatric treatment development continues to be unnecessarily long and inefficient. Strategic and targeted use of technology and data can materially improve this.
Pediatric patients are savvy, empowered young people—they see the technology made available to adults in clinical research and expect the same. Companies that ignore this shift in pediatric empowerment do so at their own risk. It’s not enough to apply innovation only at the study design stage; we must integrate it along the entire drug development continuum, with a focus on engaging patients and caregivers. ”
Dr Chris Evans, CEO and founder of Little Journey, welcomed Pam to the advisory team:
“Pam’s breadth of experience, from industry and regulators to her work as a patient advocate, brings an invaluable perspective to Little Journey. Her commitment to patient-centred innovation aligns perfectly with our mission to support families and accelerate pediatric research. We’re thrilled to have her expertise guiding our expansion into global trials.”
As Life Sciences Advisor, Pam will support Little Journey’s mission to improve pediatric trial retention, adherence, and engagement at scale - helping sponsors design studies that are not only efficient, but genuinely family-centred.