Q&A with LabConnector Amanda Heller, Associate Director, FSP Solutions

What does a typical workday look like for you?

Each day brings about new challenges and opportunities, allowing this role to be very exciting and continuously engaging. I work remotely and in collaboration with domestic and global partners, analytical laboratories and client teams. My responsibilities can vary each day, allowing me to leverage my scientific expertise in the development or validation oversight of outsourced methodology or in ensuring scientific integrity throughout the duration of an outsourced study or scope of work. I utilize project management skillsets in establishing and monitoring timelines and deliverables, managing financial objectives and creating or contributing to process efficiencies and improvements implemented on our teams. I thoroughly enjoy leadership responsibilities that allow me to contribute to the mentorship or development of the many talented individuals that work within our department, and help others work toward achieving their career goals. I also spend time engaging with client partners, building and fostering positive relationships and ensuring continuous alignment between our client needs and the implementation of various role responsibilities within our teams.

How do you like to spend your free time – hobbies, volunteer, other?

I love spending time with my family, cheering on my two children in all the sports, musical endeavors, and activities that they participate in throughout the year. In my free time, I am an avid gardener, and I enjoy crafting, hiking, traveling, going to concerts, singing, playing a variety of musical instruments, cooking, and baking. I am also a die-hard fan of all Philly sports teams, and love catching games any chance we can!

How does your role help in LabConnect’s mission of accelerating the development of medicines?

Our functional service provider (FSP) model enables individuals on our teams to be fully integrated and embedded within our clients. In doing so, our roles allow us to directly impact early discovery research through clinical trial deliverables and post-marketing requirements across our clients’ portfolios. In my role as an individual contributor, I have provided oversight of outsourced discovery research and bioanalytical validations and testing to support the development and approval of multiple therapies. Additionally, my leadership role has allowed me to build relationships and expand our group’s services across multiple functional areas and clients, supporting a wide variety of therapeutic areas and drug targets. Through remaining fully engaged with outsourced laboratories and internal project teams, our highly skilled team members utilize project management skillsets and their diverse technical expertise to ensure that critical deliverables are met while maintaining analytical quality and consistencies. Our roles also provide us with opportunities to build out process efficiencies on our teams, directly supporting the acceleration of key milestones critical to the development and approvals of medicines on a global scale.

Pick one (or more) of LabConnect’s values and share a story of how you are carrying them out in your daily work: Partnership, Excellence, Execution, Forward-Thinking, Collaboration, Accountable, Informed, Nimble.

Our FSP model is based on partnership and integration within each client, which embraces LabConnect’s values in the day-to-day responsibilities in each of our roles. Recently, our team encountered significant supply issues and scheduling constraints across many outsourced vendor laboratories utilized for ADA and PK clinical study bioanalysis. Our team was tasked with working collaboratively with internal study teams and our vendor laboratories to identify and prioritize critical analytical needs across studies and programs, allowing for our analytical laboratories to utilize their available resources in a manner that conserved immediate study deliverables and prevented downstream disruption to critical milestones. This reprioritization required highly coordinated cross-functional team engagement and involved daily monitoring of progress against milestones at our vendor laboratories. In being able to quickly pivot and work closely with our vendor laboratories to address immediate needs, we were also able to contribute to the development and implementation of mitigation strategies that would avoid potential supplier bottlenecks in the future.

How would you describe the company culture and what do you believe makes it unique?

While LabConnect is focused on providing tailored, focused solutions to meet individual client needs, the company embodies a collaborative culture in which individuals are strongly supported in their development goals and within their teams. LabConnect fosters an environment in which employees have a direct impact on contributing to best-practices and providing input or feedback on client teams and company-wide initiatives and goals. Individuals at each level of their career are able to take advantage of many opportunities for increased engagement and guidance from colleagues and cross-functional subject matter experts. LabConnect has managed to conserve a unique company culture, that is both client and employee focused, while rapidly expanding in both personnel and in services offered.