Before he brought his talents to the world of healthcare PR and communications, Kareem Clark, Ph.D., was an academic.
“I started out as a scientist. Both my parents were scientists; I got a Ph.D. and spent about nine years in labs doing brain research,” he said in a recent interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. As it transformed the world and our daily lives, it also provided a new direction for Clark’s career. After leaving research behind, stints as a freelance journalist and as an account director at Burson preceded his current role as a consultant at Arc Bio Communications.
In a Q&A for Fierce Pharma Marketing’s “Rising Stars” series, he explained how the pandemic led him to understand the importance of communicating scientific advances, and why he thinks agencies need to work harder to use the talents of all their employees.
Responses have been lightly edited.
Fierce Pharma Marketing: How did COVID lead you to pursue a career in pharma communications, and what keeps you motivated?
Kareem Clark: At the beginning of COVID, we saw this guidance being put out by the CDC—mask, don’t mask—and all the science happening in real time that most people don’t normally get to see. As scientists, we thought, “This is awesome. We’re making a vaccine faster than ever before.” We expected in our little science bubble that the world would blindly trust everything that came out of our labs and from all of our experts.
But I realized that our job is to explain all the science and why people can trust it, and why it’s safe and effective. That felt more important to me and a bigger mission than even discovering the drugs to begin with. All these innovations don’t mean anything if no one’s going to use them or trust them.
FPMK: What has been the most rewarding or challenging project you’ve worked on so far?
KC: The most rewarding by far is an op-ed I worked on for one of the biggest health leaders in the world on lessons that policymakers and drug developers should learn from the COVID pandemic. They’re the bylined author, and they were the one telling the story and making the case, but I remember reading the final piece, in one of the biggest media outlets in the country, and seeing a lot of my analogies and my thoughts being adapted by this health leader. It squashed any imposter syndrome that I may have had at that point in my career and made me realize that this is something I’m good at.
FPMK: If you could give one piece of advice to industry veterans who’ve been in pharma marketing for decades, what would it be?
KC: A lot of agencies have now realized the value of people from nontraditional backgrounds—lawyers, journalists, creatives and others—but bringing them in is only the first step. The second is knowing how to use them, and that’s something that a lot of companies, and especially senior leaders, haven’t figured out. It requires looking inward and figuring this out as we move into a more nontraditional form of communications.
FPMK: Where can you be found when you’re not helping clients communicate about healthcare?
KC: A priority for me after leaving academia has been figuring out who I am outside of work, and a big part of that has been sports. I founded a queer volleyball league that I’ve been a part of for eight years now. It’s a welcoming, fun community, and that’s where you’ll often find me on weekends.