Associate Product Manager, Lundbeck Canada
Class of 2005
During her internship in marketing at Genzyme, while still completing the MBiotech program, Ludwika Forster accepted a full time specialty sales position in the area of nephrology. After an exciting three years of traversing most of Ontario and learning all about renal disease and the impact it has on patients, their families and the team of professionals who take care of them, Ludwika Forster worked for the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation as a Policy Analyst and Marketing Consultant. While there, she was involved in organizing Ontario’s presence at BIO 2008 (the world’s largest biotechnology conference) in San Diego – a big project encompassing everyone from the Premier to start-up biotech companies.
After a very rewarding experience with the Ontario Public Service, she plunged back into the pharmaceutical industry, taking a sales position with Lundbeck Canada — a Danish-based company which specializes in CNS-based diseases. Since 2009, she has represented Cipralex — the #1 prescribed antidepressant in Canada — and recently completed a one year mandate as the Associate Product Manager for the same medication at Lundbeck’s Head Office in Montreal.
Upon finding out how much emphasis there was on teamwork in the MBiotech program, Ludwika remembers being sceptical about its benefits to her education and career prospects. She couldn’t have been more incorrect in this belief, since she accedes that her success in every position she has held since graduating, has depended to a higher or lower degree on her ability to work well within a team — to be able to listen, contribute, compromise, remain open-minded and stay flexible to change. It is a skill that has proven to be invaluable in her professional life and one that she is thankful was such an integral part of the program’s core.