OnPoint: The Mentor Sessions

Marie-Ange Noué, PhD, CMPP — President of phactMI and former Senior Director and Head of North America Scientific Communications at EMD Serono — joins host Linda Traylor on OnPoint: The Mentor Sessions to talk about the shift from information delivery to intelligent stewardship in Medical Affairs. Drawing on her path from bench chemist to global scientific communications leader, and her work found...

Jan Lewis, Secretary of the Medical Affairs Professionals of Australasia (MAPA), joins Linda Traylor to talk curiosity, courage, and enterprise thinking. Jan's path into medical affairs began as a hospital pharmacist in oncology before he crossed into industry with AstraZeneca's early targeted-therapy launches in lung cancer. In this conversation, he reflects on the mindset shift that changed his...

Olivia Kager, Global Commercial Lead, Hemato-Oncology at Kyowa Kirin, joins Linda Traylor on OnPoint: The Mentor Sessions to talk about a career built on crossing between medical affairs and commercial leadership — and what it taught her about strategic partnership, accountability, and the future of the medical affairs function. In this conversation, Olivia unpacks why "stay in your lane" is the w...

Sarah Cross, PhD, Senior Health Value Translation Lead at Sanofi, joins OnPoint: The Mentor Sessions to talk about her path into medical affairs, the mindset shifts that shaped her leadership, and why bringing the patient voice into R&D is the natural next step for the field.  From a Google search that led her to the MSL role, to a career-defining lesson in failing fast, to her current work co...

In this episode of OnPoint: The Mentor Sessions, host Linda Traylor sits down with Lee Gervitz, Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs at Xenon Pharmaceuticals, a neuroscience-focused biopharmaceutical company. Lee shares the mindset shift that reshaped his leadership — what he calls metacognition, or "thinking about your thinking" — and unpacks how it changed the way he leads teams, frames deci...

Paul Ward has spent thirty years in Medical Affairs — from selling antibiotics at Beecham Laboratories to leading field medical oncology, hematology, medical value, and access at BeOne Medicines. He has attended the American Society of Hematology for twenty-three consecutive years. His point of view is earned in the arena, and in this episode, he shares it. In this conversation with Linda Traylor,...

Tom Caravela has placed leaders across some of the most recognized Medical Affairs organizations in the industry. After 20+ years, he knows what elite looks like — and what holds people back. In this conversation with Linda Traylor, he doesn't hold back. This episode covers the evolution of the MSL role, what exceptional Medical Affairs leaders actually have in common, why adaptability is no longe...

In our inaugural episode of OnPoint: The Mentor Sessions, Linda Traylor, VP of Medical Excellence at Acceleration Point, begins a new podcast series designed to uncover the mindsets, habits, and behaviors that define exceptional leaders in Medical Affairs. Inspired by The Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss, each episode follows a consistent set of reflective questions that reveal how accomplished men...