Career and Leadership Development Academy Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals Day Blog (Class of 2023)

Throughout the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s Career and Leadership Development Academy eight-month program, each of the eight middle schools are assigned a day to write about their experiences. 43 students from across all eight New Hanover County middle schools participated in the third industry exploration day, Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals, on November 2. Students had the opportunity to hear from employees at Thermo Fisher Scientific, faculty researchers at UNCW, and Kimberly Lupo of Portrett Pharmaceuticals. The leadership development topic for the month was about Dressing for Success. Below is the third blog write-up of the first-ever Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s Career and Leadership Academy experience.

On November 2, the Leadership Development students attended the monthly session at the UNCW Center for Marine Science. At this session, we got the chance to explore and learn about careers in Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals. Over the course of the day, we were able to hear from representatives of UNCW, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and the NC Biotech Center.

We kicked off our morning with a presentation and question session with Thermo Fisher Scientific. They are a large company with over 3,000 employees with different locations varying from in the U.S and Canada. Thermo Fisher’s main mission is to push science and technology and to help people make safer and better choices. They achieve this through finding new ways to improve science, like testing water quality, preventing algae blooms, testing drugs, and using algae to find new ways to save energy. We also learned that Thermo Fisher isn’t just all about science. If you work for them, you could have a job varying from traveling, drug testing, water testing, video crew, housekeeping , security, marketing, and many other career paths.

After we learned a little about Thermo Fisher Scientific, we got the chance to speak to some employees of the company. Our group got to talk to Hannah and Kim, who were able to answer any question we had. They told us there are different careers as well, not just science. Kim told us that she worked as an administrative assistant, and was involved in helping many different parts of the company. Hannah was kind of new to the company, and was a former chemistry teacher who was now working on some of the research studies. Both people we spoke to told us that being able to work with computers is a very important part of being a worker at thermo fisher. So much of what they do is technology based, so it is very helpful to be able to use computers well.

During Covid some people in the company were a little scared thinking partnerships would go down due to the closures. However, sales and partnership’s increased tremendously because it created so much demand within their field. Since then they’ve been hiring and promoting workers like crazy for many different positions within the company. Over the past 2 years they have created jobs all over the place, and we learned that most of the important people within the company started as interns from college. They really found it important to promote their own employees.

When we finished our first session, we broke into groups to explore different areas of the building. Our first stop was a room filled with algal samples. In this room they research algae and the many different ways it can be used. In this room, they shared that they have some algae inside their refrigerated room that have been there during the 60s! They told us that they do this research for many different reasons, like testing our water that we drink to see if it is healthy for us, researching algal blooms which can be dangerous to sea creatures, and even using algae to find ways to make concrete with less energy. We were very surprised to learn how many things can be done with something that most people don’t think about much.

After learning about algae and its research, we went upstairs and went to a room that was the Pharmaceutical area. While there, we talked about things like drugs and their potency, creating new drugs, and the shelf life of drugs. We also got the chance to see the machines that are used to test the drugs that we take to make sure they are the right dosage. They also determine how many milligrams should be taken of different drugs, and the amount in each pill. We also learned that they determine the expiration date of each pill, so they know it will still do its job. We learned about the testing and time it takes to figure out if we are able to take these pills and if they are safe to hand out to patients or people in general. It was really impressive to learn how much work goes into the medicine that so many people take every day. 

After finishing in the pharmaceutical area, we rejoined the rest of the group for another activity to learn about acidity of common liquids. We had glasses filled with sea water, pond water, river water, tap water, orange juice, cola, vinegar, and soapy water. The first task was to try and arrange these based on how acidic we thought they were. Once we were done with that, we took some yellow test strips that we would dip in the samples. When we took them out, they would change color showing us the acidity of that substance.The final step was to add Alka-Seltzer to some of the liquids to see how it would affect the acidic levels from where they started.Through this experiment, we learned that many things are acidic, and when you add something more alkaline to it you can make it more neutral. This was a fun, hands on activity where we got to learn about something new.

At the end of the day, Jeff Phillips came to us and talked about business attire and how to make a good first impression. Mr. Phillips covered what is expectable at work ranging from  business casual to traditional business casual, and that this even includes wearing proper shoes for your job. For example, if I was to go to a meeting with my CEO I wouldn't wear flip flops with a dress I would wear a skirt, with a blazer top, and pearl earrings with a necklace. If I was to have a meeting with a client I would wear something professional to show that I mean business and I take them seriously. This also means that sometimes popular and trendy clothes are not always the most appropriate for a work setting, since they may not communicate the right message