Spending nearly ten years in pursuit of higher education degrees, Statistical Scientist Christina Ventura had secured a future in academia. Christina wanted nothing more than to help people through her work and research, but when she found herself in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, she, like many, began to reconsider her professional goals. While Christina loved working with her colleagues and teaching her students, she realized she wanted to refocus her attention on the impact her work was making. Christina decided to venture into clinical research.
Making a difference in the lives of patients is the driving force behind Christina’s career. She earned both her Master of Public Health and Doctorate in epidemiology with a specialization in maternal, child, reproductive, and sexual health. Christina led classrooms as an assistant professor and later as an adjunct professor while completing her doctorate. However, following her graduation in 2019, Christina, along with many, couldn’t have imagined the shift in her professional priorities.
“My initial drive to begin a career in public health was to both identify and target factors that impacted morbidity and mortality on a large, population-level scale,” Christina explains. She loved academia, but she felt something was missing. Christina wanted to have a direct impact on population health and healthcare as a whole, but she wasn’t able to see her work implemented in the way she’d grown to desire. The COVID-19 pandemic was the catalyst that brought her to an epiphany; if she really wanted to see real-world results, she would need to journey out into clinical research. Christina discovered that clinical research would allow a more hands-on approach to the research she was already interested in and the ability to witness the results of her work.
Parting with a field of work to which she’d dedicated nearly a decade of her professional life was no easy feat. Christina shares that she was “more than a bit nervous.” Fueled by her drive to leave her mark on the healthcare industry, Christina was confident in and excited by her new direction. In 2022, she made her official transition into clinical research as a Statistical Scientist in Medpace’s Biostatistics department. Starting in her new role on the clinical visualization team, Christina was a study lead for a few oncology studies. Her team handles all centralized statistical monitoring activities along with numerous safety review reports in the company. Through these, she took any opportunity that was presented to help grow her skills and learn new tasks. Now, Christina leads meetings with Clinical Operations, briefs and presents study results to internal leadership and Sponsors, and more.
Fresh off of her one-year anniversary at Medpace, Christina reflects on what this change has meant to her. “Even though I started this position mid-career, I have grown substantially in my [first] year here at Medpace,” Christina says. Moving from academia to research did not come without its hurdles, but Christina discovered that these unexpected obstacles would become her “greatest triumphs.” She attributes many of her successes to her team in the Biostatistics department. Her mentors have allowed her to flourish in her career regardless of her initial lack of clinical research experience. “I was truly mentored from day one,” Christina reminisces. “I had colleagues who checked in on me, asked how I was doing, allowed me to ask questions…even when they seemed silly, and trusted in me and my input as I grew.”
Despite the learning curve as she entered the industry, Christina truly would not have it any other way. Medpace has allowed her to make tremendous strides toward impacting global health, and she has “never felt closer to that goal than I do at Medpace.”
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