Unscripted - 35 Years of AMCP Foundation: Internships & Mentorship in Managed Care

Welcome to Unscripted, the AMCP podcast, a look inside managed care pharmacy. Listen in as experts explore the challenges, innovations, and opportunities shaping healthcare for millions of patients. Hello and welcome. I'm Jordan Bernard, AMCP Foundation, Pfizer oncology intern, and I'm thrilled to have you with us today. In 2025, AMCP Foundation achieved a major milestone, the 35th anniversary.

Joining me today are my co-hosts, fellow AMCP Foundation Pfizer-Managed Care intern, Rebecca Brown. Hi, guys. It's great to be here. Also joining me today is Carly Rodriguez, AMCP President and former AMCP Foundation Pfizer intern. Hi, Jordan. Hi, Rebecca. Thank you so much for having me.

For three decades, AMCP Foundation has been shaping the future of managed care pharmacy through scholarships, research, internships, and more. And in today's episode, we'll reflect on the foundation's legacy, explore its impact that it's had on past and current interns, and look ahead to the future of pharmacy and healthcare innovation. So let's dive into the journey of AMCP Foundation and explore how it moves the profession forward.

So Carly, I know that you did start your own career as a managed care pharmacy intern before moving into leadership roles. And so looking back, what do you think are some of like your experiences that broadened your understanding of the foundation's mission and its importance to the profession of managed care? Yeah, if I think about my early experiences, I would say that the internship program really...

is the most meaningful experience that really shaped how i pursued a career in in managed care pharmacy i say All the time, I'll say it again here, I would not be where I am today without the AMCP Pfizer summer internship program. And if I think about, you know, what are the things about that program that really helped determine or strengthen or solidify really that I wanted to move forward in the managed care field, I think it's really thinking about the opportunity to understand.

every element of managed care pharmacy within a health plan. So I got to work with data analysts. I got to work with marketing team. I got to work with nurses and physicians and healthcare services to understand really how does pharmacy fit into the bigger picture and move forward. I think that networking, it gave me a great opportunity to meet people that I still talk to every day. I still, or not every day, but I talk to them.

um often still i still consider them mentors in my own career path and and so those are some of the really like invaluable things that i think about as it relates to my early experiences in managed care the P&T competition is definitely one of them as well that's how i spent the first six years of my career is working on drug reviews for pnt meetings i think that

all of the opportunities that are afforded to students through the foundation can be really like pivotal experiences to shaping young pharmacists careers. I would love to hear from both of you about, you know, your experiences and what you think are the pivotal moments from your internships that have helped shape how you think about managed care pharmacy. Yeah. So I was the AMCP Pfizer managed care intern.

I'm your twin, your intern twin. My internship was great because I got to see the different sectors of managed care. So I got to see a lot of collaboration between the data team, the finance team, and how they all come together to make up what we call managed care. Something that really impacted me was Excel. My training in Excel in things like Power BI.

I didn't know how to make a pivot table. I didn't know you could use Excel to make dashboards. So just going into my internship, the environment was very, very friendly to someone who's a student like me. And so I got a deeper understanding of how to use these tools to understand data and to understand how formulary decisions are being made. So that was the best part of the internship for me.

Yeah, I think I have more of a surprising answer, even something that I wasn't thinking would be the most impactful part of this internship. I think it was the development of my soft skills, especially things like communication and comfortability with interacting with industry professionals. I mainly applied for this internship.
from a learning perspective experience, knowing that I personally want to go into market access long-term as a career. I thought one of the best experiences that I'd be able to get so early post-graduation is seeing things on the insurance side, seeing how formulary decisions are made, what is valued, things of that sort. But throughout the internship, there's so many opportunities to interact with industry professionals.

I think it was weekly. We would meet with like Pfizer professionals and they'd have educational sessions and we'd have opportunity to ask questions. And that was one of the biggest things. We were told that we can't be shy and we have to ask questions. So we better get comfortable with that. And ultimately I did get more and more comfortable with each and every educational session. We also had.

like weekly journal clubs that you know each intern would present or we'd bring in other people from amcp to talk and even in those situations another opportunity to have discussions ask questions and

Especially even within your own site, you know, you're talking to a lot of different people. I set up like a bunch of different one-on-ones and then also going to Nexus, you know, you're presenting your research. There's a lot of different, more people for you to be able to meet. And ultimately I feel like I was able to grow like as a communicator, being able to talk to people from different backgrounds. And I feel like that's not talked enough in terms of, you know, trying to have like a really good career. One could argue like the soft skills are probably just as.

important as like your hard skills. And I feel like I came out of the internship a lot more confident in my ability to communicate. And I think that's going to be really important for me long term. I couldn't agree with you more. I think we grow and learn the most about ourselves and other things when we're uncomfortable. So I love to hear that. And Rebecca loved hearing your perspective as well. I think I've said that before, like in.

Pharmacy school, I think there's, you know, some programs have a big emphasis or opportunity in managed care. Other, you know, schools of pharmacy don't at all. But even those that do, I think a big gap or an area where we're not, we don't get training academically is in data, reading data, working with data. And so I totally agree. That's kind of an invaluable skill that I think we've all learned in our internship programs. So thanks for sharing.

Yeah, it was truly an amazing experience and I know that Jordan and I are both immensely grateful to the AMCP Foundation. This kind of brings me to my next question. I'm curious as to how does the AMCP Foundation complement the work of AMCP itself and how does that partnership work in terms of how has it strengthened over the years?
I think that's a really good question. If we think about AMCP's mission of ensuring that patients have access to the medications they need at a cost they can afford. I think the work of the foundation is so pivotal to that mission. Over the last couple of years, we've introduced the AMCP Research Institute to really emphasize our focus on research and the value and the impact of research towards meeting our mission.

And the foundation really complements that through their future focused research element of their mission and really what they're promoting in the internship programs through the P&T competition, through student posters, those sorts of things is a really early introduction to research methods within the foundation and ensuring that students have the opportunity really to.

hone their research skills and apply that in the future. I think that'll be an even bigger opportunity over the next several years too. So AMCP and the AMCP Foundation work hand in hand to advance the mission of both organizations. Yeah, I've seen that play even at Nexus and some of the chapters that...

are in the east coast it's very clear to see how the foundation and amcp work together and might i say this is one of the organizations in pharmacy school that offers the most opportunity to students in terms of scholarships in terms of traveling and you know networking it's truly an amazing organization

Yeah, no, I completely agree. Like AMCP has definitely been a leading voice within managed care pharmacy. I kind of wanted to transition a bit and dive into the heart of the foundation's impact and kind of look at programs that have defined AMCP foundation over the years, specifically mentorship, because this has been like a long part of the foundation's history of kind of supporting the next generation. So to Carly, do you have?

Any mentors like that was early in your career who influenced your own commitment to leadership and education? Yeah, absolutely. There's maybe too many to name, but I was lucky to be at the University of Washington where we had a managed care pharmacy elective. We had faculty and faculty advisor that was passionate about.
students having exposure to this segment of the pharmacy industry. So I'll name a couple. Pete Penna, one of AMCP's founders, and Pete Fullerton, a very early engaged member of AMCP, both were my professors in the managed care elective. And I think seeing that they were both willing to dedicate, like really volunteer their time in this elective to

share their knowledge and ensure that students had exposure was really incredible to see. And Pete Fullerton even gave me the opportunity to do work for his company when I was a student, had an opportunity to do medical writing. And another person, also University of Washington, John Watkins, a recent Stephen G. Avey Award winner at AMCP, he was one of my professors in medical literature evaluation and through my work as a student.

student there, he gave me an opportunity to go present at his health plans P and T committee. So write a drug monograph and go present to them. And I, again, just was constantly struck by their willingness to give their own time outside of work to mentor students and give students opportunities really shaped who I am as a leader and how I
want to give back and help further the profession. I think another person I definitely want to call out is Marissa Schlafer. She's an AMCP past president, but also used to work on AMCP staff, including when I was an intern. And I think her and Ebony Clay with the foundation are people who will stick with me forever as

really encouraging me to keep going, to take advantage of opportunities, to continue to be involved. And here I am, I won't say how many years later, but many years later, truly achieved what I would say is like a bucket list item professionally to be the president of AMCP and have the opportunity to work with students like yourselves and others and really kind of show a path forward in managed care.

Love the question. I wish I could name like 10 more people, but I'll stop there. I had one last question for you. With these foundation internships, would you say, what would you find that's uniquely valuable about these internships in comparison to all of the different other opportunities that, you know, are available to pharmacy students today?
Yeah, I think something that sets them apart is really just how immersive they are. I think there's other, you know, internships available in the pharmacy field where you might go and get a lot of experience like doing one specific thing. But I feel like the possibilities are endless with these internships in terms of what you know what you can learn and where you can go. I think the other thing is.

the research project tied to the internship. It gives students a bit of autonomy to say something that they're curious about or what they want to explore. And then, of course, they have mentors that kind of help guide them along the way or even might give them ideas. But I think that's really unique that there is a research project tied to it, which then leads to creating a poster and going to present that poster. So kind of back to the soft skills.

there's a path and an opportunity to work through or work on all of those things. And I'm just not aware of other opportunities or internship programs out there in the field of pharmacy that give you that really same level of hands-on experience. Would you say that the two of you found that to be the case or are there other things you would highlight?

So I actually first, like coming into pharmacy school, I wanted to be a clinical pharmacist. And I changed my mind after a few experiences that told me, you know, I might not really love clinical pharmacy. I found managed care to be sort of like an intersection between clinical policy and also like public health.

that ability to like you change one thing in the formulary it's going to affect like a lot of people you know those those numbers is what really stood out to me at the at my internship because understanding how the policies that are made at blue cross can impact you know a lot of people gave me more of a purpose in pharmacy

And, you know, told me this, this is something, the work they're doing at Blue Cross is super, super important. And, you know, it affects many lives. And I think there's not too many internships that offer you that ability to really affect a lot of people on a large scale or show you how they really affect a lot of people on a large scale. I love the involvement in policy, the involvement in public health.

And, you know, kind of seeing data policy and, you know, the science come together was really impactful for me. Yeah. I'd say probably the most unique thing about this internship to me is the availability of the diverse perspectives that are at your disposal. I would argue, you know, being in pharmacy school right now and for people who eventually want a long-term career in managed care, one of the most difficult...

barriers, I'd say, is just understanding like today's U.S. health care system, right? It's very complex. There's a lot going on. And I would say that's like one of the first things that, you know, might be like a scare entry to barrier into careers like these. But I think one of the best opportunities for you to be able to do that is to, you know, hear from.
people's different perspectives across you know different professions and with the way this was set up especially for my specific internship um you know i was you know had a bunch of meetings with different like pfizer professionals as part of like being the pfizer oncology intern the site i was practicing at was at horizon blue cross blue shield so
The biggest health plan within Jersey and all of those people to my disposal that I'm able to talk to. And then also the AMCP portion and all of the people that I'm able to talk to there. And hearing everybody's perspectives and being able to ask follow-up questions to get a better grasp and understanding of what is going on, what is important, and kind of what we see going on in the future is something that...

I don't see it any other opportunity that you'd be able to get. Like if you're doing, I don't know, let's say like a research project within your school, like, you know, you're not getting all of these perspectives, even just doing like, you know, any other internship with a company or with a health plan. Again, like you're very siloed to just the place that you're working with, but, you know, seeing so many different people. And then I emphasize again, like, you know, they want you to ask questions like, you know, and things of that sort. And I feel like.

that sets up a really good experience and a really good foundation for kind of understanding the U.S. healthcare system and being confident in whatever your next steps are, whether that's like post-graduation, your next year of pharmacy school. Yeah, it's a really big change to, prior to the internship, would watch the news regarding healthcare and didn't understand a little bit. But now I understand, like I know what's happening.

um in the climate and you know can see how these policies are going to affect us so it was really great so Carly i was wondering how do you see the amcp foundation's role evolving within the managed care landscape and probably the question every student pharmacist out there wants to know what guidance would you give the future interns and young professionals who want to contribute to managed care and to the foundation

yeah i think those are great questions so if i think about the where the foundation where i see the foundation evolving i think they have evolved a lot and continue to evolve like almost on a yearly basis and i see that key partnerships that the foundation has with manufacturer partners health plan partners pbm partners and others i see that those will continue to expand and create expansion opportunities for internships and expansion opportunities for furthering research and

Really, when I think about where might there be a role or where might we be going, I really think about it in the innovation space. The up and coming generations or younger generations of managed care pharmacists, they have so much knowledge about technology, how technology is evolving.

and how to use technology in ways that people like me probably haven't thought of and maybe can't ever think of. And so I think that there's really an opportunity to embrace and leverage our younger generations of up-and-coming pharmacists to think about how we innovate within the managed care space. And so if I think about the second part of your question, like what advice or guidance would I give to students to contribute and come along in that journey?

I said it earlier, being curious, being willing to ask questions. And I say all the time, get involved. There's internships. There's a P&T competition. You can volunteer at conferences. There's conference buddies. Really getting involved and, again, like saying yes when those opportunities come up. There's affiliate meetings at your local level. There's the national meetings and the meetings within your own student chapters.

I think, again, like doing those things really makes it obvious that there's a passion, a genuine interest and a drive to be a part of where Managed Care Pharmacy is going. I just wanted to thank you, Carly, for joining Rebecca and me today.

Thank you to everyone who's supported and advanced AMCP Foundation's mission over the past 35 years. We'd like to extend special thanks to our internship sponsors, AbbVie, Pfizer, and Sanofi, without whom this program would not be possible. Thanks for having me, Jordan. Thanks for having me, Rebecca. Thank you, Carly. And we invite you to explore our website at amcpfoundation.org. Get involved and inspire the future of managed care pharmacy.