The Next Chapter

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Welcome to Your Worthy Career, a podcast for women in Pharma and Biotech with me, Melissa Lawrence. I am a certified career and leadership coach with a master’s in organizational psychology who has worked in talent and learning development in biotech to large pharma, from non-clinical to commercial. I help women in pharma and biotech create a career worthy of them, with whether you want to get clear on what you want, get a new job, get promoted, or be effective as a leader at any level, this is the place for you. Every week, you will get practical career strategies and mindset shifts to help you overcome the problems you experience at work so you can reach your goals feeling better than ever. Your up level begins now. Well, hello. I am so happy to be with you here today. Welcome to what is going to be Season 3 of the podcast. Now, after more than four years of weekly episodes, I took a pause from the podcast because I said yes to something that needed my full attention. I spent the last year writing a book. Yes, a book. I spent all of last year of 2025 writing, and I’m so excited to finally let you in on the secret and share that my book Your Worthy Career, a science-backed method to build a meaningful career in pharma and biotech, will be available on February 24th.

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Now, before we talk about this more deeply, here is what you can expect of the podcast moving forward. Now, over the last year, I just want to be honest, I have missed talking to you. It was a little harder than I anticipated it to be to take this break from the podcast. The podcast did feel complete at the time that I took the break. And to say yes to the writing the book, I had to take a pause on this labor of love. Now, initially, I will be back with new episodes twice a month, and we’re going to start with first and third Wednesdays as a cadence so that you can anticipate and plan to check in. Now, if you’re not subscribed to the podcast, now is the time to click that plus button or that subscribe button, because then you’ll be notified every time a new episode is released. I will still be here offering research-backed insights and strategies, practical tips for navigating your career and industry, talking about what is relevant. So if you’re a woman in pharma or biotech, what we will talk about is going to continue to be extremely relevant to you.

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And as always, my goal is for you to feel seen, to know that you’re not alone, and to have support as you grow both personally and professionally. Now, this past year, let’s just be truthful here, as always, that this past year has had a lot of change between the government society, industry’s reaction to those changes, and sometimes feeling like they’re not reacting enough or well enough or appropriately. I know it’s been hard for many people. So even if your work is secure, many of the women that I speak to have shared their fears that they’re sad. They’re sad for their friends, for their colleagues, for themselves. They worry about patience, the quality of care, the progression of They worry about the future of the industry. I realized that strategy and mindset work, it’s just not enough on its own. If women were constantly in this fear or stress response or having increased anxiety, it really makes it difficult to make clear career decisions. If you are stressed out, then things feel much more urgent. Decisions feel heavier in weight. There’s more pressure to them. And so what I did is I actually started bringing in a trained breathwork facilitator into my programs to help regulate not just the logical action, but my clients and really my own nervous system during this time.

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So if you feel that it’s been a lot and this year has been hard, you’re not alone. And what I promise is that I will hold space for the authentic and real feelings and challenges, but I’m also here to help you move through them and to keep perspective that will enable will you to reach your goals. Because you have a support system, I hope, in your life that can listen to you vent and to reassure you. And here, I want to move past that and to help Can you achieve what you really want? There’s two purposes. There’s different purposes for people in your life. Because some women will tell me that there aren’t any opportunities right now or that only certain companies are hiring, or it’s impossible to a promotion right now, or that they should just maybe wait until the market gets better, that there just isn’t jobs or aren’t opportunities. And I want to say in response, if you’re feeling that way, too, this is what I’ve also told other women that I speak to, that You, of course, are responsible and have autonomy and authority over your own decisions and over how you take care of yourself right now and where you want to prioritize career growth and goals.

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And you know what is best for you. And I’m here to show you what’s possible for you. I’m here to show you how to grow yourself in your career, even with obstacles or circumstances that feel hard or impossible, to really help you neutralize what feels impossible and see what are the options in front of you. What is it that you can actually do? My work is really about building agency, helping you trust your decisions, take responsibility for your path in your career, and see what’s actually possible for you, even when conditions aren’t perfect. So on the podcast, we will have new topics and conversations that are relevant and specific to you. And my new book is where you’ll get my method for building a meaningful career. Now, the book is a labor of love. It is a research-backed SOP, if you will, for how to design, build, and sustain a career that is authentically aligned and meaningful to you. Now, it is going to be available February 24th. And inside, I’m going to be sharing the method that I’ve spent years developing and refining. I’m sharing stories of women like you who have used this method to have new roles created for them, job offers after layoffs, pivots, and decades in one area after moving to another, promotions after hearing no, not now, and ultimately having a career that you can enjoy going to, making the difference you desire, the impact only you can in the way that you want to.

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Which means you don’t have You don’t have to give up on being an engaged parent, a loving partner. You don’t have to give up your Zumba classes or anything else to have the career that you want and that you deserve. Now, in some ways, I see this as my legacy, a way to share more about what I know to work in this industry, especially as a woman, even if we aren’t able to talk to each other. You and many women for years to come will never have to wonder what to do or if their problems are just them because this book is going be a resource that is going to live on forever. Between my podcast, my book, my client work, and everything in between, you’re not alone. You have someone who is on your side who cares deeply about your career and your happiness, even if we’ve never met, and will give you the straight advice, the straight insight that I see, who will tell you what I see is working that maybe you won’t hear in corporate. And I know because I was corporate. I was in those roles. I talk to women that are in corporate every week.

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And there are just fundamental issues that have not been addressed. And it’s not necessarily because your company is at fault, but because of the deeper issues that exist in our society, in the workplace culture, and our own psychology and blind spots that we have that just require a more specific and scientific approach, a scientific method, if you will. And that is why I wrote this book. That is why I wrote this for So since we were last together on the podcast, my signature program has evolved. So you might hear me reference ‘Beyond the Ceiling’ in older episodes. And today, that work is inside the Right Move Protocol. At its core, It’s a four-month, highly personalized coaching experience where I help you apply the method from the book to your real career. This isn’t generic. It’s not one size fits all. We’re looking at your specific situation, your areas of growth, the skills that you need to learn, the circumstances around your career and your role, your goals, all of that industry context. And what makes this work different is that we’re not just talking about what you should do. I’m not just giving you advice.

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We’re actually implementing together. You’re learning how to think, decide, and take action differently. So you’re not guessing or repeating the same patterns that can keep you stuck. It’s like a dynamic GPS. If you imagine having directions that tell you exactly where to go. And back in the day, you would print out MapQuest. And if there was a detour or something to make go as planned, you didn’t have that updated list of directions to tell you how to overcome that obstacle in real-time. And what coaching does in this space when we’re working together over these few months is that you have that dynamic GPS. You’re able to then get feedback and pivot and learn how to go through some of the things that you’ll experience when you’re making such a big change in your career. So some women come to me wanting a new role. Others want to change how they work, lead or position themselves where they are. They want to be a standout leader. All of this is valid, and the strategy is really going to look different depending on the person. So if you want full details, you can always find them on my website at yourworthycareer.com. Now, over the last year, through 2025, my focus has really been on this book and delivering a high-quality service to my clients. It has changed a little bit, even with the different things that are happening in the industry and in the government, where I’ve had different types of women reach out to me that maybe are trying to get out of government and move into industry, or are trying to make a pivot because of the things that are happening around us. I have had more clients that are in federal agencies or more women who have gone through a layoff, more who want to move into industry. That actually required me to pivot a little bit and figure out how can I help these women? Where do they fit within the greater context of women that are already in industry? How can I help them with the method and strategies that I have to move into those roles and to That has been something that has been a growth area for me to see that this is working in multiple different contexts. I’ve been really focusing on my client work, and that obviously feeds right into my bookwork as well.

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I’ve also been doing that writing. I’ve taking time away from my family, actually, to meet the milestones for my editor, diligently working to make this the best resource for you. And I have to say, I have always wanted to write a book for years before I even had my business. And I always thought, when I do, it’s going to be so easy because I have so much knowledge in my head. I just have to write it down. If you’ve ever written a book or read a book, I should say, and you thought, Wow, I could write something like this. I thought that over and over again over the years. But let me tell you, like most things, thinking something and doing something are two very different things. Once I actually sat down to write, I had a hard time with the outline realizing I need to constrain my scope. That in reality, the book that you will see, I could write an entire book on each of the chapters. Distilling and constraining my message was more challenging than I anticipated. And then as I was writing, the weight of this book being published really started to set in.

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The finality of this, it just added some pressure for me that I had to work through on, are these my very best thoughts on this topic? This has to be so good for you. And my editor helped me with every review. She helped me constrain, add stories where needed. She actually told me that she learned a lot about leadership from reading my book. And that is such a compliment. Now, this was a process. And honestly, I’m sharing this with you because I think we often don’t know what people go through when they achieve a big milestone, and we assume things about what it took. And so I just want to be transparent that there were times that I wondered if it was going to come together on time. But like any goal, it’s that one step at a time, even when you can’t see the end, even when it’s hard to keep going one foot in front of the other, trusting the process. Honestly, it reminded me and grounded me more of how my clients feel when they go through my process and they might resist or they might not see how it’s going to work yet and start sabotaging, or because it’s new and it’s a new skill and muscle, it’s completely normal, they might start to do things that are distracting them from taking the action that they were intending to take.

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But I encourage them to do the same thing, to trust the process one step at a time. Don’t worry about what happens at the end because we’re not at the end yet. And then here I was going through the same thing, writing this book. And all of those little steps, the not giving up, the just working through the messy middle, the part where you aren’t even sure if you’re doing it right, you just keep going, resulted in the finished manuscript. And you know, I’m big on celebration. We celebrate this at home. I am honestly so proud of what this book ended up being. It actually brings tears to my eyes if I think about it too much. When I revealed the cover on social media, I decided to record myself opening the copies that my editor sent me in advance because I wanted to document that milestone. I had a little bit of an emotional release going through that because it’s just even more than I envisioned. I’m so proud of what it is and how it’s going to help so many women. Just beyond my lifetime is my goal. And there’s not just words.

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I put exercises in this book to implement. There are diagrams, there are frameworks. This is going to be your new SOP, your method that you will use or can use for the rest of your career. This should be something that every woman has when they start their science career, that mentors should buy for their mentees, that women should gift each other. I have women that are leaders that are like, I’m going to buy this book for every woman on my team. My goal is you not only feel seen and understood, but that you have a path forward. You know what steps to take, that it’s not so ambiguous, that you’re not trying to take generic advice on Google or an HBR article and trying to implement it to a very complex industry like pharma and biotech, where the strategies can be different. You know how to design your meaningful career from the inside out. Other than my method, there are case studies and stories, exercises, and implementation tips. There’s also research. If you didn’t know, I have a master’s in organizational psychology, and writing this book brought me back to those days. I had a lot of fun collecting studies and research to cite in this book to show you that this doesn’t just work because I say so or because I’ve used it for several years with other women.

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It’s been tested and proven, but the research and the scientific studies actually support what I’m teaching you. I also introduce a mascot, Claire T. Path, and she is a woman in science who really represents all of us doing this work to stand up and stand out in this matrix, male-dominated space. And I use her in the book to illustrate the steps in some of the method and to bring the words to life for you. And let’s see. Well, there are some other things that are a surprise. And I don’t want to give too much away. You’ll have to get the book. But I can tell you there is a foreword and a letter to in the book that are written by others that is very special. So in a couple of weeks, I am going to come back with another episode to give you more behind the scenes into how this came to be and maybe even a little read into the book. And for now, put February 24th on your calendar. And if you’re not, join the waitlist for the book on my website, yourworthycareer. Com. I’ll have a link in the show notes for you.

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The book is going to be available exclusively on Amazon initially, and you definitely want to buy it on the day it comes out. Not only because it is going to need to be such a helpful resource and likely one of the more practical and useful books you could read on your career as a woman in the industry, It’s actually the only book of its kind. But because on release day, on February 24th, it’s going to be marked 50% off the list price. So you will have a significant savings when you purchase it on February 24th, and you’re going to get access to a special bonus for free that is going to help you implement what you learn in the book even faster and more effectively, but only when you buy it on the day it comes out. And when you join the waitlist, you’ll get the book details so you don’t miss them, and you’re going to get information an invitation to the book release parties. There’s going to be one in person in Frederick, Maryland. So if you are local or able to drive in, I would love to see you. I would love for you to bring your copy of your book, and I will sign it for you.

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We’re also going to have a virtual party on Zoom at the end of February. So get on the list. Stay tuned in for the next episode, where I’m going to dig deeper into what is in the book, give you some insights for how you can improve your career right now. So until next time, keep Trailblazing, and I will talk to you very soon. I have something special for you. The episode is over, But that doesn’t mean your development ends here. If you enjoyed the podcast episode today, head to my website, yourworthycareer.com, and check out additional free resources you can get access to right now. From joining my free VIP Insiders to downloadable resources and trainings, you won’t want to miss it. Head there now.