Meet Yangmin
Can you walk us through a typical day in your role at the Michael Allen Company? What are some of the key tasks you focus on?
My day always starts with a large cup of coffee- and an even larger stretch to match. From there, it’s all systems go. At Michael Allen Company, I lead our SAPPHIREs—the tracker side of our projects, mainly focused on brand launch performance trackers and ATUs. So “tracking” the trackers is one of the first things I do every morning to ensure everything is proceeding smoothly (or flagging any potential issues so we can address them proactively), and, of course, checking my inbox and responding to client questions or team inquiries. After these morning routines, I usually carve out time for heavy-thinking, creative, or high-priority work—when I have my best mental clarity—such as survey design, proposal writing, or product development. As you can see, there’s some strategy behind getting the heavy-lifting things done first. New priorities always line up as the day goes on.
Another big part of my day is working collaboratively with partner and client teams on project kick-offs, working sessions, report reviews, and results read-outs as each project progresses, or preparing materials for client meetings to ensure productive discussions and effective meetings.
With the internal team, I work closely with our consultants and associates to develop analysis plans, review and provide feedback on reports, and hop on calls to discuss any questions the team may have throughout the day.
No two days are the same, and that’s probably the most intriguing part of work and life. It would be my simple pleasure if the day ends with a nice sunset and I’m lucky enough to catch it. Let’s call it a day!
What do you enjoy most about working at Michael Allen Company?
Great people and interesting projects! I’m naturally inclined to solve business questions and greatly appreciate being surrounded by talented, expert teams—both internal MAC teams and our client teams. What I enjoy most is the opportunity to tackle fascinating—and often critical—product launch and post-launch business cases, as well as the close collaboration with internal and client teams to formulate hypotheses and construct effective market research solutions that generate valuable and actionable data insights. It’s both intellectually stimulating and genuinely fulfilling to connect the dots with data, deepen the understanding of the market, add value and support our client teams in making informed decisions with real impact.
How does your team collaborate to achieve success in your projects? Can you describe the work culture and how it supports teamwork?
We value deep work, effective collaboration, open discussion, and innovation. We understand the importance of doing the right thing in the right way, for both our projects and our people. We value every team member’s development and growth, and we have supportive systems well in place to nurture the team’s success.
We have a talented consulting team that works autonomously and is empowered to take initiative, contribute to projects, and strive for the best possible outcomes. Each of our team members is a highly efficient individual contributor, while also providing strong support to others during collaboration and always willing to exchange ideas and share knowledge and expertise at all levels. From project to project, we learn, iterate, and grow together.
What advice would you give to someone interested in pursuing a career in pharmaceutical market research?
Generally speaking, I think aligning career goals with personal interests, strengths, and values plays a pivotal role in shaping a fulfilling career path. Pharmaceutical consulting with specialization in market research is a vertical that requires expertise in both biomedicine and data analytics as essential hard skills. Like most careers, in addition to domain expertise, communication, problem-solving skills, and business acumen become even more important as one progresses along the professional development journey. One thing that still inspires me to this day is that the learning curve remains steep, and there’s so much you can do to add more value.
If you’re interested in deepening your understanding of the business side of the pharmaceutical world, product lifecycles, and tackling complex business cases, this is definitely a path worth pursuing.
What's one fun or surprising fact about your job that people might not expect?
Fun fact: somehow, I’ve ended up with the quirky skill of instantly matching colors to pharmaceutical brands.