MLIS 2008
Vice President, Operations
Doctor Evidence
Santa Monica, CA USA

What I am doing now.

As VP Operations at Doctor Evidence, a specialty software & services company that assists stakeholders in the healthcare industry make and inform clinical business decisions with medical evidence, I get to wear several hats. My most critical responsibilities revolve around our financial planning and analysis; I run our financial forecasting model, supervise accounts receivable activity, and design and produce reports on our financial position and other valuable company metrics. I also supervise analysis and reporting related to our production activity. Lastly, I am also frequently engaged in opportunity-specific modeling and presentations—understanding the elements involved with a new business opportunity and translating that into an Excel model or Powerpoint that articulately expresses those ideas.

I also run an ad hoc Excel workshop once a month, with the tagline “Cocktails and Spreadsheets.”

What are the most valuable skills I use in my job?

Getting an MLIS from San Jose was the entry point into my first position at Doctor Evidence. One of the services we provide to our clients is a literature search of clinical journal articles, with the goal of retrieving all relevant studies on a particular topic. The head librarian at Doctor Evidence found me through the SJSU Career Center and brought me on as a medical librarian just a couple of months after graduation. While I had no prior experience with medical literature, I did specialize in Special Libraries at SLIS and loved the idea of working for a small organization either as a solo librarian or as a part of a very small team—since we started in the founder’s garage, Doctor Evidence was a perfect match!

I transitioned to the “business” side of our company about a year after I started as a librarian. I often feel that the skills I refined at SLIS are as important in my current position as they were as a librarian: knowing that the “reference interview” is a process, a balance of asking for enough information without belaboring it, trying to define the outcome with a “client,” internal or external, who may not know what they want; categorizing information with the see-saw of how easy or time-consuming is it to create, versus how your end users will access it.

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Send email to: Megan Berru-Kerr