Patient Advocate Winners
Emmanuel Fombu, MD, Medical Affairs, Novartis
An entrepreneur and innovative healthcare executive, Dr. Fombu has a vast experience in medical and clinical affairs in pharmaceutical, device, imaging and laboratory diagnostic industries as well as quality experience in healthcare delivery. He is an advocate for value-based healthcare and a leader in designing clinical trials using innovative study designs to evaluate complementary health approaches and their integration into real world healthcare. He is passionate about ehealth, nanotechnology, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital medicine and is an external advisory board member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT.nano project.
Mary Shomon, Founder of thyroid-info.com and Contributing Editor
Mary is known around the world as one of the key thyroid and health activists. Diagnosed with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism in 1995, Mary transformed her struggles, pregnancy, and firsthand understanding of hypothyroidism into an advocative and educational mission that now makes her a leading voice in thyroid health. A New York Times Best-selling author, Mary has maintained patient-oriented websites on thyroid disease, co-starred in the PBS “Healthy Hormones” television series, and has been featured in hundreds of television, radio, newspaper, magazine and web interviews. Mary is a key thyroid voice in social media, via her Facebook Thyroid Support page, and her ThyroidMary feed on Twitter.
Agency Guru Winner
Andrea Palmer, SVP, Publicis Health Media
Andrea heads Publicis Health Media’s Chicago office, overseeing client service teams on several of the agency’s marquee media accounts, managing cross-functional agency strategy and activation teams to deliver best-in-class integrated media and content solutions for some of the largest healthcare brands and organizations in the U.S.
Before joining Publicis, Andrea served as the global lead for media activation and planning and buying services for Digitas Health.
She has held positions in both traditional and digital media in verticals such as telecom, retail, ecommerce, travel/tourism, and political marketing in D.C. before shifting focus to healthcare for the past 10 years.
Agency Guru Rising Star Winner
Kate Flanagan, Director, Digital Planning & Activation, Carat
Kate is currently a Director on the Digital team at Carat managing the Pfizer business. She has been working on Pfizer and learning the intricacies of pharmaceutical marketing since she began her career in media nearly seven years ago. Recently, her area of focus has been partnering with Pfizer to advance DTC advertising in the social space.
