PME: What was your career path to your current position?
Emma Banks (EB): It’s been quite varied. I started off doing a pharmacology degree and then a PhD and postdoc, so I went down the medical research route. When I did my postdoc, I think I realised that I really didn’t enjoy working in the lab. It was an interesting experience, but I found it quite restrictive so I found myself at a pivotal point, thinking about what I was going to do next.
I decided to do something completely different and train to be an acupuncturist, as that is still connected with human health. To do that, I had to get a job, so I applied for a number of different things and in the end I found a job with a small CRO doing data entry, working in clinical development. That enabled me to do my acupuncture work four days a week, but when I had children, I found myself with three kids under four and the job in clinical trials became more important, in order to provide for my family. I kept doing acupuncture on the side, and then as I progressed in my career at that company, I worked my way up to associate department lead in data management.
At that point, as a family, we decided to move back up north as my husband is from the North East and he wanted to go back to Newcastle. As it happened, I was approached by an ex-colleague of mine to run a company in Newcastle – still working with data, but being more involved in the software side, using compliant software to collect data for clinical trials. I worked there for quite a long time and progressed to CEO level. The core thread for me at that point was definitely being involved in scientific medical research, but perhaps not in the lab. So it was still very much connected to something I loved, but it wasn’t lab based.
Then I was approached about running an agency. Initially I didn’t think it would be a good fit, as I’d just spent around 20 years working in clinical research and I knew the industry really well. But the timing was great and as the role was in pharma, the link was still there with the industry. So I decided to give it a try and looking back, it was probably the best thing I ever did. So that’s how I got here and even though I’m not from an agency background, I’ve learnt so much over the last five years.
PME: What would you say some of the obstacles were that you encountered as you progressed in your different roles?
EB: That’s a tricky question. When I was 17, I was adamant I wanted to be a medical doctor, but my teacher told me I wasn’t clever enough and unfortunately, being so young, I believed him. That completely changed my direction and that’s the reason I ended up on this career path. I think part of the reason I did a PhD was to prove to him that I could still be a doctor, just not that kind of doctor. So I would say that was an obstacle in some ways, but an age-related one.
Since then, I feel that I’ve been really fortunate in that I’ve worked with really fantastic people, both men and women, who’ve been incredibly encouraging. I think now I’m probably more acutely aware of the challenges that younger women have than I was when I was younger. I was born in the 70s, and that was a very different decade to 2024. In those days it was much more accepted that women were treated inappropriately, with a sort of ‘everyday sexism’. I don’t think that I was that aware of it at the time and I just continued to do what I wanted to do. So I’ve been quite fortunate in that sense.
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