CHAPTER OFFICERS 2011-2012

Nancy Katz PhD - President

Dr. Nancy R. Katz is completing 15 years as a medical writer. She is President and Principal Medical Writing Consultant of Illyria Consulting Group, Inc., which specializes in eCTD-compliant documents for regulatory submissions.

Nancy holds AMWA core credential certificates in pharmaceuticals and in editing/writing; recently, she taught a course on Module 2 Summaries for the CTD at the AMWA regional convention at Asilomar. She is active member of the Medical Writing Special Interest Area Community (MW SIAC) of the Drug Information Association (DIA) and the pharmaceutical content subcommittee of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). She also mentors writers through AuthorAid, an organization that helps researchers in developing countries publish their work.

Nancy earned a Clinical Sciences Certificate from the Pharmaceutical Education Research Institute (PERI), a Certificate in Training and Human Resource Development (with distinction) from U.C. Berkeley Extension School of Business and Management, and a Ph.D. in English from U.C. Berkeley.

Publications on medical/regulatory writing include "The eCTD: A primer and beyond for regulatory writers" (DIA Global Forum, April 2010), and "Your career as biopharmaceutical regulatory writer" in Choosing the Right Regulatory Career (edited by Peggy Berry; RAPS; 2010).

Suzanne Canada PhD - Vice President (President-elect)

I have been a member of the Northern California chapter of AMWA for 9 years and received a Writing/Editing core certificate in 2009. With a Bachelors in Chem/Biochem from UCSD, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Purdue, I have been working in the fields of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Development for over 10 years. With a balance between data-driven analysis, the ability to make a difference for patients, and an creative use of language to convey the story behind the science, Medical Writing is the ideal career for me.

In 2010, I broke out of the corporate career to work as a freelance writer, specializing in regulatory documents to support NDA, IND and BLA filings to the FDA. This allows me to keep a more independent perspective while allowing a flexible schedule for family and volunteer work with Cub Scouts. I am interested in the role that AMWA plays in keeping members apprised of new developments in the industry, educating new Medical Writers and the public, and serving as a forum for issues in our profession.

Joan Brodovsky - Secretary

Joan Brodovsky's interest in medical writing led to posts in both an industrial and a medical dot-com as writer and editor in the early 2000s.She was an independent consultant in Mexico City for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for many years, specializing in market research for pharmaceutical and chemical firms. She returned to the United States to take a position as consultant at Frost and Sullivan, a market research and strategy management consulting firm, where she has become the ad hoc editor for the Healthcare and Life Science Consulting Group.

Joan has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and an MS in Physiology from Stanford University. Her curriculum includes work in the quality control laboratory of a pharmaceutical laboratory; an appointment as Associate Professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where she taught Chemistry; and a position as Director for Services to the Pharmaceutical Industry at the Mexican National Science and Technology Council.

She qualified for certification as Editor in the Life Sciences in 2004. She is fluent in Spanish, conversant in German, and reads French, Italian, and Portuguese. She has been an active member of the American Medical Writers Association, the American Chemical Society, the Mexican Pharmaceutical Association.

Christine J Holzhauer - Treasurer

CJ Holzhauer has been an AMWA member since 2003. She learned of the benefits of AMWA through her colleagues in an East Bay biotechnology company. She earned a Bachelors of Science Degree from Cook College at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a Masters of Science from Washington State University. She has written Standard Operating Procedures and audited scientific documentation. Christine is active in education as a math teacher. Christine applies her Food Science and Nutrition education in the community by promoting good nutrition and health to women and children. She enjoys communicating with friends abroad in French and Spanish.

Kristen Mayo PhD - Membership Liaison

Kristen Mayo is currently a staff medical writer at JANSSEN Alzheimer Immunotherapy Research and Development in South San Francisco. She has worked as a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry for 13 years, in 5 companies in the Bay Area. Prior to that, she was a technical writer/editor in a biotech company for 6 years. Kristen has been an active member of AMWA since 1998 and she completed the AMWA requirements for a Multidisciplinary certificate in 2002. Kristen received her Bachelor's degree from UC Santa Barbara (with a double major in English and Anthropology) and a PhD in Biology from UCSB. She went on to do postdoctoral research in biochemistry/molecular biology at Stanford Medical Center, and then was a guest researcher at the Karolinska Medical Research Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

It was while living in Europe and on maternity leave that Kristen began her career as science writer and editor. When she re-entered the workforce in the US in 1992, she was able to make the switch completely from lab research to technical writing. The transition to medical writing happened in 1998, with the help of a friend and mentor (an AMWA member). Kristen's medical writing experience thus far has focused primarily in the therapeutic areas of cancer prevention, autoimmune diseases, pain control, renal anemia, and Alzheimer disease.

Sunil Patel - Newsletter Editor

Sunil Patel's entire life has led up to becoming the Newsletter Editor for the Northern California Chapter of AMWA. He began writing in elementary school and really took off in high school, where he served as Literary Director for the literary magazine, élan. At Rice University, where he studied biochemistry and English, he again worked for the literary magazine, University Blue, and also copyedited for the Rice Thresher. After receiving a Master's in pharmacology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, he wrote science articles for the Michigan Daily. He began his career 5 years ago as a Medical Writer Intern at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, where he is now a Drug Safety Associate II. He has been an active member of AMWA since 2007, serving on panels, teaching workshops, and singing about commas.

Catherine Magill PhD - Programs Chair

Catherine Magill has worked as a freelance scientific/medical writer and editor for six years after more than 11 years in cell biology/pharmacology research in Bay Area biotech companies (one job, four companies). The desire for more flexibility in her work-life drove her to look into freelance opportunities in writing/editing for biotech, and during the course of that research she found AMWA and has been active in the Northern California Chapter since 2005. She has completed the requirements for AMWA certificates in Editing/Writing and Freelance and is working on an Advanced certificate. Catherine served this past year as Acting President and has served for several years as Programs Chair.

Catherine received her Bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in Neurobiology and her PhD from Stanford in Neurosciences and then moved to Harvard to do post-doctoral training in Molecular Embryology. She quickly determined that she prefers Northern California life and after three years she returned to the Bay Area to work in biotech, where she focused predominantly on drug discovery in the areas of oncology and inflammation.

Other professional organizations in which Catherine participates are the Northern California Science Writer's Association, American Association of Cancer Research, International Society for Stem Cell Research, and American Society for Cell Biology.

NON-ELECTED POSITIONS

Catherine Magill - Immediate Past-President

Mimi Wessling PhD ELS - Website Administrator

Mimi Wessling is a relative newcomer to the field, having spent most of her professional life as an academic historian of science and medicine. She has been a technical and medical writer for 10 years, and a member of AMWA-Northern California for 6 years. She received graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (Physical Chemistry) and the University of Michigan (History of Science and Medicine). Her previous career in academia included positions at University of Michigan, Stanford University, and the University of Essex (U.K.)

Her professional interests are medical communication, medical ethics, translations of medical and scientific writing from German, scientific writing, and neuroscience. Her professional interests are medical communication, medical ethics, and translations of German scientific writing. She is a Board member and active volunteer with the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life Project, based in Monterey, CA.

Medical writing and editing has combined her love of science with her interest in effective communication of ideas.

If scrolling this far down hasn't exhausted you, take a look at her Web site, Language Matters Santa Cruz. There you'll find a link to the preface of her recently published translation of a classic in the history of medical ethics.