Prescription for Career Success: Skilled Marketing Leaders and Researchers Are Making Headway in the Pharmaceutical Industry

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IT'S 8:00 A.M. AND BONNIE MUMFORD, A SALES REP FOR PFIZER Inc., is meeting with a hospital psychiatrist. Next, she makes a few cold calls and has lunch with doctors in her Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, territory. As friendly reminders of her visit, Mumford leaves behind pens and pads etched with the name of the sole drug she markets, Zoloft, which is the nation's most prescribed anti-depressant. By 7 p.m., Mumford is at an educational symposium on depression, which she helped organize for an audience of psychiatrists. A hectic schedule indeed but real life for a pharmaceutical sales representative.

A summer internship with Merck Inc., during her sophomore year at Florida A & M University School of Business and Industry in Tallahassee, started her on this career path. She joined Pfizer after receiving an M.B.A. in marketing from FAMU in 1993. "I saw …