When Derek and I came up with the idea for our Tin Anniversary “10 Years in 10 Minutes” series earlier this year, it forced us to take a look back at some of our old agendas to see where everyone from 2014 had meandered professionally since then. Some people had jumped around to multiple organizations; very, very few were still with the same employer.

Allison Gardner, PhD, is one of those few who have stayed put – she recently celebrated her 15th year with Med-IQ. Allison has certainly taken on more responsibility since her CMEpalooza debut, though we’ll only take part of the credit for her professional ascension.

While we didn’t have time to talk about Allison’s undoubtedly fascinating 2007 paper entitled “CaMKII can participate in but is not sufficient for the establishment of the membrane block to polyspermy in mouse eggs” (it’s sadly behind a paywall), we did have time to banter about her earliest CMEpalooza experiences, the need to be prepared in educational emergencies, and those balmy Chicago winters.

As a welcome back treat to all who attended the Alliance Industry Summit earlier in the week, we have the next edition of our 10 Years in 10 Minutes interview series for you today. For this episode, our guest is old longtime friend of CMEpalooza, Karen Roy, CEO and co-founder of infograph-ed.

Karen is such a pleasure to talk to that I lost track of time, and this ended up being closer to 10 years in 15 minutes. My apologies in advance for not closely adhering to a self-imposed arbitrary time limit that was established mostly so we could have a clever title. It’s well worth it, I promise.

So, come for Karen’s thoughts on how the topic of her original CMEpalooza Fall session on publishing CME outcomes has evolved over the past 10 years, but stay for the cheesesteak discussion at the end, including one truly horrifying revelation. (note from Scott: I know that Derek thinks Karen’s admission is the truly horrifying revelation, but I was more shocked by Derek’s tidbit. People have gotten seriously hurt for that faux pas!)

One of the nice things about a long-ish career in one particular field is that you get to see some of the good people you work with succeed by moving on to bigger and better things where they can spread their wings. I had the good fortune of sharing ideas and travels with John Ruggiero at an early professional stop for both of us in the CME space, and could clearly tell even then that this was someone who was going places.

Everybody likes John, and for good reason (even if he will never tell you how old he is). John is unfailingly kind, witty, talented, and truly celebrates the successes of others. He probably has a mean bone somewhere in his body, but he hides it well.

Now in his role as Executive Director of U.S. Medical Affairs, and Head of HEOR & Real World Evidence/Learning at Daiichi Sankyo, John took a few moments out of his travels to join us in the latest installment of our special “10 Years in 10 Minutes” CMEpalooza Tin Anniversary series. Here, we talk about the importance of provider/supporter communication, how CMEpalooza predicted the COVID pandemic (sort of), and the secret password at McDonalds.