Exploring Pharma Careers
PharmaFest brings job opportunities to ECU students, alumni
Every day, Keaton Caldwell gets closer to graduating from East Carolina University with an engineering degree. And every day, the senior continues to explore her career goals.
“I haven’t really figured that out yet,” said Caldwell, whose concentration is in biomedical engineering. “There are so many opportunities that I’m just weighing my options.”
Her exploration brought her to PharmaFest Wednesday in the Main Campus Student Center. She met with representatives of some of the region’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.
“I’m just getting more information,” she said. “I wasn’t really familiar, but I did actually learn some information that I think can be helpful.”
Jeff Cox, a practical process improvement team member from Thermo Fisher and a 2017 ECU graduate in chemistry and physics, helps a student access information about the company on her phone during PharmaFest 2025.
Representatives from CMP Pharma, Johnson & Johnson and Thermo Fisher attended PharmaFest, meeting with ECU students and alumni to tout their companies and careers in the pharmaceutical industry.
“It’s not just going to work and doing your specific tasks,” said Jeff Cox, a practical process improvement team member with Thermo Fisher and a 2017 ECU graduate in chemistry and physics. “You know you’re really contributing to helping save patients’ lives. That’s a beautiful thing.”
Engineering alumnus Tyrell Sharp shook hands and talked with multiple people during PharmaFest.
“I’m looking for an opportunity to jumpstart my engineering career,” he said. “I’ve connected with people from Johnson & Johnson and Thermo Fisher in the past, so I just wanted to come and make more connections.
“It’s very important because sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know. In my job searching experience in these last couple of months of trying to get my foot in the door with a good engineering job, I found it important to make connections because these people can refer you to jobs. That way the people who do the hiring know that you have someone they know backing your application. I find that important.”
Cooper Isaacs graduated ECU in 2024 with a Bachelor of Science in industrial technology, yet he works as a manufacturing engineer 2 at Thermo Fisher. He said the pharmaceutical industry is much more than just chemists, biologists and engineers.
“You see companies using the ‘E’ word — engineer. You get very timid like you don’t belong, and you start looking at other jobs and you don’t realize how much of an application you can have in the pharma field,” Isaacs said. “We manufacture medicine, but it takes a collective team to make that happen. We have fabricators and machinists on site. We have chemists on site. There are so many facets. We manufacture, but there has to be a support function for everything in the facility. That can be a hard thing for a lot of students to understand. They might immediately think of mechanical or electrical manufacturing, and pharma is typically overlooked.”
As a recent graduate, Isaacs remembers being in the same position as the students he talked with during PharmaFest just a couple of years ago.
“When I was an undergraduate, I used to bug all the HR (human resources) reps who would come to events like this to please give me a job,” he said. “I would get their email and send them emails all day.”
He encouraged students during PharmaFest to visit the College of Engineering and Technology’s Career Development Center inside the Science and Technology Building. He said the center’s services helped him develop a comprehensive resume and hone his skills to become a better job candidate.
“I probably went through five or 10 resume revisions,” he said. “All that and then practicing my interviewing is half the reason I got this job.”
The Eastern Region Pharma Center, with support from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the Golden LEAF Foundation, ECU Career Services and ECU’s Office of Continuing and Professional Education, puts on PharmaFest annually to showcase career opportunities in the region. North Carolina is ranked among the top life sciences hubs in the nation, according to the biotechnology center, with more than 840 life sciences and pharmaceutical companies employing more than 75,000 people. The average annual salary in the life sciences industry is roughly $121,000.
The pharma center, with support from the Golden LEAF Foundation and ECU, was created in 2021 to promote workforce development and career pathways to meet pharmaceutical job needs in the region.
Representatives from pharmaceutical companies meet with ECU students and alumni for PharmaFest 2025.