Kelly Simpson-Angelini is a business professional who has made a name for herself in one of the most important fields, healthcare. Her comprehension of creating disruption in the traditional systems goes two decades back when she founded Old Lyme, CT-based Simpson Healthcare Executives in 1998. Being the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of the agency, she has remarkably elevated her venture in becoming the globally recognized entity that is uplifting several organizations in healthcare. Her firm gist and tireless efforts have made her into a successful serial entrepreneur, trustee, board member, inspiring author, futurist, brand strategist, and an active mother of four children. She challenges key healthcare stakeholders around the globe to think differently and disruptively about the future of health, looking beyond next year and into the next decade.
With her leadership and guidance, Simpson Healthcare was able to acquire milestones of becoming a Certified B Corporation as well as a National LGBTQ certified business. Being a purpose-driven scientific agency, it is dedicated to helping patients with new therapies who can be benefitted the most. It offers its innovations to support several organizations to develop new therapies for the patients. The agency has worked with heritage biopharmaceutical clients including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Takeda, Janssen, Genzyme, Amgen, Rhythm, Merck, Galderma, and Genentech, and others.
Leading with purpose
Simpson Healthcare is currently completing its 23rd year in the business. In today’s ever-evolving healthcare landscape, this agency believes in providing great, connected brand and disease education to physicians and patients as it is essential to advancing the story of science that its clients want to tell. In the mid of 2021, the agency earned the status of Certified B corporation that uses the power of business to address society’s greatest challenges. This recognition specifically aims to show that the time to expand how success is measured in the business world is on the verge. “For-profit businesses should be a force for good and collectively strive for ‘shared and durable prosperity’,” says Kelly. B Corps voluntarily meet high standards for social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. And being a B Corp, Simpson Healthcare measures and manages the impact of its business on its employees, clients, community, and the environment with as much rigor as it manages and monitors its business and its impact on health. By becoming a B Corp, Simpson Healthcare has joined the rapidly growing movement of more than 4,000 Certified B Corporations in over 150 industries, across over 75 countries.
Moreover, the scientific expertise and strategic medical communications expertise among other members of Simpson Healthcare span across a broad array of many major disease categories, including respiratory, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, rare diseases, gastrointestinal, adult vaccines, severe asthma, and more. “Simpson Healthcare’s medical and strategy teams are catalysts of innovation as we manage brands throughout the entire brand lifecycle, always leading with our purpose, and always keeping the patient at the center of our focus,” says Kelly.
Driven by Core Values
According to Kelly, the agency’s core values are the foundation for its growth and success. The core values at Simpson Healthcare include maintaining a passion for making a difference by stretching the boundaries to create unique strategic value for the company, its clients, as well as for the community. It portrays professionalism by developing strong, authentic relationships internally and externally with its clients and envisions a future by never losing sight of the larger context and bigger opportunity. The company understands the importance of being together thus the employees are dedicated to cumulative teamwork to ensure the highest quality work product. Furthermore, Kelly believes that the way to be most impactful in the industry is to focus on the delivery of positive experiences to not just its colleagues or clients, but most importantly to the patients. As she always believes that the real value in healthcare comes from helping patients to live better lives. The main purpose of the company is to support its clients to share the scientific story of the diseases they touch and therapies discovered.
Thriving in the Pandemic
Being a pioneer in disrupting the traditional healthcare systems, Kelly has faced several obstacles in her entrepreneurial journey. But she admits Covid-19 to be the biggest of all. Yet her invaluable foresight and leadership skills assisted the company’s employees to overcome the coronavirus challenge and march forward. The biggest issue faced by the company was going virtual to carry out business. Under her guidance, the company realized the benefit of providing staff with the ability to work remotely and knowing they can operate efficiently in the new normal. Kelly’s and her team’s preparedness enabled them to be agile and highly impactful while working amidst the pandemic. “In 2020, with the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, Simpson Healthcare was a cornerstone for our clients and for our community, supporting everything we could during this critical time,” asserts Kelly. During this difficult time, Kelly dedicated all her efforts to support the development of molecules that would eventually contribute to improving/alleviating the COVID-19 crisis around the globe. The employees lived up to the company’s B Corporate commitments and integrated its values in arriving with great purpose and energy to work every day. Yet, the question that was always on their mind is, “how can we help to make this better?” The agency supported their clients and rose to meet the pandemic head-on in the healthcare space, and is fully committed to their clients and community during these testing times.
An empowering workplace
“Simpson Healthcare is grounded in purpose and values that are lived every day at the agency, one of the many reasons why Simpson Healthcare has been featured on the CT Best Places To Work List since 2017,” Kelly says proudly. At the agency, employees understand the gravitas of purpose they hold and can live up to it eventually leading to a greater professional fulfillment each day. With its full virtual workspace, Kelly and her team engage in a highly collaborative environment that nurtures their creative and scientific approach. Later, assisting them to achieve a greater work-life balance than ever before. “We are proud to be both a B Corporation and to be the Best Place to Work in Connecticut, where living our purpose is our lifestyle,” she continues. This transformation was eventuated a few years back when Simpson Healthcare’s leadership team, under the guidance of Kelly, revised the mission and vision of the agency.
Kelly encourages her team and aspiring business leaders to embrace the core values of the company and implement them in their approach as well. She suggests that transactional thinking promises that if one possesses all the requisite skills and knowledge for leadership then they are destined to move up the ladder. She feels that every individual must follow a long-term approach as it assists in driving better strategies for the business. Kelly strongly believes in Futuring and visioning the goal that places an organization to the desired stature. As an agency, she has managed to get its clients productive by enlightening them with the significance of Futuring. “Very often Futuring is broad and, by design, divergent in its focus. Drilling down to specific, meaningful, actionable steps that will shape your market and your space going forward can take a while,” she explains. “In contrast, our process gets very granular quickly, identifying specific drivers shaping the market so that you can actively monitor them, spot them when they show up, and take action.” Thus, Kelly asks her clients to focus on drivers as irregular tracking of those could lead to failure of the Futuring process.
Conclusively, it can be stated that this innovation-led agency is whisking the new advancements with Futuring practices to assist clients to stay accountable for many years.
