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Anna Braun
Meet Anna Braun, a third-year Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) student pharmacist (P3) who will graduate in 2025. Anna was accepted to complete a Diabetes Specialty Sales Summer Internship with Eli Lilly and Company during the summer of 2023. Learn more about Anna's experience during the internship below.
Name: Anna Braun
Hometown: Rochester, Minnesota
Degree Program: PharmD, 2025
Minor: Spanish
Internship: Diabetes Specialty Sales Intern
Organization: Eli Lilly and Co.
Location: Virtual and various locations in the Midwest
Tell us about your internship. What does a typical day look like for you?
My internship this summer is with Eli Lilly as a Diabetes Specialty Sales Intern. This internship program is structured to where the interns go through a training process prior to being on their own in the field. The first two weeks were all online meetings and training. Then, I had the opportunity to travel to the Lilly Corporate Office in Indianapolis, Indiana, with all the other interns from around the country for a week, where we finished our training. After this, I had a week of shadowing my mentors in my assigned territory of Omaha, Nebraska, stretching to Des Moines, Iowa. Now that I am working as a Sales Intern on my own, I spend my days traveling to medical offices and talking to Endocrinology Specialists about their diabetes patients, their treatment plans, and ways the Lilly diabetes medications could help their patients.
How has your experience at Drake and in the PharmD program helped prepare you for this internship?
The reason I got this internship was ultimately due to a Drake Pharmacy Alum who had come and spoke in our CPD class one day. I had reached out to this Alum, and she helped me to find and apply for this position. Drake provides so many opportunities for their students and this is just another example of how graduates of Drake Pharmacy want to help future students!
Additionally, the diabetes coursework we learn in class has come in handy many times and I have felt very prepared to talk about it in clinical situations. Knowing the pharmacy background has been very helpful when talking to doctors about guidelines and other underlying diseases that they see every day in practice. I feel the Drake education really prepared me enough to feel confident when discussing the material, even with specialists who work with diabetes patients every day.
What have you enjoyed most about the internship?
I have most enjoyed the many people I have gotten to meet throughout this internship. I have met so many great healthcare providers who have taught me a lot about clinical applications of the medications we learn in school. I have also gotten to meet so many employees at Eli Lilly and have learned about many positions within the company. Additionally, the other interns I got to meet during live training week were also all amazing and I will hopefully stay in touch with many of them much beyond the internship. All of these connections will be great resources as I continue to explore which career in pharmacy is right for me.
What has been your biggest lesson from the internship?
The biggest lesson I have learned so far is to be confident in yourself and your knowledge. It has been scary at times to put myself out there when trying something completely new and different than the typical pharmacy settings I have worked in. However, having a pharmacy education has given me a good base when walking into conversations with doctors and with other employees at Lilly. Having that confidence in the things I know and asking questions when I don't has really helped me to get the most out of this internship and allowed me to learn from the people around me.
Why did you decide to study pharmacy at Drake and pursue a pharmacy career?
Drake provides so many opportunities for their students to develop outside of the classroom and that is what really drove me to coming here. The environment at Drake also made me feel so welcome and I could tell the professors really cared about their students. I wanted to pursue a career in pharmacy as I have always wanted to be in the healthcare field while also combining my love of the science behind medicine.
What is one piece of advice you have for individuals considering Drake's PharmD program?
Be curious - there are so many different career paths within pharmacy and as a student you will have so many opportunities to explore - don't hesitate to try something new because you will learn a lot!
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