Member since June 2025
Nancy Hedlund, PhD, MBA, RPh, believes that great science shouldn't get stuck on the path to patients — and she's spent her career making sure it doesn't. As founder of MedNavigate LLC, Nancy helps emerging and mid-size life sciences companies build the evidence strategies and payer narratives they need to achieve real-world commercial success. Drawing on 30+ years across clinical pharmacy, health economics, and market access, she bridges the gap between what's scientifically proven and what payers and health systems will actually cover. Nancy shares this passion in the classroom as adjunct faculty at Northwestern University, where she teaches Biotech Commercialization to the next generation of life sciences leaders. She is also a contributing author to the Amazon best-selling anthology Power of What's NEXT: Bold Moves by Design and an active voice in the HEOR and women's leadership communities.
My passion is deceptively simple: getting the right treatments to the right patients. But the path between a promising innovation and a patient actually receiving it is filled with payer hurdles, evidence gaps, and market access barriers that can derail even the most breakthrough therapies. That's where I live and thrive.
I am deeply passionate about translating complex science into the language that payers, health systems, and regulators understand and trust. Every evidence strategy I build is ultimately in service of a patient who needs access to something that could change their life. Teaching biotech commercialization at Northwestern keeps me energized and accountable to the future of this industry, not just its past.
A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in a women-owned bookstore in Libertyville, Illinois, signing copies of an Amazon best-selling anthology with my name on the cover. I caught myself thinking, "how did I end up here?"
My chapter, "The Final Pivot," tells the real story: a career built on deliberate reinvention, not a straight line. I started as a clinical pharmacist, moved through pharmacy automation, medical device consulting, and big pharma, navigated significant personal losses along the way — including a late-term stillbirth — and ultimately bet on myself by founding MedNavigate.
The lesson I wrote for that book is the same one I carry into every client engagement: it's never too late to redesign what comes next. That belief is what drove me to entrepreneurship, to teaching at Northwestern, and to writing a chapter I hope gives other women permission to pivot, boldly and on their own terms.
My journey is best described as a series of deliberate reinventions, each one building on the last.
I grew up on an orchard in rural West Michigan and began my career as a clinical pharmacist in a large urban hospital. That front-line experience gave me something no textbook could: a visceral understanding of what it means when a patient cannot access the therapy they need. From there, I moved into pharmacy automation and operations, then pivoted into medical device consulting, followed by nearly two decades in senior roles at global pharmaceutical and health IT companies including Astellas, Baxter, Hospira (Pfizer), and AmerisourceBergen (Cencora).
Along the way, I earned my MBA and completed a PhD in Public Health Sciences with a concentration in Health Economics and Policy. Each credential wasn't just an academic milestone; it was a tool I picked up because the work demanded it.
Ultimately, I founded MedNavigate LLC to bring senior-level evidence strategy and market access expertise to the biotech and medtech companies that need it most — those with transformative science but limited runway to get it right.
A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in a women-owned bookstore in Libertyville, Illinois, signing copies of an Amazon best-selling anthology with my name on the cover. I caught myself thinking, "how did I end up here?"
My chapter, "The Final Pivot," tells the real story: a career built on deliberate reinvention, not a straight line. I started as a clinical pharmacist, moved through pharmacy automation, medical device consulting, and big pharma, navigated significant personal losses along the way — including a late-term stillbirth — and ultimately bet on myself by founding MedNavigate.
The lesson I wrote for that book is the same one I carry into every client engagement: it's never too late to redesign what comes next. That belief is what drove me to entrepreneurship, to teaching at Northwestern, and to writing a chapter I hope gives other women permission to pivot, boldly and on their own terms.
My journey is best described as a series of deliberate reinventions, each one building on the last.
I grew up on an orchard in rural West Michigan and began my career as a clinical pharmacist in a large urban hospital. That front-line experience gave me something no textbook could: a visceral understanding of what it means when a patient cannot access the therapy they need. From there, I moved into pharmacy automation and operations, then pivoted into medical device consulting, followed by nearly two decades in senior roles at global pharmaceutical and health IT companies including Astellas, Baxter, Hospira (Pfizer), and AmerisourceBergen (Cencora).
Along the way, I earned my MBA and completed a PhD in Public Health Sciences with a concentration in Health Economics and Policy. Each credential wasn't just an academic milestone; it was a tool I picked up because the work demanded it.
Ultimately, I founded MedNavigate LLC to bring senior-level evidence strategy and market access expertise to the biotech and medtech companies that need it most — those with transformative science but limited runway to get it right.