Wendy Turenne — Real World Evidence, Messy Data & Why AI Must Earn Your Trust

Adam Walker:I\'m Adam Walker, a biometrics consultant, and this is the Pharma Prescribed Podcast where leaders, innovators, and hidden voices in healthcare open up, no sound bites, no spin, just raw insight, one prescription at a time. In an industry driven by data protocols and pressure, we rarely pause to ask the human questions.

Adam Walker:What drives us, what breaks us, and what truths live behind the titles we wear?

Adam Walker:Wendy Turin, widely known as in the industry as Real World. Wendy is a strategic force in real world data and evidence generation. Most recently, she served as Chief data Officer and senior Vice President of Evidence Solutions at Aeon, where she led global teams in transforming real world data into regulatory grade evidence.

Adam Walker:For pharma, biotech, and health authorities. Prior to Aeon, Wendy held other pivotal roles at dda, Cardinal Health and Children\'s National Medical Center, where she built analytics capabilities, scaled delivery operations, and advanced population health initiatives. Her career spans over 25 years across providers, payers, health, tech, and government sectors, giving her a uniquely holistic view of the healthcare data ecosystem.

Adam Walker:Now, an independent consultant, Wendy, advises life science companies and real world data providers on data maturity, evidence strategy, and operational readiness. Wendy, it\'s a pleasure to welcome to you to Pharma Prescribe Today. Aons an interesting story, but really I think our audience want to know how you got here today.

Wendy Turenne (2): Thank you for having me. First of all, Adam.

Wendy Turenne (2): It was a little bit of a long and winding path. My story to date. I think certainly Aeon has been one of the most exciting times on it. But in that story, but when you think about where it came from and how I got here, I like to tell people I am the child of two statisticians and I a bio statistician myself.

Wendy Turenne (2): People will often say, oh, statistics or research, or data\'s so specific. How did you get there? I really do think maybe I was born this way. In many ways. But and then, like any. Good, rebellious, strong-minded teenager when she\'s going off to college, insisted that I was gonna be a criminal prosecutor.

Wendy Turenne (2): I was gonna major in sociology and criminal justice and really take the law into my own hands and really make an impact that way. And like many other rebellious teens, I sit here today with a degree in biostatistics doing much of the same work that my parents were both doing as they were raising me.

Wendy Turenne (2): So that\'s just a little bit of a tidbit of how I got here. You know what, it comes down to me I have a lot of questions in my daily life. I have a lot of questions. And when I was. Sitting in early research methods, statistics courses, and I realized, wait, there\'s data that sits in all kinds of places that\'s just been clear.

Wendy Turenne (2): There\'s information there that can answer my questions. I knew that\'s what I was going to do. Lots of choices as to how to do that. And and I ended up really pursuing that in healthcare and I\'m so grateful to have had some different experiences.

Wendy Turenne (2): When you look back at my career, I did not start in clinical trials and work my way up through what used to be regular statistics paths.

Wendy Turenne (2): And so I found myself after really spending time. Looking at data that was not collected for the purposes of answering the question at hand and doing that in the hospital when we were thinking about safety and effectiveness, medical errors in pediatric care, and then moving into kidney care, thinking about what is effective for patients who are really many times at end of life stages, but continue to need care and keep going in complex reimbursement environments.

Wendy Turenne (2): Moving into oncology again, how do we get patients, genetic testing? How do we understand targets? How do we get better? Outcomes to better patients. And this whole time I just kept saying, but the information\'s here. It\'s just a matter of figuring it out. And that\'s what I\'ve been chasing.

Wendy Turenne (2): I think my whole career is, there\'s information there, how do I make sense of it and help make decisions with it.

Adam Walker:Thank you for sharing that. And it\'s fascinating to hear how everyone comes to where they sit today.

Adam Walker:And no doubt you\'ve not only got a couple of very proud parents, but I\'m just curious what kind of conversations were happening around that dinner table because I can only think what\'s happening around mine and our kids, it\'s not that, don\'t wanna know anything about what we\'re up to, my wife and I in life, science and all the associated areas.

Adam Walker:So I\'m just wondering what kind of conversation were happening around that dinner table.

Wendy Turenne (2): So I\'ll share with you that until I actually really understood what my parents were doing, they were the pretty normal dinnertime conversations. However again, when you get an excited, passionate college student late in their major, starting to figure things out, or particularly a young master\'s student who has it all figured out, even though our parents has been, have been doing it for 20 years, we did have dinner conversations about is the interpretation of the coefficient from a regression co from a regression equation, how do you actually make that interpretation for the main effect when you\'ve included the interaction effects in the model as well?

Wendy Turenne (2): And. My father was a sampling survey statistician. My mother was biostats and epi. There\'s lots of very fundamental theoretical disagreements that happen around logistic regression and categorical analysis at the dinner

Adam Walker:table. That sounds Fascinating. You lost me there already because whilst I am surrounded by statisticians in my day-to-day work, I leave their expertise to do their magic and come up with their outcomes in their statistical analysis and the summaries that come out into those final outputs.

Adam Walker:But that\'s really an interesting insight into your upbringing, Wendy, and I\'m really appreciative of you sharing that. We talked about your experiences at Aon and before I gather that you\'ve learned a lot because to have earned a title of Real World.

Adam Walker:Wendy, I\'m sensing that you have been in the trenches for a little while working in and around real world data and having been in that arena myself, I think we share a lot of common connections as well. So what have you learned from those experiences and how different is that to clinical trials more generally?

Wendy Turenne (2): Yeah so look, the last six and a half years, spending the last seven years at Aeon, really, I was fortunate to sit at the epicenter of the questions, the conversations, the challenges, the regulatory evaluations of real world data, real world evidence. And it was a real growth period just for the industry.

Wendy Turenne (2): Not in that all of a sudden we were using data that we weren\'t using before. But I really would say that what I learned is that especially in the last six years, what\'s really important is for any new concept, and I hate to mention it, but AI is gonna follow in this same way, right? But what are the standards that we agree on? Let\'s create a shared vocabulary so that we can communicate around what we agree on, what we don\'t agree on, what we are willing to call, even the term regulatory grade. And so my biggest learnings aside from. How I think life sciences wants to use data and how I think that data companies can really meet those needs better.

Wendy Turenne (2): My biggest learnings have come around when any multi-stakeholder group. Competing needs and competing incentives, if we\'re gonna be frank. And that varies really highly around the globe, right? But when you need to bring any multi-stakeholder group together, there are some fundamental keys to success that I just see continuing to repeat in our own industry.

Wendy Turenne (2): Being able to listen to each other, being sure that multiple perspectives are expressed in a room and in a conversation, and shutting down the perspectives that are inconvenient lead to big and costly mistakes later, right? Having a shared vocabulary so that you are not arguing with another person over the same point with different words.

Wendy Turenne (2): And I have to say that I, that\'s part of what\'s been really fulfilling and exciting. Watching the growth and the evolution and the acceptance and is there a lot more work to do? Yes, but I do get excited when I hear us all using the same words and concepts fit for purpose is now a term that we talk about when we think about the question, the data, the population, the study design, the way you choose a methodology and the way you talk about your results.

Wendy Turenne (2): And, but we all know what it means and we\'ve all come around it. We all agree that there\'s some intentionality and thought that needs to be put into a design before we solve a problem. So those are some of the kind of fun parts of being on the forward edge of a real change frontier, I think here in data and evidence.

Adam Walker:I think that\'s a compelling observation.

Adam Walker:And if I may make so bold, you don\'t strike me as a typical statistician. Am I allowed to say that out loud? You\'re in the fact that you are gregarious and you are a very open communicator, and that often is one of the skills that is not always on show with many statisticians, epidemiologists, in my experience.

Adam Walker:Is that something you\'ve built upon, grown into yourself over time with confidence?

Wendy Turenne (2): I think if you had asked 10-year-old Wendy what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would\'ve told you a pop star. So there is a little bit of a comfort and ease with communication.

Wendy Turenne (2): I think that has served me well through my career when I mentor young. People, particularly women, but people, even my own kids who are interested in scientific careers, I will often remind them I see it as my job to remind them. All of that work loses the potential to make impact if you can\'t tell the story along with it.

Wendy Turenne (2): So I think I, there is a natural storytelling part of me that I love to embrace that serves me well here. I will tell you that I. I loved writing a SaaS program. I said the other day, I know. I thought I was gonna be a SaaS programmer forever. It was a beautiful thing to be able to call the data, define all your concepts, check it all, and see it there, write a program and get your results.

Wendy Turenne (2): And then just push the results to the other side of the table and say, here they are. Here are your results. And I really thought that\'s what I was gonna do forever. And the team at DaVita. Spent about six months convincing me you are not going to be a programmer, and there\'s a real power in your ability to talk about results, to ask people about their questions, to talk through transparent limitations.

Wendy Turenne (2): I do not oversell. I am a scientist that sometimes puts a commercial hat on and my commercial colleagues get real upset with me about how much I hold back on, on some of the commercial language. So it\'s just been a real evolution in being able to embrace the duality of the technical, the math, the science, and the basic with the Tory, the storytelling with active listening I\'m compelled to help people understand, and so you will find me talking to people about technical terms at a much simpler language just by nature than to move right into my technical terms.

Adam Walker:I think you\'ve nailed that particular point, and it\'s something that I also described. In my own experience is I may be the least qualified person in the room on paper, but I always try to simplify the complexity for the broader audience, whether that\'s in the room or outside the room.

Adam Walker:And I think that\'s probably how we\'ve connected because as you are speaking, that\'s exactly what you\'re making me think of. And I think in the real world evidence arena, there seems to be more of an opportunity to be that person isn\'t there?

Adam Walker:I\'m thinking particularly around early in the pandemic, you\'ll recall there were many of those podcasts and channels and clubhouse sites where people went and they just chatted.

Adam Walker:\'cause we had so much time to chat. I\'m assuming you were in some of those clubhouse conversations, early pandemic in 2020 and beyond. Having those conversations because those places were fascinating for me just to be a fly on the wall and listen to some of the conversations. As much as I got the impression that there was an awful lot more going on behind the scenes that I was ever privy to because it was always behind a paywall or behind the CD, and pure confidentiality.

Adam Walker:But in those forum, people were talking and sharing, not breaking confidentiality, but definitely shooting the breeze and pushing out the boundaries. Whether or not was is that perception fair?

Wendy Turenne (2): I think that perception\'s fair. I will admit to you that I was not in those conversations. I was buried in millions and millions of rows of data trying to figure out how we were going to see the care that people were getting in a time when care was being delivered in unprecedented, in un unexpected ways.

Wendy Turenne (2): I will tell you that my Aon colleagues and I were heads down buried in a lot of work. What I will credit the COVID chatter with is a real understanding. We had t-shirts and hats right. At a TI and it was like, I\'m an epidemiologist now. Everyone knows what I do in the COVID, right?

Wendy Turenne (2): Or 2020, the year everyone became an epidemiologist, right? So that was what was really gratifying about, it was a little hard to listen to all the public and semi-public experts coming together because it was fast. People were talking about evidence, like it was evidence rather than it was preliminary exploratory understanding.

Wendy Turenne (2): We were really focused on. How confident can we be? This is the first time we\'re gonna make real or near time decisions based only on how confident can we be. So we were really diving into the methods and so on the one hand, all of the chatter, I believe, moved us, moved the healthcare consumer towards a place of wanting to understand what they were reading, needing, really trying to think about the information that was coming out.

Wendy Turenne (2): How we turn off the fire hose on all of that. I\'m not sure, but I did I mentioned I tutor young people in statistics as well. It\'s all for me about, I just want everyone to be a better consumer of evidence, and that is what that chatter started to do now. And we had people really in those public forums trying to teach about how to be consumer of evidence.

Wendy Turenne (2): And I think that\'s how I approach even everything that we\'re doing now. How are we consuming, providing, evaluating, judging, grading, purchasing evidence?

Adam Walker:So for our audience, if they\'re not familiar with the difference between clinical trial data and real world evidence, can you summarize that in a nutshell please?

Adam Walker:Because. I think that\'s a key point that will probably push us forward in understanding more broadly, but also I want to bring in as many people to understand these concepts as well.

Wendy Turenne (2): Yeah. So look at its base, what I would say is that we, and I\'m gonna assume this sort of universally agreed on, when we think about clinical trials and clinical trial data, they are designed to be as ultimately controlled as possible and to focus on a specific comparison and all of those designs and controls, particularly when you\'re making the initial safety decisions, when you\'re evaluating initial effectiveness claims, there is certainly a place for that kind of well controlled and.

Wendy Turenne (2): Many people will say the key is randomized trial. That has long been the gold standard of evidence. And you, I think we were hearing as people were wanting to think about the data that was being collected through the course of care, delivering healthcare in a non-experimental setting. I think that as the idea of how can we use that data, how can it be.

Wendy Turenne (2): Part of developing medicines. Some of the conversations started coming hard out of the gate with, but you could do this instead of a clinical trial. And here are all of the reasons why and where we\'ve moved now is that now we\'re thinking about the pieces of an evidence package.

Wendy Turenne (2): And so when we think about real world data or real world evidence, what we\'re up to in that space is we haven\'t carefully controlled, carefully designed the trial. We are not always randomizing control, but we are depending on the course of routine care that is made because of whatever practical decision that practical decision might be.

Wendy Turenne (2): Because you have the most knowledgeable doctor caring for you, or the least knowledgeable doctor caring for you. But one, there\'s a wealth of information that\'s available to us. Yes. It is not as well controlled. So we need to be very thoughtful about the math and the language and the words and the media and the hype and the advertising that we put around it.

Wendy Turenne (2): But it is additional information. It\'s often, it\'s almost always additional information about groups of people that needed to be excluded from a trial because it would not be ethical, because it would. Confound a relationship that was really critical to be a pure one. And so when I think about clinical trials and real world data and real world evidence, for me, they are pieces of a puzzle, components of a package that actually answer different questions and give you a different lens of the same question sometimes.

Adam Walker:Thanks. Thanks so much for explaining that. I think that\'s very helpful.

Adam Walker:So as a statistician, what do you prefer? What works more for you? Is it harder or are you more inclined to go down the real world evidence route than sticking with the fully fledged gold standard clinical trials? Because they\'re very fixed and by very definition, you\'re going down a very tight runway.

Wendy Turenne (2): Yeah anyone who knows me personally and professionally knows I apparently am drawn to things that are messy and unanswerable. But no, it

Wendy Turenne (2): my draw to, let\'s call it observational research as a larger paradigm. I remember I got my master\'s degree, university of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a real kind of powerhouse, particularly at that time. I\'m old, particularly at that time, a real powerhouse for clinical trials, clinical trial execution methodology analysis. And I remember thinking, why are we spending all of that time on studying 45 patients, as a young. Person. I remember that\'s a whole lot of effort to make some conclusions out of a hundred people in each arm. And certainly that\'s a generalization and there are larger trials but that was my kind of uninformed, immature thinking at the time.

Wendy Turenne (2): And I ended up working in graduate school with the survey research unit who were doing these surveys on twins and exposure and mental health outcomes based on twin exposure. And they, tens of thousands of people in this database, why would we not look at tens of thousands of people? And it just felt such such an obvious place for me.

Wendy Turenne (2): And then there\'s a lot to clean up when you take on that problem. And I think that the story of my career, maybe when I look back on it, is I\'ve spent some time cleaning up around the edges really trying to push some of the low hanging fruit around. There\'s a lot to be defined in what already exists and now.

Wendy Turenne (2): Here we are 25 years later. I\'m super excited about using structured data, but where I really want to kinda get my hands on data and start sinking in is how can I extract even more from some of that unstructured data or the unstructured tools that will look at structured data without some of the constraints that we look at it with from a human perspective.

Adam Walker:I think that explains it very well actually, Wendy, because in the context of structured versus unstructured data, that really is the sweet spot, isn\'t it? It\'s small versus large data sets. And I\'m sensing perhaps that the conversations that you\'re having with many of your mentees are along those similar lines.

Adam Walker:Are they? Because. You\'ve had experiences both in clinical trial arena, but also in the real world evidence. And I\'m, it\'s very clear to me where your enthusiasm is and where your future may lie.

Adam Walker:But in addition, what do you say to those guys coming into this industry? How do you advise them on where they ought to be centering their attention?

Adam Walker:Is it down to the person? Is it down to their drive, their motivation? What is it? You advise \'em around?

Wendy Turenne (2): So

Wendy Turenne (2): when I talk to either folks that work for me or I do some mentoring with some universities, I talk to all young people about, really about thinking about your toolbox, what is in your toolbox minus red and shiny, and it has bright gold clasps on it. That sparkle with gold glitter, right? But what is in my toolbox?

Wendy Turenne (2): There are some analytic tools and there are some really good tools that I\'ve developed over 25 years in evaluation around some specific things around data. We started our conversation this way. What else is in my toolbox? Storytelling, active listening, creative problem solving. And so when I talk to young people I talk to them about.

Wendy Turenne (2): Even. Yeah, my son has dreams of being an engineer and he is into welding and he is interested in nuclear and okay, those, that\'s, those are gonna be your tools. But what\'s important is where does it feel really fun to take your toolbox too? What job site feels really fun to work on with your tools?

Wendy Turenne (2): What building? And for some people that is a building, I wanna build a palace. Some people wanna build a tiny house, some people want to come in and just tune up around the edges, but somebody else has built the foundation and so that\'s how, regardless of what your tools are. I have to work with data engineers who are amazing coders and understand how to code very efficiently because every step of compute breaks the bank every time.

Wendy Turenne (2): How is that person gonna talk to me about getting the data right and clean and in the most beautiful way it can be to create the analytic algorithms. We have different toolboxes, but we\'re trying to solve. For me, that\'s the thread that I focus on in my mentoring.

Wendy Turenne (2): And what are the tools you want in your toolbox? Maybe there\'s a tool you want and you\'re just not gonna be able to have it. What does that mean for you? Why do you want it? And if you can\'t have it, what can you have? Can you be near it? What are the adjacent tools? And so that\'s kinda where I stick, that\'s my mentoring foundation in Paradigm.

Wendy Turenne (2): So for all those people listening, if you come to me, that\'s what you\'re getting. That\'s talking about tools and toolboxes.

Adam Walker:I like the toolbox analogy that works for me and similar to you, I also work with mentees from my alumni. I never cease to be amazed at the enthusiasm that these students are coming through.

Adam Walker:But also I just wonder what the future looks like for them and without, jumping too far ahead. We\'ve both been doing this a long time. I think we\'ve been probably quite patient in our careers.

Adam Walker:Are there characteristics that you\'re seeing in that next generation of life? Scientists and statisticians coming through that.

Adam Walker:Will or will not serve them particularly because I don\'t want to make a blanket statement, but I\'d love to know what your observations are of some of the next generation that are coming through.

Wendy Turenne (2): Boy, are you inviting me to get myself into trouble saying something I know. Speak your truth. What we do here, please. It\'s what we do here. So

Wendy Turenne (2): caught me off guard on this one. I think. First of all, you mentioned, and so this is where I\'ll start. You mentioned there is. What feels like a percolating sense of impatience around career and career development for people, let\'s say, who might be in their first eight years of their career after whatever their school milestone looks like.

Wendy Turenne (2): And that means we\'re talking about a pretty wide age range, actually, of people too, and experiences. But I do think that there\'s an impatience to progress in your career. Now, look, on the one hand that impatience, and I certainly, I saw this at Aeon, right? We were a fast growing company and most of the people who were working at Aon, it was their first job or an early career job. It\'s hard not to feel that impatience. And on the one hand, I think it does push you that impatience and that youthful exuberance, and it does help remind people maybe who have gotten comfortable in leadership, maybe who are not making catalytic changes because it feels hard, it feels disruptive.

Wendy Turenne (2): It\'s a good reminder to try that out sometimes. At the same time, I found myself saying to many young people, what is the why behind that impatience? So what is it gonna look like for you? I had young people who were. 24, 25. When am I gonna get to lead a team and be a team leader? Do you want to lead other people at 25?

Wendy Turenne (2): And what are, what is it that you want to learn from that? And what are, but isn\'t that what it\'s supposed to look like for me to get ahead, for me to get the next job? So what I\'m hoping, and I feel like corporate job ladders, normal career paths are being disrupted. It\'s part of what that urgency is doing for us.

Wendy Turenne (2): Do I have to do a little bit of a double take when I see a 30-year-old CEO? I do. I do. I\'m gonna admit it. I do. And I want to ask a few more questions and I want to see how much somebody has. But that different approach, the urgency, the impatience, it\'s breaking the way we\'ve thought a little bit more.

Wendy Turenne (2): I worry that it makes it harder for us to learn from past mistakes. I worry that in our quest for non constraint, we are giving up structure and a place for young people to learn from, experienced people. When I was in graduate school. I\'m gonna tell you that was 1998 and in a statistics class. We were not allowed to use stepwise regression when we were thinking about model bidding, building and model fitting. And for those of you who don\'t know, it just means they throw all the variables back. Then you throw all the variables into a command and you let the model decide which variables it\'s gonna pick.

Wendy Turenne (2): We are so far away from that kind of constrained thinking. Now I am better for it at every time I\'ve taken a step into those tools that allow me not to constrain my thinking. I am better that I learned in that constrained way, because I\'m constantly thinking about, does that make sense? Can I see what it means?

Wendy Turenne (2): Can I interpret it? Are there some basic smell tests and I worry that the impatience and the urgency and all the fast tools that we have in our hands

Wendy Turenne (2): enable us to stop doing the smell test.

Adam Walker:I think that\'s also a really compelling observation and I appreciate you sharing that, Wendy, because it\'s a similar experience that I\'ve seen, and particularly most recently, seeing lots of demonstrations of some very clever tools in and around clinical data, real world data, some amazing stuff out there.

Adam Walker:But as you say, you have to make mistakes to learn. If you never make mistakes, you dunno how you\'ve got to that end point. You don\'t know what you didn\'t program correctly to get to that outcome or that particular curve that didn\'t quite. Smooth out in the right place that in the past perhaps you would\'ve had to do two or three times push it over the fence to another independent programmer who would\'ve done that and validate it by a medical writer or another epidemiologist, someone else in the team, clinical project manager, whoever, whomever.

Adam Walker:So it does chime with me as well. But at the same time, this is progress, isn\'t it? So I keep being told that this is progress, so get on the train or this is where we\'re heading, the train\'s going that way. I love the idea also of 30 somethings young, 30 somethings leading our organizations.

Adam Walker:I haven\'t seen that firsthand myself, particularly outside of, the big tech players. I haven\'t seen that in the organizations that I\'ve been working in, but I don\'t think we\'re probably too far away from that. If our experiences in other areas and other arenas and other verticals are to go by probably just around the corner.

Adam Walker:Right.

Wendy Turenne (2): I agree. I guess what I want to say to those young people, don\'t forget to stop and talk to the people around you about even about the questions even the example that you just gave about you used to have to write the program and somebody would validate it.

Wendy Turenne (2): There were also a few different people sitting around the table talking about are we asking the right questions? And we\'ve done a great job, particularly in the RWE and pharma space, spending more time thinking about asking the questions the right way. But again, with these fast tools I start to worry if one person is able to sit in a room and ask and answer questions themselves is there nothing such as common sense, common knowledge, common goals anymore?

Adam Walker:I\'m gonna play that one back and turn it on its head. So I\'m a 20 something and I\'m listening to this conversation and I\'m thinking give me a chance. Why not just gimme a chance? What have you got to lose? I\'m keen, I\'m willing.

Adam Walker:I\'ll work all the hours God sends. I\'ll be there for you. I want to learn from you alongside you, and I appreciate that. I will make mistakes along the way, but I\'m really keen and I\'m really motivated. Is that enough?

Wendy Turenne (2): I think it\'s the main ingredient.

Wendy Turenne (2): And also I want all of those people to take their chances. Yeah. What I think, right? With great power comes great responsibility. And so I think that if you\'re gonna go out there and you\'re gonna say, I\'m doing it. I\'m keen, I\'m motivated. We\'re doing it, we\'re building it. The ability to defend your viewpoint, the storytelling, the ability to understand. I\'ve seen a number of health tech, digital tech companies that come out and they\'re, everybody is gonna want this, right? Sometimes I\'m actually in a position to evaluate a product like that and think.

Wendy Turenne (2): Nobody\'s gonna want, nobody\'s gonna want that. And I think that you see that, you get to those situations, but have you actually talked to your customers about what they want? Are you able to put yourself in the other shoe and answer the questions that cause doubts in other people\'s minds?

Wendy Turenne (2): And so the ability, the motivation, and the pure physical ability to move fast doesn\'t mean that you don\'t have to bring others along with you. That you don\'t have to do it within the framework that we\'re operating in now, try to break it great, but you have to be able to break it and put it back together as you move along.

Wendy Turenne (2): You can\'t just break and run away. I seem to be the one that\'s always putting it back together these days, Adam.

Adam Walker:Sometimes you need someone in the room that can do that based upon.

Adam Walker:The experiences that you\'ve had and as broad and as wide as they have been, what do you see that future self for your own role in the industry as we go forward, as real world, Wendy, this new incarnation of yourself into the world of a consultant like myself?

Adam Walker:What is that looking like for you and what do you intend for that?

Wendy Turenne (2): It changes every day and I intend to let it keep changing every day. How about that? No, but I am eager to figure out a place or a space to land next where we\'re going deeper. Where I am going deeper. And what does that mean? I feel like I sat in the middle of an ecosystem. Life sciences. The data providers, producers, just \'cause you produce don\'t mean you provide. Just \'cause you provide doesn\'t mean you produce.

Wendy Turenne (2): So the producers, the providers, the consumers, I\'ve really had a chance to sit in the middle. And there are a few spots that I get extremely passionate about, clearly and timely in the US regulatory news today. I think there is a host of work we should be doing in women\'s health that data can unlock some fundamental mysteries for and towards.

Wendy Turenne (2): I haven\'t quite figured out why we haven\'t been doing it yet so far and again, like oncology happens to be another passion area. Women\'s health means actually a thousand different things, but it\'s full of messiness and interaction effects and effects that look one way the first week of the month and a different way the third week of the month.

Wendy Turenne (2): But we have all of the tools. We have all of the tools. They exist in disparate toolboxes, right? Waiting for someone to invite me into that toolbox to go do that. But I think that was a very specific answer to what\'s my future, I would like to be spending my time thinking really critically about how do we push farther into unlocking the information that exists and it\'s not gonna happen fast.

Wendy Turenne (2): Yeah. The information exists. I think we are being propelled into a validate trust, verify. It\'s not just trust but verify, but I think it\'s first validate in order to gain my trust. And then I\'m gonna ask you to verify it over and over again. I think we\'re moving into that iteration with any tools, NLP based data curation, AI based algorithm development, AI simulation for patient severity or treatment choices, even AI based analytic tools that are applying models and analyzing data and spinning out conclusions.

Wendy Turenne (2): Validate it for me first, then I will trust you and then I\'m gonna ask you to continually verify it. And I wanna sit in the middle of that. Some pretty strong thoughts on how to verify it. \'cause remember, I am the person who wasn\'t allowed to use stepwise regression in 1998. And so now you\'re gonna have to pay for that too.

Wendy Turenne (2): And you\'re gonna have to keep showing me that your fancy tools actually do reflect truth and can be validated before I give you the leap of faith to just start selecting the information that I get out of it. So that\'s how I think about where I\'m going. I would love to get deep into some data assets and figure out, I think I am secretly a data product person. I\'d love to build data products, kinda have access to an unlimited wealth of interesting data and just think about all the interesting ways to put it together and release it out into the market. And so those are the kinds of conversations that I\'m having, the kind of advice that I\'m giving.

Wendy Turenne (2): And it\'s fun. I\'m learning a lot. When you sit inside an organization like Aon, everyone tells you that they\'ve got it figured out and that it\'s easy. And so learning a lot about shared challenges about what we really have figured out, what we don\'t really have figured out. And I\'m asking a lot of questions, which some people respond to nicely and other people don\'t.

Adam Walker:So I think you, you share that through a very refreshing lens because. It\'s built from experience, but also I think if anyone\'s listening to this conversation, the energy and the enthusiasm for your subject is clear. You touched also on women\'s health, and I think it\'s an area that\'s been underserved forever.

Adam Walker:And in answer to that particular question, I think it\'s probably because mainly men were making the decisions about that. One of the key components of this podcast is about inviting as many men as women on this podcast. To give a shared voice to the women of the world who are doing incredible work like yourself and who have done incredible work.

Adam Walker:Because I think that\'s really important as well, that I think probably in clinical research we found more women leaders are getting to the tops of organizations and you are an example of that. And I would love to have more conversations with more women in leadership roles like yourself. So that\'s a shout out to anyone that\'s listening to this.

Adam Walker:Just make contact with me because you are the kind of person that I want to have more conversations with because I think these are really important and groundbreaking conversations that are not happening elsewhere, actually.

Adam Walker:So I think at this point in the conversation, I like to finish with a quick fire round, and there is so much that we\'ve covered, Wendy, I can\'t even begin to summarize it at this point.

Adam Walker:So whilst I ask you the quick fire rounds, I\'ll be thinking about those things as I summarize, but what is the one piece of advice, Wendy, that you would give to your younger self?

Wendy Turenne (2): Stop being scared. Stop being scared. I don\'t know what I was scared of. I can tell you, here we go. I can\'t believe I\'m gonna say this on a video.

Wendy Turenne (2): I turned 51 last week and I can tell you that looking back at the last 25 years of my life, I was operating out of. Fear, uneasiness, anxiety, you could name it a few different things. But the worst thing that happens in any decision that you make is that it doesn\'t work and you have to pivot. And I say stop being scared, but maybe what actually I should be saying is embrace the ability to make a different decision and to make a change.

Wendy Turenne (2): Don\'t confuse change with failure.

Adam Walker:I love that. I have a mantra that I come back to, which is success is failure turned inside out. I often come back to that and it sounds very complimentary to what you just said there. What are the top three qualities that you value most when building a team?

Wendy Turenne (2): Authenticity.

Wendy Turenne (2): I want everyone to bring their real self to a team. Transparency.

Wendy Turenne (2): If we cannot speak clearly to each other, then we will not go anywhere. And then, I\'m trying to think of the right word for this.

Wendy Turenne (2): Roll up your sleeves nest, right? At DaVita they called it GSD, get stuff done. But that\'s the key to success, right? We built an incredible teams, an incredible organization at Aon. The people who were in it and who were around us know how special it was, those are the three things that at least I can speak for the teams I was a part of.

Wendy Turenne (2): I think those are really the three key qualities. If you can be authentic and transparent and you\'re willing to roll up your sleeves, you\'re able to say, I don\'t know. Do you, you\'re able to say, I can\'t, can you, can we, I need help. I am uncomfortable with the way that this is happening. But I don\'t have a solution.

Wendy Turenne (2): All of those really hard things to say. If you can come together with authenticity, transparency, and a readiness to roll up your sleeves and work together, there\'s really little that cannot be figured out.

Adam Walker:I hold for how to

Wendy Turenne (2): run a services business on 90% margin that we couldn\'t figure out.

Adam Walker:When you were talking about the roll up, your sleepness, I was thinking of Nike as you would say, just do it.

Wendy Turenne (2): Just do it. That\'s what I was

Adam Walker:thinking. Just, or just f do it anyway. I don\'t use that language, so I would never Yes, but I would never do it. Yes. But Adam, don\'t

Wendy Turenne (2): just do it, but don\'t just do it without talking to other people without make sure you\'re active listening without being intentional about the choices you\'re making.

Wendy Turenne (2): But yeah, I want everyone to have a just do it attitude. Someone on my team saying that\'s her job and not mine as the quickest way to shut me down in a conversation,

Adam Walker:Okay, lovely. And what is your favorite thing outside of work?

Wendy Turenne (2): My boys, my kids I don\'t know if it\'s fair to say that they are young men now.

Wendy Turenne (2): They are 18 and 20. And they\'re boys and our house has been me and the two of them only it\'s been, that\'s been our dynamic. And so it is one of my favorite things to watch them bloom into men. Get curious about the world around them. Get curious about me. And what I do and what I like and how it just doesn\'t happen with girls, I feel like it happens in different ways all through. But with the boys, when that starts to happen, I\'m gonna take them to Europe, that\'s right. So I\'m gonna take them. We are going to Zurich by and Paris for Christmas this year. So we\'re gonna spend Christmas Eve and Christmas in burn.

Wendy Turenne (2): I chose by, because I have a budding physicist who\'s a little bit of an Einstein fan, so we\'re gonna spend a little Christmas time in, by and Zurich and Paris and so there is little, I like more than showing them new things, spending time with them, hearing them talk about things, we have fun.

Wendy Turenne (2): I\'m just a big sappy mom. Adam is really what I am.

Adam Walker:I don\'t have any problem with that whatsoever. Just so that when they\'re listening and we can embarrass them. What are their names?

Wendy Turenne (2): Oh, their names are William. He goes by trip. He never goes by William. So my 20-year-old is Trip. He\'s a sophomore at the University of Tennessee, living his best life there, Vols.

Wendy Turenne (2): And my senior in high school is Zacharia and we are mid college application. We\'re crossing our fingers for some of the best engineering schools in the country. So that\'s them. I feel sure they would never listen to the replay of this podcast all the way through, but maybe if I tell them there\'s an Easter egg at the end, they might,

Adam Walker:They haven\'t seen my YouTube shorts yet, so when that pops up on their YouTube channel, you wait and see.

Wendy Turenne (2): I love that. Adam, this is the best. This is the best.

Adam Walker:I\'m trying to tick off all the boxes. I\'m doing my very best.

Adam Walker:And finally, Wendy, what is your number one golden rule in life and in business?

Wendy Turenne (2): Be honest. And be kind. Really just be honest and be kind. Sounds so simple. And I\'ll say it, it comes out of my mouth in a hundred different ways as I\'m talking to people, but be honest and be kind. I will always come into a business conversation, honest and kind. You know that\'s what you will get from me, and that\'s just where it starts.

Adam Walker:Perfect. We\'ve had a wonderful conversation, Wendy. There\'s no two ways about it. You started off by talking about those conversations around the dinner table with your statistician parents, and then we\'ve touched on your two boys who clearly make you very proud, and I\'m sure they\'re extremely proud of you as well.

Adam Walker:And the experiences that you\'ve had that have made you the person that you are today, and hopefully that will serve you, for many years ahead as an independent consultant in this wonderful industry that we work in. So for anyone that\'s been listening to this conversation, who wants to get in touch with you, Wendy, what\'s the best way to reach out to you?

Wendy Turenne (2): Real world wendy@gmail.com. That is the best way to reach out to me. And probably the easiest way for everyone to remember and look. That is certainly about all the things that I\'ve experienced, but it\'s really real world. Wendy is about all the things that get me super passionate about making a difference, and it\'s always going to be real world.

Speaker 3: and we can have public forum debates about and discussions about how the two work together.

Adam Walker:I think that sounds like a future podcast in the can already. I cannot thank you enough for your honesty and your openness and the kindness with which you\'ve joined the conversation today, Wendy.

Adam Walker:I had no doubt whatsoever when we spoke recently that. This would be an uplifting and an enthusiastic conversation between two very enthusiastic people. And that\'s how I think it\'s played out. So once again, I just really want to thank you for coming on, pharma Prescribe, for taking the time, for being so generous with your time, and I look forward to continuing the conversation with you.

Adam Walker:It\'s been an absolute pleasure.

Wendy Turenne (2): I hope we get an opportunity to, I appreciate the authenticity and vulnerability with which every guest of yours and the way that you approach hosting the show with a real emphasis on authenticity and vulnerability, because we\'re humans, we\'re working together.

Wendy Turenne (2): We cannot lose a human connection in trying to do this very hard work. And so thank you, Adam,

Adam Walker:Leslie, Wendy, I can\'t finish on any better note than that. Thank you once again for being on Pharma Prescribed