You're halfway through a degree or deep into a career you're not sure you'll stay in and the loudest fear isn't about what's next. It's that everything you've already invested might be wasted. Keagan Hadley finished an entire OT doctorate he wasn't sure he'd use and it was the very thing that gave him room to build a completely different career.

Keagan Hadley is a regulatory medical writer for a large biotech company. He holds a doctorate in occupational therapy and has spent over a decade in the biotech and pharmaceutical space.

We Explore

• How geographic limitation can become a catalyst for unconventional experience
• Why the financial variable in career decisions deserves more honesty in the helping professions
• How your cognitive wiring reveals itself early and what to do when it doesn't match the clinical path
• Why "regulatory medical writer" misrepresents the actual work of the role
• How credibility gets built in an industry where your healthcare credential doesn't automatically count

Chapters

00:00 Meet Keagan Hadley - regulatory medical writer and OT

03:22 How a small-town CRO in North Dakota opened the door to biotech

08:50 $96K in student loans and the decision to finish anyway

14:14 The lecture that reframed scale and patient impact

19:25 Remote work, flexibility, and family life in biotech

24:48 Starting before you feel ready and selling yourself as a novice

35:56 Why recruiters matter more than applications in this field

45:10 Wrangling physicians who disagree

47:28 AI and regulatory writing

57:25 Why clinicians won't say the money part out loud

Connect with Keagan

• LinkedIn: Keagan Hadley
• Newsletter: https://cliniciansguide.substack.com/
• What Regulatory Writers Actually Make - https://thecliniciansguide.myflodesk.com/uegisjcpq9
• 6-Month Roadmap to Becoming a Regulatory Medical Writer - https://thecliniciansguide.myflodesk.com/nx48w16db8

Career Cliniq Resources

If you're trying to get clearer on what actually drives your next step, the StreamAhead Assessment will map your interests within healthcare.

👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Most health professionals spend years building toward a role they're told is the destination. What happens when you get there and realise you're still evolving?

Kristen Hicks-Roof is a registered dietitian and PhD researcher who built a full academic career - tenure, grants, research agendas, and chose to leave it to lead human nutrition at the US National Pork Board, a role that didn't exist before she took it.

This conversation gets into what it's like to be a high performer navigating competitive dynamics, the identity reckoning that happens when your career and your motherhood collide on the same timeline, and what it actually looks like to take clinical skills into an industry most dietitians are taught to distrust. If you've ever felt like you outgrew a role you genuinely valued, or wondered whether the skills you built in practice could belong somewhere completely different, this one will sit with you.

• The fight to prove nutrition's value and why it follows you no matter what setting you're in
• What happens when your drive and the culture around you aren't well matched
• The identity shift from "mother scholar" to something with no established name
• How a 2am LinkedIn scroll during maternity leave became a career turning point
• What dietitians and clinicians misunderstand about working in the food industry

Chapters

• 00:00 Unexpected Career Paths
• 06:31 The Role of Nutrition Professionals
• 17:08 Academia and Career Transition
• 28:26 The Decision to Leave Academia
• 34:01 Navigating Tension in Academia
• 42:46 The Impact of Motherhood on Career
• 49:29 Role in Nutrition Research
• 59:12 Building Connections and Following Passions

Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD is the Director of Human Nutrition at the US National Pork Board, where she oversees research investment and science communication across stakeholder groups from farmers to federal policymakers. A former associate professor with promotion and tenure, her academic research focused on integrating nutrition across healthcare teams and the lived experience of mother scholars in academia. She also hosts the Nutrition Connection podcast.

• LinkedIn: Kristen Hicks-Roof
• Podcast: Nutrition Connection

Wondering where your clinical skills could actually take you? The StreamAhead Assessment helps you map what you've built and where it could go next. 👉 Take the StreamAhead Assessment

Have you ever been in a role where your drive worked against you? Tell us about it. Find us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Emily Kelly chose physical therapy because a torn ACL at 14 showed her what one-on-one care could do. She found her dream clinic, treated patients for an hour each, and loved the work. Then a new grad started questioning what she believed about pain, and the clinical identity she had spent years building started to come apart.

Emily is now a product manager at Prompt, a health tech company building software for rehabilitation providers in the US.

This conversation covers what it actually took to get from one to the other. A pay structure that punished the qualification it demanded. The emotional cost of being the clinician who takes everything home. A healthcare innovation conference that lit something up. And a series of deliberate, unglamorous decisions that most career transition stories skip over entirely. If you are a health professional who knows something needs to shift but cannot see the steps from where you are, this episode lays them out honestly.

We explore:

• What pain science does to a clinician's sense of who they are in the room
• The emotional cost of clinical empathy that no one talks about at university
• A pay structure that punishes the qualification it demands
• What hiring managers actually notice when a clinician interviews for a non-clinical role
• The unglamorous middle of moving from physical therapy to health tech product management

About Emily Kelly

Emily Kelly is a physical therapist and product manager at Prompt, a health tech company building practice management software for rehabilitation providers. Based in Denver, Colorado, she spent eight years in outpatient physical therapy before moving through customer success and leadership into product.

• LinkedIn: Emily Kelly
• Mentioned: Meredith Caston / The Non-Clinical PT, Lorimer Moseley (pain science researcher), Peter O'Sullivan, Adriaan Louw

Career Cliniq Resources

If this episode has you wondering where else your clinical expertise could take you, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your interests across eight healthcare work streams and shows you options you might not have considered yet.

Take StreamAhead HERE!

Connect with Ruth

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drruthvo/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drruthvo/