Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharon Carothers

Hi Sharon, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

Growing up, I was not aware of social impact and public health work – let alone careers – so it was during a memorable series of college classes in political science and social welfare policy where I became focused on the optimistic, if rather cliched, goal of “moving to Washington, DC and get a job that makes a difference.” I was lucky to have my first job at The Lewin Group, which is a boutique healthcare consulting firm that set my health care career in motion surrounded by several mentors. It was there that I came to learn about health care reform (Clinton administration version), population health, development of campaigns, program evaluation, and writing policy papers. To this day, I stay in touch with many of my colleagues from those formative, indelible years. I then spent over a decade in tobacco control working on the truth campaign, which was an incredible job being able to focus solely on prevention and treatment of cigarette smoking, which at the time was the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. Afterwards, I spent time at Booz Allen followed by my joining Sensis where my first client was the FDA, where we created the first national smokeless tobacco prevention campaign targeting rural, tween and teen boys. The thread through all this is developing and nurturing a strong network and being willing to take risks and move for career advancement and learning. I cannot express how important networking is for any career. I was able to leverage and benefit from the relationships that I had at each stage of my education and employers and with very few exceptions, that is how I found out about high quality job opportunities, which has resulted in rich career experiences across public and private sectors.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

I expect any worthwhile career journey experiences struggles and while it is not always easy to do in the moment, one must reflect, learn, and move forward. A “fail fast” mentality helps. A couple of challenges – after leaving The Lewin Group for graduate school, I intended on completing a PhD as I believed that would offer more credibility and career options in the healthcare space but missed working and learning “on the job” so I wrapped up my academic career with a master’s – at times I have wistful feelings about that decision but no regrets; also, I left a big job to pursue a smaller “more interesting” job that was not a smart match but didn’t find that out until I was a few months in the role. Lesson learned: always try to go towards a new job and not be motivated by jettisoning the current one.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Sensis Health?

I have been with Sensis for almost a decade and am so proud of its continued growth and commitment connecting people with brands through marketing that builds relationships across cultures. We are a 100% minority owned, full service integrated advertising agency with offices across the U.S. as well as Mexico and Colombia.

As someone who has been working to improve the public’s health for a couple decades, leading Sensis Health – our health care practice that delivers marketing solutions that leaves no one behind – is very satisfying and a highlight of my career. We at Sensis are passionate and expert in working with audiences who experience access issues and have multiple health care needs – recently we have built a significant portfolio of clients in the senior care / aging space and given the growth of this demographic, we are learning so much about how to reach them in a fragmented media market, communicate about health plans and diseases, and scale marketing solutions. I enjoy the mix of working in public and private sectors including solving problems for Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), AltaMed, UnitedHealthcare, UC Davis, ChenMed, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?

Growing up in the Philadelphia area, I was rather obsessed with a local, beloved broadcaster, Lisa Thomas-Laury. I was convinced I would grow up to be on local television reporting the 5 o’clock news “just like her”. Makes me chuckle thinking how I ended up in communications but in a role very much behind the screen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sensishealth.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sensisagency/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sensisagency
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sensishealth