During my undergrad, all I knew was that when I joined the workforce, I wanted to use my degree for good and work somewhere where I felt like I was making a difference. I didn’t want to get lost in a large corporate environment, but I didn’t necessarily think of myself as someone who would work at a start-up. When you hear start-up, you might think garage in Cupertino, or maybe your cousin’s crypto business. At least, that’s what I thought. But since I started, my perspective has changed so much. I just celebrated my six-month Clymb-aversary, and I feel like now is a good time to reflect on my time so far and where I see us going from here.

When I initially joined our team at Clymb – I was hired to be a part-time Statistical Programmer working on common clinical data services tasks – SDTM, ADaM, and TFLs. But, as is common in a start-up, my job and responsibilities have changed so much. Along with my day-to-day work I have had the opportunity to be very involved with TFL Designer. A lot of my work has been supporting the development of the Community Version but I also have had a chance to work with our clients on the Enterprise Version as well. This is a new world for me, and being involved daily with our software development team and learning the process of creating a web-based tool has been very rewarding. I get to work with and learn from highly experienced statistical programmers, statisticians and developers. Seeing their trains of thought, work ethic, and listening to their experiences is inspiring and educational. I also get to work hands on with our clients at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies ranging across all different disease areas. In six short months, my network has expanded, and I have experienced so many different facets of working in the clinical data industry. I have also been given the opportunity to expand my horizons and step into other roles. One of those roles was becoming a triple threat (Writer / Director / Voice Actress). You can find my big screen debut in our community training videos. This is not necessarily the kind of task you imagine yourself doing when majoring in math, but I have zero complaints, and am grateful for the chance to step outside of my comfort zone (and into the spotlight!).

My responsibilities and network are not the only things that have grown in the past six months – the Clymb team has as well. When I started, most days it was just a few of us in our Burlington Office. Since then, we have hired more full-time, on-site employees, all of whom have been a pleasure to work with and learn from. It’s an interesting position to be in when you’re 22 years old in your first big girl job out of college, and already one of the longest employed at a company. But it has given me the chance to help orient others to the Clymb environment, and I feel a sense of pride for having been one of the first FTEs. One thing that I noticed about working here is that your work matters and that ideas are listened to and implemented. I get to see through all the projects I have been involved in, from kick-off to the final deliverable we give our clients. In the short time I have been here, we have already launched the community version of our TFL Designer, taken on several TFL Designer enterprise clients, as well as provided clinical data services for multiple trials. Who knows where we’ll go from here!

Starting my career at a start-up has been a great experience for me. I get to try out all different manners of work, truly figure out what it is I enjoy, and know that I have a support system here at my disposal that will help and encourage me to grow into the best career for me. I am so grateful for my colleagues here at Clymb who have already taught me so much, and I cannot wait to see how we continue to grow together. Don’t forget to check me out on our training videos (Bhavin, we’ll discuss royalties), and try out the TFL Designer today!

Anna Yaggi

Statistical Programmer, Clymb Clinical