Candice Hardie

When I studied public communications and psychology in college, I always knew I wanted to go into PR, though I wasn’t exactly sure where the path would lead. I stumbled upon healthcare communications, and at first, was intimidated by what I thought would be work that solely focused on scientific communications. I quickly learned that was not the case and just how much you could do within healthcare communications to help educate and empower different patient populations. When I joined dna Communications, I was excited by the agency’s work with unbranded disease education programs — initiatives that truly make a difference in patients’ lives. That, paired with dna’s collaborative and creative energy, made it a perfect fit.

The cultural reckonings that were underway during the summer of 2020 brought a lot into perspective for me and my colleagues. With support from leadership, I co-founded the agency’s first Inclusion + Belonging Committee to create a dedicated space for important conversations that would strengthen our sense of togetherness across the team.

 

Our Inclusion + Belonging Standards Statement mentions that we stay true to our [I+B] mission by ensuring that our place can be anyone’s place, and I think our programming, how we show up for our employees and bring these values through to client work delivers on that. The committee is organized around three pillars: growing diverse talent, providing educational and foundational resources, and client excellence.

We’ve partnered with the talent acquisition team to support diverse hiring pipelines, hosting in-person sessions for college students and creating spaces where young talent can envision a future in healthcare communications. We’ve also ensured dna talent have access to programs like TWSC’s CONNECT sponsorship program and McKinsey’s Connected Leaders Academy.

 

Our programs like Educational Exchanges make space for dna to chat about topics like Juneteenth, bias in healthcare algorithms, and celebrating the impact of indigenous people on western science. And our dna Downloads take place after network-wide inclusion and belonging events to allow our team to further engage with the content as a small group. I’m proud that our dna Download approach has been adopted by other Inclusion + Belonging Committees within TWSC to foster conversation around important topics.

 

Inclusion also fuels creativity. When you bring together people from various backgrounds, with differing perspectives and lived experiences, it leads to richer discussions and more innovative solutions for clients. Our clients trust us to deliver campaigns and communications that resonate across cultures and demographics, and that trust is earned by ensuring our own teams reflect the diversity of the world around us.

Mentorship has been meaningful to my career. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the guidance of people who saw potential in me and invested in my growth, so I make it a priority to do the same for others. This goes for my direct reports but also many others who I’ve built relationships with over the years.

 

It’s especially important to me to support the development of underrepresented talent—those who might have different kinds of barriers or challenges navigating their careers. I had the privilege of being a protégé in an early cohort of CONNECT, and now I’m proud to serve as a sponsor.