Team Spotlight: Partnerships

At PHM, we are continually re-imagining media for health and wellness everyday—but how does that play out in the day to day lives of our employees?

To answer this question, PHM presents the Team Spotlight, highlighting a different team each month and detailing not only the work they do, but how they make PHM a great place to work.

This month: Partnerships, through the lens of Karima Sharif, Head of Inclusive Investments and Partnerships Lead, HCP + DTC

My involvement in the healthcare industry was truly divine – my mother was a nurse and I used to study her nursing handbooks to learn more about different medicines and how they worked.

I have been in healthcare media my entire career and joined PHM two years ago. A Philly native myself, just call me the “Fresh Prince[ss] of Healthcare Media!” To me, it was a no-brainer to join PHM. As large as we are, we still have a spunky entrepreneurial spirit that I love. There isn’t too much red tape and working across teams has been rewarding, especially when I have been able to see some of our ideas come to life.

Currently, I serve as the Head of Inclusive Investments and Partnerships Lead, HCP + DTC. Sounds like a mouthful, but don’t worry—let me tell you what that means!

The Partnerships team, a growing department imbedded in the Investments and Partnerships team, started in 2020 as we began to reimagine media strategy, investments and activations at the agency. Our team drives value for all our clients, working to create connections between our agency and our valued partners.

We have three strategic responsibilities:

Partnership Oversight

At PHM, we have relationships with over 600 partners across all channels and data sources, in both the DTC and HCP spaces. The job of our team is to manage these relationships and ensure we are giving our partners a seat at the table when it comes to strategy.

Building Efficiencies

As we oversee these relationships, we are able to identify inefficiencies and build in more centralized ways of working across clients and partners.

Marketplace Collaborations

Additionally, we’re able to identify gaps in the market for our clients, and work with our partners to create new products and power big ideas. For example, we recently collaborated with Twitter and Medscape on Conference Conversations, a video content series designed to unify HCPs who attend medical conferences and unlock new pathways that connect attendees and marketers.

One of the most exciting aspects of my job is working on Inclusive Investments within healthcare media. At PHM, we have made a commitment to spur economic equity and growth within Diverse Owned and Targeted (DOT) partners that will energize access and resources for underserved and underrepresented communities. Our work with DOT partners is not to fill a niche need or check a box—our work with them fuels economic growth. Additionally, we make sure to understand whether these partners are diverse-targeted or diverse-owned. For example, BET is a black-targeted brand, whereas Holler is black-owned. Knowing the difference is critical to understanding where we put our dollars and how we are fueling economic opportunity within healthcare media.

Even though we aren’t on the front lines saving lives like healthcare providers—all of us have been patients and caregivers at some point, or will be one day. The value that we can bring by being agents of healthcare information and collaborating with source providers is rewarding and meaningful. Patients and healthcare providers count on us and our partners for accurate, relevant and meaningful information and it is our responsibility to put our healthcare community first, every day.

Interested in the Investments and Partnerships team? Check out our open job postings here.

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Connect with Karima on LinkedIn.

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