We Are Norstella

Jon Poshywak

Vice President of Corporate Partnerships

Jon Poshywak is the vice president of corporate partnerships at Norstella, joining us in 2021. He focuses on building Norstella’s corporate relationships and overall business development, working to establish relationships with other businesses and creating synergistic alignment between brands and outside partners.

How did you join the company?
Norstella and MMIT is my first foray into pharma and market access. Historically, I’ve been on the acute care side, doing P&L [profit and loss] management for small businesses within larger organizations and working with service providers in hospital settings. What interested me about Norstella is that throughout my entire career, I’ve done a lot of business development and corporate partnership work, and our brands and sponsors at Norstella provide an environment where I can really focus on that, and that’s the kind of environment I was looking for.

What does your day-to-day usually look like?
I’m coming up on a year with Norstella, and I’ve spent a good bit of that time just learning. There’s no shortage of subject matter experts within this organization, so I’ve been busy educating myself on traditional pharma, life sciences and market access, and what means what to who. I’ve aligned myself closely with the commercial and product teams because I wanted to understand the history of MMIT and who we’ve traditionally sold to, and how Norstella has grown into what it is now. Right out of the gate, I started thinking about our reseller relationships. So, on a typical day I’m thinking about how we can most effectively target our small-to-medium pharma clients, those businesses that have a need for our assets but may not have the resources to effectively use them because their sole purpose is driving new medicines and getting them to the public, and putting reseller mechanisms into place where they can see how our assets can work for them.

What are some of the larger projects you’re working on?
When I think of Norstella coming to life over the past year, our corporate development team has been tasked with creating a culture of M&A, business development and corporate partnerships, and having that culture permeate through our brands. A good bit of that is reaching out more broadly within Norstella, establishing relationships with commercial, finance, legal, operations and marketing, getting to know all of those folks under our umbrella. When we have a new asset or partnership to fold into the company, it could be tucked in under one of our existing brands, or it might become a new brand or overall corporate relationship, and we need to establish that identity and find where we can be successful.

Another big project I’m working on right now is claims data acquisition and integration. There’s a need for us to better understand traditional claims data and how that data can be integrated with our existing assets under the Norstella umbrella. I’ve been focusing a lot of my efforts on understanding data from providers and suppliers of both open and closed claims data, establishing relationships with them and working to understand how our organizations can work together.

What are some of the common challenges of your role?
There are always going to be growing pains with this kind of work. If you’re not communicating effectively, if you’re not engaging the right people, that can drive a lot of concern and fear of the unknown, so creating the right levels of transparency is crucial. But this is an organization that is not afraid to grow, so that’s a good challenge.

Which company principle resonates most with you?
Integrity, truth and reality. It’s important to do what you say you’re going to do, there’s integrity behind that. I spent 10 years working in acute care, understanding workflow in hospitals and how that can drive decision-making. When I think about our mission at MMIT, smoothing access to therapies, taking medicines from an idea to something that’s available to the people who need it, it’s a similar process to ensuring people get the right kind of inpatient care. Are you going to urgent care? Are you going to theemergency department? Do you need to be admitted from the ED? What does your length of stay look like from there? How can I help that hospital be more efficient, admitting the people who need care and making sure they get discharged safely? It’s grounded in truth, and I’ve realized that focus is very similar to what we’re doing at Norstella, getting people the therapies they need (and hopefully keeping them out of the hospital). It’s very satisfying work.

What would you tell someone just starting their career with Norstella?
This is a high-growth environment with a lot of moving pieces. The industry knowledge in this organization is amazing, our people are among the most dedicated and passionate I’ve ever met. Three or four years ago, MMIT was a $30 million company, and now Norstella is a $250 million company, and the environment is going to keep growing and changing. So come in with your eyes wide open and be ready for that!

Where do you see Norstella a year from now?
A year from now, Norstella will have effectively found its way, strategically and commercially. When you think about the past 24 months, we acquired and/or merged with Panalgo, the Dedham Group, and Evaluate. Right now, we’re in the throes of integrating and harmonizing those businesses under the Norstella umbrella. Next year I think we’ll see alignment across our leadership teams and more consistency across our solutions. We’ll have a broader strategy vision, we’ll know what areas we’ll be competing in that we haven’t historically competed in, and we’ll have our marching orders.

What’s your favorite part of your job?
I love the relationships I’ve built and the challenge in establishing new relationships. We’re stepping into areas where we haven’t worked much in the past, like claims data, so I’m getting out into that market, meeting new people and finding that pathway where we can all work together. That’s been a lot of fun for me.

What do you like to do outside of work?
My wife and I are really active, we live at the Jersey shore right outside of Ocean City. We live right on the water and we’re both active runners, bikers and kayakers. And our little dog loves to be on the trails out by the beach. So, anything outdoors, that’s what we love to do.

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