When UNC Hussman student Connor Sule ’25 first skimmed a newsletter blurb about the school’s Health Communication and Marketing Focus program, she didn’t know it would ultimately shape her path into a career in strategic health communications. Today, Sule is a client services fellow at Spectrum Science, a health science strategic communications agency, where she supports science, corporate and product communications for several biopharma and biotech accounts.
Sule joined Spectrum Science as a full-time employee in a fellowship program that onboards early-career communicators over the course of six months. Fellows work on several accounts, learn the agency’s strategic approach and eventually transition into full account management or project management roles.
Sule credits the Health Communication and Marketing Focus program — particularly coursework on the patient journey — with giving her a strong foundation for understanding how communication materials must adapt to different audiences.
“Something we talk about quite often in my current role is the patient journey and its role in clinical trials and pipeline development,” she said. “Having that knowledge from my health comms classes about how the patient journey can affect the materials you’re creating has been really helpful.”
She specifically mentioned how these skills were helpful when she works on accounts that handle pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Sule added that the skills from her broader UNC Hussman coursework, including crisis communications with Professor VK Fields, allowed her to bring polished, portfolio-ready work into interviews.
“Interviewers want to know what kind of materials you’ve worked on,” Sule said. “Being able to reference work I produced in class made a clear connection to what they were working on at Spectrum.”
Her initial interest in health communication began in spring 2023. She enrolled in “MEJO 469: Health Communication and Marketing”, the first course of the focus program, where she saw firsthand how health communication skills translate to professional work. Before taking the class, Sule knew she was interested in strategic communications and public relations, but she didn’t know what a career in health communications would look like or how it could combine with her interests. When industry professionals visited the class, she was able to form a tangible picture of how strategic communications overlapped with the health space and what directions her career could take.
After completing the first course of the focus program, she joined the program’s Student Advisory Board, providing feedback on curriculum and student needs. She and other students met with Professor of the Practice Rebecca Fish, the program head, to discuss the direction of the program as it continued to grow and attract more students.
The program’s structure — from foundational concepts to case studies and a capstone experience — helped Sule visualize how real-world health comes together. “I didn’t want the classes to feel repetitive or like one-off thoughts,” she said. “I loved seeing the pull-through from one class to the next.”
Sule mentioned how she and other students on the board suggested the first course focus on learning about the patient journey and different aspects of strategic plans to reach a target audience. The second course would build on that. Students would see how the material comes to life in case studies. Finally, in the capstone course, students would be able to pull examples and skills they learned in the first two courses to develop a strategic plan of their own.
“Building relationships with faculty also helped ease the stress of planning for life after graduation,” she said. “It can feel make-or-break when you’re choosing between opportunities. UNC Hussman professors do a good job of reminding you of the skills you’ve spent four years developing.”
Sule also brought a rich internship background into the focus program. She worked with Discovery Education for two summers and throughout her senior year, gaining experience in the K-12 ed-tech space — an area she now sees overlapping with health, biotech and AI in her current accounts at Spectrum Science. Her internship with Eckel & Vaughan, a strategic communications agency in Raleigh, gave her early experience working with clients across the health sector, including hospital systems, advocacy groups and insurance providers.
“I had been seeing and hearing these concepts in the health comms program, but at E&V I was finally getting to do it,” Sule said. “It rounded out everything I was learning.”
For students considering the Health Communication and Marketing Focus Program, Sule’s advice is simple: try the first class.
“If you have the slightest interest in health, there’s nothing to lose by signing up,” she said. Sule said some of the most influential classes she took during her time at UNC were classes she signed up for just to try something new.
Once in the program, she advised students to engage deeply with professors and mentors. “You’re setting yourself up for success if you network now,” Sule said. “When you start applying for jobs, you’ll want people who can give advice, write recommendation letters and help you understand which opportunities will let you use the skills you worked so hard to build.”