February 21, 2013 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a North Carolina-based key opinion leader strategy company, announces the hiring of Heather Langan as research director.

In her new role at the company, Langan will lead profiling and engagement planning related to the skills and experience of both leading physicians and other health care professionals, as well as medical centers of excellence that advance the medical science.  Life sciences companies use this research and advice for better strategic decision-making for collaborations with medical experts, as industry works with these experts to bring new treatments to market for better patient care and better public health outcomes.

Langan arrives at Thought Leader Select after a decorated career in human services, working and leading teams in developmental disabilities, family therapy, and mental health.  In her most recent role at Duke University’s National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, Langan led quality assurance and continuous improvement at the premier center of excellence in the area of child trauma, influencing the treatment decisions in evidence-based clinics around the country.

Heather Langan holds two bachelor’s degrees, in philosophy and psychology, from the University of Utah.  After graduation, Langan also earned a pair of master’s degrees in psychology and counseling, from Stephen F. Austin University and North Carolina Central University, respectively.

“Heather’s combination of experience is a perfect fit for our research group at Thought Leader Select,” stated Paul Meade, the company’s president.  “This team is basically an in-house think tank, and we look for people that have a record of achievement in healthcare, so that we can bring a keen understanding of that space to our clients.  Heather has a tremendous record of accomplishment in both the public and private sectors, and a deep, in-the-field understanding of how leaders and centers of excellence in healthcare operate and stay ahead of the pack year after year.  We’re looking forward to seeing the impact of her work and the improvement of our team through collaboration with a group committed to redefining its standard of excellence year after year.”

About Thought Leader Select

Thought Leader Select is a Chapel Hill, NC-based private consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries with strategies, in-house research, and a suite of engagement tools and support for collaborating with and reaching out to key opinion leaders and centers of excellence in medicine.

Thought Leader Select has supported companies as they develop effective treatments to promote better patient and public health across more than 18 therapeutic areas and 50 diseases and conditions.

Media Contact:

Brian Castle, Director of Marketing and Client Relations

Phone:  919-360-9690

Email:   bcastle@thoughtleaderselect.com

At Thought Leader Select, we have the privilege of working with a group of people who are always mindful of our company’s place in the big world of healthcare. We view our mission as a simple one, and that is to go about our work in ways that will always ultimately promote better patient care and public health outcomes.

We collaborate, through a strategic approach, with a variety of partner companies in the healthcare space—companies developing and commercializing pharmaceuticals, biotech treatments, medical devices, and diagnostics—as well as thousands of thought leaders, key advisors, and medical centers of excellence across more than 18 therapeutic areas covering over 50 diseases and conditions that affect millions of people around the world.

This week, we are proud to launch a new expression of our company’s mission and what we see as our responsibility to our partners across healthcare and the patients we all serve. We are proud of our team’s heritage in multiple areas of healthcare—our people have led industry teams working in brand and product commercialization, predictive medicine, and strategic planning, and they have also performed critical research work and delivered clinical care to patients alongside leading physicians in many of the top medical centers on multiple continents.

On our new Our Mission and Responsibility page, you’ll see a listing of many of the organizations that our company and its people have supported since our founding.  Our goal here is to promote these organizations even more by providing links to their respective sites to drive new people to experience their great work as we have.

Thanks for taking the time to learn more about our company and the mindset we use to approach our work. What we do isn’t merely foundational to promoting some corporate commercial strategy, and the physicians and centers we engage on behalf of companies around the world aren’t merely data points for people to access for some kind of gain.  What we do is part of a much bigger set of solutions, as the public and private sectors that make up the scientific community work together to solve the world’s problems in health, and we are gratified by seeing a real evolution, year after year, in the quality of care that people receive.

Brian Castle is the Director of Global Marketing and Client Relations at Thought Leader Select.  Kristen Smithwick is the Vice President of Global Business Development, Marketing, and Strategic Planning at Thought Leader Select.