Melanie Cross

Majors: Marketing

Certificate: Digital Studies

Graduation Date: December 2019

How did you end up working at Enlyte?

After graduating in Dec 2019, I was preparing and interviewing for a career in sports marketing. When Covid hit in early 2020, sports started to shut down and hiring in the sports marketing industry slowed. With the uncertainty of when the Covid lockdowns were going to end, I decided to further research other potential career fields. Thinking about doing pharmaceutical sales, I reached out to a parent of a friend from high school as I knew she was a pharmacist. I met with her for lunch one day where she went over the workers comp industry and how Pharmacy Benefit Managers work in that industry. About a month later she reached out to let me know about a job that had opened up at the company where she worked. After learning more about the job and interviewing, I decided to accept the job offer and have been working here since!

What does a typical day in the office look like for you?

As a Client Services Manager, I am responsible for overseeing my clients’ ScriptAdvisor Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) program in the property and casualty industry (worker’s comp, auto injury, etc). I currently have 18 clients that I’m responsible for managing! Some of my bigger clients include United Airlines (work comp), FedEx (work comp), and Nationwide Insurance (both work comp and auto injury). I typically meet virtually with my larger clients a few times a month and also do site-visits once or twice a year.

Outside of client meetings, my day-to-day responsibilities include ensuring claimants are able to get their medications related to their workers comp/auto injury, providing data/reporting to my client’s on their program performance (including analyzing brand vs generic trends, opioid usage, etc), and working on projects to continuously improve my clients’ customized PBM programs.

How has Digital Studies influenced your career path?

I learned a lot of valuable skills through my digital studies courses that I still utilize in my career everyday! Actually, when I was applying and interviewing for jobs, I used a lot of the projects I completed through my digital studies classes as examples of work that I had done in the past.

In my current role, the ScriptAdvisor PBM platform that I use is a completely digital and web based portal, so the skills I learned in my digital studies courses helped me learn how to navigate the portal quickly and utilize it effectively on a daily basis. Also, I work completely remote, so I rely on digital communication methods to effectively communicate with my colleagues, clients, and claimants, and to deliver virtual presentations and trainings.

Did you have a favorite Digital Studies class when you were a student?

I really enjoyed Curriculum and Instruction 209: Digital Media & Literacy as it taught me how to effectively collaborate with others and allowed me to express my creativity through the class projects. I also really enjoyed Communication Arts 346: Critical Internet Studies. With the internet being so prominent in life today, learning about the history of the internet and how it has evolved was super interesting. Both professors of those courses were really engaging, making each topic super interesting to learn about!

Do you have any advice for current students?

Enjoy everything in the moment and don’t take any of it for granted! Time goes so fast. The memories from UW are some of the best of my life.

I would also recommend getting involved and trying new things. You think you might be interested in one career or life path, but you could find something totally different that you wouldn’t have even thought about and you might love it! I would never have thought about pursuing a career path in my current industry unless I put myself out there and was willing to try something new – now I’m so thankful for that and love it!

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career thus far?

My book of clients has a number of integrated products across our company for their work comp/auto programs. My most proud achievements are when we win a big renewal or a new big client because we’ve demonstrated the value in the collaboration across our teams and how that collaboration is key for the success of our clients’ programs. Being able to provide valuable services for our clients and their insureds is so rewarding because we know these work comp or auto injuries can be devastating and life changing for the claimants. So when we’re able to ensure the claimants get the most effective and appropriate care for their injury, that’s what motivates me and makes me excited to come to work everyday.