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Evon Burton on the Power of Storytelling in Pharma Marketing · Expertly Said

• Kristen Sweeney: My guest today is Evan Burton, Associate Director of Patient Marketing at Bristol Myers Squibb. Evan is an accomplished marketing and communications leader with more than a decade of experience driving patient and consumer centered strategy across biotech, pharmaceutical, nonprofit, and cultural sectors. At Bristol Myers Squibb, Evan leads integrated initiatives that connect brand strategy with real patient needs, blending data-driven insight, cultural fluency, and regulatory rigor. You're listening to Expertly Said, a podcast on the art and impact of communication. I'm Kristen Sweeney, founder and CEO of Every Little Word. Previously at Merck, Evan shaped national healthcare consumer strategies within the HIV portfolio, developing culturally resonant campaigns and expanding digital engagement into emerging platforms to deliver compliant high impact work at scale. Evan led crisis communications for Philadelphia fight during the COVID-19 pandemic and built trusted community based outreach programs focused on access, equity and prevention. He's also a committed arts advocate who has served on the city of Philadelphia's arts and culture task force and consistently champions the role of creative expression in community building and public storytelling. Evan's work has been recognized by organizations including the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and Harvard Business Review. And he remains dedicated to advancing patient advocacy, health equity, and the arts as interconnected drivers of meaningful change. Evan, welcome to the show. Evon: Hi, thank you for having me. Kristen Sweeney: I'm very excited to have this conversation. ⁓ So we've heard already the kind of key touch points of a really interesting career journey, but I'd like to go back a bit further to the origins. ⁓ Tell us how you ended up in marketing and communications. That's it for this episode of Expertly Said. We are produced by Every Little Word, a boutique content and communications agency. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, or leave us a review. If you want to connect with me directly, please do. You can find me on LinkedIn, just search Kristen Sweeney. Thanks for listening. Talk soon. Evon: Well, that's a really good question. It started in 2009 when I was a senior at Morehouse College. If you think about the year 2009, that was the beginning of the Great Recession. We were, I like to think of this as millennials as the generation of broken promises. So, you know, to be in. Kristen Sweeney: Fun! Evon: Right, right. Like when you, you know, you're supposed to go to college, you're supposed to start your career, you're supposed to get a job. And my juvenile mind, you're supposed to get a BMW and make six figures and, you know, have no worries in the world. But literally none of that was provided for us. We got our degrees and they said, hey, there are no jobs. So figure out, figure it out. And ⁓ I just remember going to interview after interview, not getting the job, but more importantly, not really feeling connected to the role that I was applying for and interviewing for at that time. So I started thinking about what I was really interested in at that time. And I had always loved the work of nonprofits. There were plenty that had gotten me to that point. And what was more interesting was that, Philadelphians or people overall had very little awareness of these organizations, one, but more importantly, the life-changing work they were doing. So I kind of created like this little mission statement for myself or this hypothesis for myself to figure out like what would happen if these, these organizations received more. had more increase in awareness. I had no idea where that hypothesis would lead me, but I knew that that's would be something that I would love to do. so I stopped the interview process while I was a senior. I started telling people, like, this is what I'm thinking. I'll never forget there was a Morehouse brother that was like, so you want to be broke for the rest of your life? And he wasn't fully wrong there. He you know, I knew that this was something that could open doors for me in some way. But more importantly, like help the help various communities overall. So for me, it started ⁓ with an unpaid internship after graduating at the American Bread across in Philadelphia. ⁓ And I think I was only there like three months and I'm like, OK, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Like this is amazing. So there were some Kristen Sweeney: Wow. Evon: there was a job in between, but when I made the decision, okay, I need to get back and have that feeling when I was working at the Red Cross. So I literally built a communications career on my own ⁓ with the help of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and the Black Public Relations Society. ⁓ I used what I knew to help these various organizations in the city of Philadelphia. get the awareness from a media perspective and a social media perspective that I felt they needed. So I worked with organizations such as Achievability, which is an interesting ⁓ hybrid of a education and housing program. ⁓ I worked with independent artists, choreographers, and event planners and whatnot. And then ultimately that led me to the ⁓ to Philadelphia Fight, which is the city's largest HIV-serving organization, where I was there for seven years. Kristen Sweeney: Wow. I love, I mean, it's so interesting just to go back to where you started when you talked about the Great Recession as a pivot point. Had a little bit of a different experience, but still one that's very much shaped by those events. ⁓ I was graduating grad school for musical theater and it was moving to New York. So it was very interesting because obviously I'm moving to New York to be an actor. Everyone has told you that's hard. And so I didn't really... Evon: Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: know quite what to expect. And I didn't have any trouble picking up the kind of like side work gig work that actors do. There's there's plenty of that for people who are able to show up reliably. And ⁓ but I remember a few months in, you know, like talking to people who had been around a lot longer and they were like, no, no, it's hard, but it's never been this hard. Theaters are closing their doors left and right, like Evon: Mm-hmm. you Kristen Sweeney: And I kind of had this like naivete of I just didn't know. was like, ⁓ I guess it's just really hard, like really, really hard. And ⁓ so it's interesting because it really just kind of like shaped my early experience there. And on the one hand, I was inexperienced. ⁓ But on the other hand, I was even before I knew it very much being impacted by what was like the kind of bigger, ⁓ the bigger economic landscape. ⁓ So. Evon: Thank you. Kristen Sweeney: I love that you talk to and like Proud Millennial here as well. And I think the, you know, the need to be passionate about what we do and to have that connection. Like this is a positive, get, you know, dinged for it a little bit sometimes. tell us a little bit about Philadelphia fight. ⁓ And because then I want to get into like your switch to kind of the farm aside. And it sounds like this was maybe a transition point. Evon: Mm-hmm Yeah. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ So tell us a little bit about that work and what it was like to be there in the midst of the pandemic where you've got a whole other phenomenon, social, economic, cultural, everything else happening at the same time. Evon: ⁓ So let me first mention how I got to Philadelphia fight. So ⁓ it's so interesting how people see you and then pull you when they see that you have like a particular talent. So a dear friend ⁓ was the wife of one of my colleagues at Achievability. And she's like, hey, I like you. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. Evon: you're doing an amazing job, we need you at Philadelphia Fight. And so she literally recruited me to come to that organization. when I went to Philadelphia Fight, as a gay black man, I knew of HIV, I knew of the risks, but I knew it from the state of being a gay man. However, I'll never forget that first day walking into the office and seeing the amount of ⁓ Black people that were walking through the door. And it made me question, yes, this is an LGBTQ story, considering the HIV focus and who HIV impacts, but it's almost equally a Black ⁓ African-American issue. And so at that time, I had built great relationships with the African-American press here in Philadelphia. And I thought it it sought to my mission to connect Philadelphia fight to the black community as much as possible. ⁓ So over those seven years, ⁓ I made sure that ⁓ every journalist, but particularly ⁓ African American and LGBTQ journalists knew fight in a deeply personal level, ⁓ based on who the population Philadelphia fight was serving. So literally like six weeks in, I was able to land the first ⁓ story, the first local TV story on prep. And this is when prep maybe PrEP was the, Philadelphia Pride was the only organization in the state of Pennsylvania prescribing PrEP. ⁓ Mind you, again, I was six weeks into the role and I barely had an idea what PrEP was. All I knew was that this is something that was big and major that people needed to talk about. So now, you know, everybody kind of knows what PrEP is. PrEP has, ⁓ PrEP is on TV, there's commercials, there's... Kristen Sweeney: Wow. Wow. Evon: There's state, city campaigns behind it. ⁓ Back then, nobody knew and ⁓ nobody was promoting it except Philadelphia Fight in the greater Philadelphia area. So from then on, I always was able to like find those unique stories and to make sure that Philadelphia Fight was at the center of anything innovative and progressive in the HIV movement. ⁓ And so again, that's what started my career at Philadelphia FIGHT. And then around that time, FIGHT was also a fairly new FQHC organization. for those who don't know, the FQHC status, the Federal Requalified Health Center status, is a grant from the federal government that allows community organizations to... to see anybody and everybody regardless of insurance or the ability to pay. So through that designation, we were able to open additional clinics with key focuses such as expanding outside of HIV and having primary care to anybody and everybody, dental care, programming for behavioral health. anything like you could think of, FITE did it and ⁓ we were able to put campaigns and promote it in a lot of ways. So I really got the underground training and promoting to very different marginalized communities, which of course I still now use now ⁓ in my farming career. But I learned all of that at Philadelphia Fight during those seven years. ⁓ It was one of the best experiences I've ever had, but some of the hardest as well. ⁓ As nonprofit professionals, you have 10 million jobs under one. So ⁓ I learned I was everything from a mark-on professional, also to quick crisis comms. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ huh. Evon: Um, you know, we were, there was a big, um, gayborhood, um, issue in the city of Philadelphia. Um, I believe it was at 2015, 2016. Um, my organization kind of got swept in that. So I had to, uh, gain some, some crisis comms experience, um, cleaning that up. Um, but also, um, I was a director of comms when, um, during the pandemic and which was very one of the most, yeah, yeah, we were definitely all in crisis. But you know, what was so interesting about Philadelphia fight, I'll never forget ⁓ speaking with Jane who was the CEO at the time. She's since retired and I'll never forget my last day in the office before we quote unquote closed our doors. And I'll say quote unquote, Kristen Sweeney: We were all in crisis, yeah. Evon: and I'll put an asterisk there for a second. But I'm like, this sounds like from my research, very, very, very close to what happened in the early days of the HIV epidemic, where there was this panic, there was limited information. People were getting stigmatized. Oh my God, they have COVID. They were doing unsafe activities. were outside. They were on planes that were doing all these things that were normal, but they were being demonized, which is exactly what happened with the HIV epidemic in those early days. she was like, Evan, you're exactly right. And so she's like, what we can't do is like lean into the panic. So and she's like, what we also can't do is close our doors permanently for people who are at most risk of coded because if research was showing that in deep urban settings, like COVID was running rampant and that was our population at Philadelphia fight. So if someone didn't have insurance or couldn't make it to a hospital, if they had HIV and were very comfortable in going to Philadelphia fight, they needed a place to go. fight technically remained open. Now, the primary, so we turned our medical offices into these like triage centers. They had, our doctors had, were wearing N95. There were ⁓ on and off shifts, but everybody from, ⁓ who had a more administrative role, ⁓ they worked remotely for the first time ever. Kristen Sweeney: Wow. Evon: You know the federal government were they were allowing telehealth for the first time ever for FQACs So we implemented that We turned all of our supportive services virtual And again all of this happened in a matter of seven days. So the communication challenge was one Telling people that we were remaining open because you know all of our competitors were clothing They said hey, this is too unsafe for us you know, that's a whole nother conversation, but we wanted to stay open. That was one. And then two, informing all of our patients and program participants that we were still here for them. So that's exactly what we did. Jane and I wrote this very, very, very forceful letter that talked about why we were opening our doors. Journalists literally took that statement and put it on their own publications because they're like, this is amazing. But then ⁓ Jane, as the innovator that she is, hey, I think that there is more that we can do as an organization, especially an organization that had ⁓ HIV testing ⁓ as a core program at some point. Like, what can we do to provide testing to the community, the communities in which we serve? So we were the second big community organization to provide ⁓ free COVID testing in the city. The first was, ⁓ I believe, the Black Doctors Consortium ⁓ that AILA Stanford created. We were the second, so we split the city in two and we hit up all these places and offered ⁓ tests to anybody and everybody who needed it because even though the world was quote unquote shut down. There were people who had essential jobs that needed to get to work and needed to know their status. And this is before COVID tests were being shipped to people's homes through the federal government. So that was a whole nother thing that we had to communicate out to the public here in Philadelphia. So I've learned to lie. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah! Evon: I know I'm like rambling, but yeah. Kristen Sweeney: No, no, no, this is fascinating. I mean, it's also taking me back, and I'm sure listeners as well, like when you're talking about shipping, this is when like we didn't know if we could touch mail. I mean, in those early days. ⁓ I think it sounds like... Philadelphia Fight was already a very agile organization. It had experience expanding services and being flexible, but you know, kind of take for granted now, you know, I've worked remotely like long before it was cool. And I think now we're so post pandemic virtually oriented, but you kind of forget like. Evon: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: how big of a shift it would be even to say, we still have our services, but now we have to take them online and we have to set up the platforms and they have to be secure and they have to protect health information and our patients have to have the internet connections. Like all of those logistics and the sheer speed. ⁓ There's a client that we work with and they were... Evon: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: They're in automation and digital transformation, and they were really critical in getting ⁓ the facility up and running to produce the Moderna vaccine. their stories, it's really incredible. mean, months and months of their teams working round the clock shifts, no days off, because like all of us, they're watching the counts and the counts, they felt their work so directly related to those numbers they were seeing. ⁓ I get chills. Evon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm Yeah. Kristen Sweeney: And I, yeah, I get chills just talking about it, but that ability to, ⁓ when we really focus and have just that everything else falls away and the priority is so clear, that tremendous amount of energy and attention and what can be accomplished in such a short amount of time. Evon: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: It's a shame it doesn't feel sustainable all the time to achieve those kinds of amazing things ⁓ that quickly. But it sounds like you all had that same kind of focus and ability to expand. And I love you talking about partnering with another organization and kind of saying like, for now at least we're not competing in any way. We're splitting coverage and trying to just get access and information to as many people as possible. Evon: Right. Well, so I'll say this, like what I know for sure is that some of the most innovative, scrappy, agile organizations, ⁓ and definitely in the nation and the world are nonprofits. Because when you think about it, ⁓ the average nonprofit doesn't have like millions and millions of dollars. All aren't the Red Cross and ones that are household names, ⁓ but they are the ones that are trying to meet their communities where they are in the best ways that they can with as little resources as they have. So when you think about ⁓ program implementation, how you communicate, Philadelphia fight was blessed because they were probably one of the few organizations that could even afford a comms. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Evon: person as a non-person, because unfortunately, where the industry is going, ⁓ communications is a nice to have, not a need to have. And you and I both know that we are always a need to have. ⁓ Right. So every organization doesn't ⁓ invest in comms. But ⁓ when things like COVID-19 happen ⁓ or when crises happen, Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Perception and reality are two very different things, right? Yeah. Evon: The comms folks are the first that they call. So, you know, they were lucky to have ⁓ the budget to have ⁓ a comms professional like myself and others who've worked in the organization. ⁓ But I'll say even without that person to communicate all the great work, nonprofits do, in my opinion, God's work. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. And then, so I want to kind of continue on your career journey a little bit. So there's a common thread of working within the HIV portfolio and with ⁓ those communities. ⁓ But you decided to go industry side. ⁓ So tell us a little bit about that transition for you. Evon: Mm-hmm. Yes. So was funny, ⁓ about maybe year two or year three when I was at Philadelphia fight, my godmother had said to me, she was like, Evan, I have a feeling that one of these pharma companies are gonna find you. And I was like, please. I've worked in nonprofits my entire career. There was nothing that ⁓ a pharma company would want from me. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Evon: And so, and even like at myself around like year five, I started questioning like, okay, so I've been at Fight 5 years. At this time, I was think I was like an associate director. I was like the number two of our comms team. Like there's nowhere for me to go. So I need to start thinking about like what I wanted to do next. And I enrolled in Georgetown's Executive MBA program. And then a couple of months after enrolling, ⁓ there was ⁓ my boss retired and I ended up becoming director of the team. ⁓ And so I'm like, okay, you know, I'm growing and I'm happy as director, but you know, I'm still trying to see like what else is out there. Because my fear was, okay, so I become director of comms at Philadelphia Fight. I'm just gonna be on this like, rolling machine of being a director of comps at various nonprofits where I'm not, I'm just like lifting and shifting from company to company with the same title. I didn't really want that. ⁓ And so. A friend of mine sent me this link and she was like, Evan, I found the perfect job for you. And there was this role at Merck. And I said, okay, this is great. It sounds just like me, but there's no way in hell Merck would hire me. But because it was still that thing of, okay, I'm not, I'm not like, yeah, I have way too much nonprofit experience, no corporate experience at all. to for a pharma company, one of the most regulated industries in the world to want somebody like me. ⁓ Then I spoke to the recruiter, the recruiter literally said, you're exactly what we're looking for. And I said, ⁓ well, this is interesting. ⁓ So she said she's like, we need someone who knows the community and can speak to the community. And I think you can do it. You have the. Kristen Sweeney: Amazing. Evon: the educational and professional acumen to do this job. And that's what I did for four years. So started as the community engagement point, supporting the community liaisons and then ended my tenure, ⁓ which is, you know, kind of leads me to where I am now, which was ⁓ leading their consumer marketing at Merck for their HIV products, which I love doing. ⁓ So, I mean, it was such an amazing experience. I learned a lot. I think it was like my... my on the ground training and working in pharma. had, nonprofits had no, I don't want to say no regulation. Because you know, there's grants that you have to report and things, but it's nothing like, it's nothing like the review process or the regulatory process of pharma. So I'm like, okay, wait, I have to talk to a lawyer. about a program, everything, right? I was like, this is new to me, but I'll figure it out. And that's exactly what I did. And I'm very grateful that Merck gave me the bandwidth to try things and to learn and to build those relationships. So yeah, like I really enjoyed like my Merck experience. Did I answer your question? Because I think, yeah. Kristen Sweeney: Everything. Yeah, definitely. I, I, there's a little bit more that I want to save for a one big idea section around some of the populations that you served at Merck and how they may have differed, but ⁓ you're in a new role today. ⁓ And it's a, my understanding is this is a, work on a drug for psoriatic arthritis, probably very different patient populations. So I'd love to hear on kind of a conceptual level, like, Evon: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: You had deep experience ⁓ for almost a dozen years, it sounds like, kind of in one focus area. How did you go about saying, I've got to learn a new medication, but also a new patient population, new set of needs, new set of sort of other factors to consider? What did that process look like for you? Evon: Mm-hmm For me, it was actually very similar to my HIV experience, which was, so first of all, who's the patient? But more importantly, like, what are they going through? So what are their medical, but more important to me, yes, their medical challenges are one thing, but their socioeconomic challenges are another. So that's how we meet patients or meet consumers holistically. Kristen Sweeney: Okay. Evon: and how we shape our message to meet whatever their individual unmet needs are. But I also like to think of pharma consumer marketing as something additional. There's something additional I like to think of. So when the consumer is not thinking about HIV or psoriatic arthritis in oncology, because you know, We are people, we have jobs, have responsibilities, we have kids, we have hobbies. So when we're not thinking about these things, like, ⁓ so when they're not thinking of taking their medication or going to the doctor's office, what are they doing? Or what do they wanna do where this medical condition's preventing them from doing? So that's how I like to paint the picture of the ideal patient or the patients in focus and you create campaigns, create programming, you create visuals that meet their individual goals, their challenges or whatever of those patients in focus. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, I love that. And I think that's a great segue into our one big idea section. ⁓ So every episode we cover ⁓ one inside experience or aspect of your work that's had a meaningful impact on how you communicate. And we talked about your one big idea, which is storytelling, especially around marginalized communities or niche kind of segments as a through line of your career. ⁓ So I do I do want to like follow on with the. Evon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm Kristen Sweeney: the recent conversation, but I think I want to step back first and tell me a little bit about what that through line looks like and why it matters to you. Evon: Mm-hmm. For me, a story is a before and after. So there's like the, who was this person before, what's the pivotal moment, and then what happens afterwards. And so, everybody wants that pivotal moment or wants to encounter some type of pivotal moment that makes their life better. ⁓ When I was nonprofit communications professional, it was, that pivotal moment might have been a service that an organization offered. It might have been a diagnosis from an HIV test. It might have been when I was working at Achieveability, getting housing so that you can go to school. There's always that pivotal moment that someone has and working in the pharma. and at a pharma company, it's our product and how our product is making someone's better. That's what we do and that's what we should always want to demonstrate somehow. And the best way to do that, in my opinion, is to tell real life stories. So going back to that prep news story that I helped put together, gosh, oh, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, my God. Gosh, I was 20 or 30 years old and you couldn't tell me anything. And I just remember the news journalists who's still a dear friend of mine and the producer interviewing those young, because I believe the prep program participants that we interviewed at the time were maybe like 19 or 20. And we interviewed them and asked them how, like, why PrEP was so important for them because, they talked about how HIV has always been a deep fear being young black gay men and having friends who were getting, ⁓ who were seroconverting, like, you they were becoming, ⁓ they were contracting the virus, like, and they didn't want that to be them, so. That's why they enrolled in the program. It gave them more confidence to be gay and experiment and all those things. So that's why, and people needed to hear those type of stories. I'll never forget, because again, this was a point where nobody knew what prep was. So I sent the news story to all my friends, partially because I'm like, hey guys, I made it to TV. Kristen Sweeney: Sure! Evon: I'm producing feature stories now, but also like, okay, hey, this is something that ⁓ us as like young black professionals need to know about. And like, I remember the text like, okay, like we are young and educated and we have degrees, but we've never heard of PrEP. So this is important to me, even though I'm not in like, you know, target market and all that stuff. It was nice to know. And... you never know with a story who you're going to impact. As you know, I'm into performing arts and ⁓ the ⁓ studio that I'm a part of, they're getting media attention and whatnot because they're the only ⁓ adult ⁓ dance studio in the Philadelphia region. And I think what... ⁓ And what I've shared to my teacher and studio owner is that, you built a community of like your, the pivotal moment is that. One, you found folks who still love dance, but the pivotal moment is them realizing they can still dance. And one, that they're not alone. And with every news story that comes out, her phone constantly rings because there's people out there who realize that, ⁓ my God, this is something I've always wanted to do. I'm not alone. I'm not. crazy because that's why, you know, stories do that. You kind of realize that you're not alone or, you know, you're not as much of a unicorn as you thought that you thought you were. So it allows you to connect to ⁓ connect with other people, connect with with other connect with other experiences. It makes you feel less alone. So that's the power of storytelling. And I think that us as communicators, we need to ⁓ invest more in storytelling, but do it in unique ways because, you know, we have so many channels now. There's Reddit and there's TikTok and there's Facebook and Instagram and, you know, there's podcasts like we're doing now. There are so many ways to like get stories out because you never know like what could be, what like what pivotal moments are out there that need to be that can impact others, you know? Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, definitely. ⁓ I want to pull on the thread of the arts for second and dance specifically. So I have a performing arts background. And it's interesting, as soon as you said, like the only adult dance studio I started thinking, because when I lived in New York City, I took classes at like Broadway Dance and Alvin Ailey. And I was an adult, but I was full of other adults and lots of like professionals. ⁓ Evon: Yeah Mm-hmm. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: And I never thought twice about it, but like here in Tampa, where I live, it's definitely like, it's kind of how I feel going into, take piano lessons and like the person after me is seven, you know, like, and like, it's fine. It's totally fine. I love my teacher. It's great. But, but there is something in like, even, even that, and that's such an interesting way of sort of like slicing a segment and being like, Evon: Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: these people don't necessarily feel seen. In many other dimensions, maybe they have great representation in the world, but in this way of wanting to go express themselves creatively, ⁓ maybe they're not seen or don't feel comfortable like taking class alongside a nine-year-old, and the nine-year-old's better than them. Yeah, so I love that. ⁓ Evon: Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I've been there. And I want to shout out the studio. want to name them, like Second Chance Dance, owned by Elisa Bowser, who was an angel. I believe that entrepreneurship is also can be another form of like doing God's work because you're offering a service that someone needs and may be too busy or whatnot to do and you're providing that help. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Evon: Just the community that she's built, the supportive community, because you and I both know, and performing arts, it's not always supportive. Yeah, so I definitely want to share that, uplift that, that, uplift Elisa in SCD. But yeah, you're right. I have my best friend, she takes guitar lessons, and I have friends who take Pilates. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. not always, can't take that for granted. That's right, that's right. Evon: And we want to do things that make us feel more alive, more in tune with ourselves. sometimes it's more than just going to the gym. It's as small as taking a walk. For me, it's going to dance class. For my best friend, it's ⁓ taking guitar lessons. For you, may be auditioning for a musical theater performance in Tampa. people want to experience things. And a lot of us want to either correct childhood or reclaim it in some way too. And I think that's another thing that Elisa kind of learned. Some people possibly just could not afford certain things as a child, but you always had that interest. Like I had a very long interest, a long... positive and negative story with dance. As someone who is more full-figured, someone who's a male who loved dancing, that's not ⁓ socially acceptable. So there's tons of reasons why we do certain things ⁓ as a hobby. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, definitely. And I want to tie this to, you know, when you think about like marketing a particular medication and you talked about wanting to understand the full sort of environment that someone's going through. And yet there's this tension, right, of there might be ⁓ advocacy programs or programs through medical affairs and other support programs, but you can't. fix everything for them, right? And so how do you think about being sort of responsible with that and understanding everything they're going through, but also sort of staying within the lane of what kind of support you can offer? Or maybe within the organization collaborating with Met Affairs or something like that. Evon: Right. Yeah, I think that's a challenge and a balance that we as pharma communications and marketing communication professionals always try to that we're always facing. There's always a desire to want to do more. ⁓ But it may be illegal, right, ⁓ for us to do more. it's, sometimes you just have to really like say it just like that and figure out like within the boxes where you play, how best you can serve the communities where you are. ⁓ What you can't do is like succumb to the guilt. Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Yeah, yeah. call that over responsibility. ⁓ You know, where, and ⁓ as an entrepreneur myself, don't necessarily have the it's illegal kind of constraints, right? Around extra help or feeling like I take all of that on. But it's something I've had to work on as I get older and mature as a business owner is like, like you said, say I'm helping in... Evon: Yeah. Right. Kristen Sweeney: this way and I'm very committed to that but I can't feel guilty about the other pieces and it has to be a shared responsibility. That's a little bit different from what we're talking about here but. Evon: Mm-hmm. Well, but no, but here's the thing, what I, because I have this, I am not brave enough to be an entrepreneur. I've learned that, I've tried it. It is a thing, a muscle maybe I'll build someday. So kudos to you and your fellow entrepreneurs and those who are listening. ⁓ But you know, I think a big challenge that you all face is that, you know, you want to help everybody. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha ⁓ thank you. Evon: but everybody may not be able to afford or, and you you have bills to pay, you know, some entrepreneurs have kids and ⁓ college tuition to support and daycare is astronomical from, you know, so, you know, you have to take care of your own needs too. So, you know, there's that, ⁓ what is it? That famous line from the airplane and you have to put your mask on before helping someone else. Kristen Sweeney: Yes. Evon: So, you all face similar challenges too, where you can't do everything for everyone, but you have to choose what's best for you in order to help as many people as you can. And I think that's where we are in pharma. you know, we have our, again, we talk to lot of lawyers ⁓ and lawyers and compliance folks who help. shape and tell us what we can and can't do. And we play and we maximize where we can. And again, we have to learn how to do it without guilt. And you could try to push as much as you can, but the more important part is to do those things without guilt. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, appreciate that. ⁓ Last question I wanted to ask here. So, you we talked about working with, you know, often marginalized or niche populations. How do you think about telling the stories of those folks in a way that, ⁓ you know, gives them dignity, is respectful, doesn't... maybe tip into feeling like exploitative. ⁓ Like I imagine that's a balance you're considering as well of, as you said, I can't think of the word, like uplifting those stories. ⁓ How do you navigate that? Evon: Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. ⁓ I believe that subjects are vehicles. ⁓ when you have a subject, if you have like a quote unquote star of a story, ⁓ it's your responsibility to make sure that they are comfortable enough to tell their story from such a, from a pure and honest and safe space. ⁓ Things can. I've been in situations where subjects just are not ready to tell their story. And considering ⁓ the very like stigmatized and some of the rough spaces where I've worked, that's totally understandable. But that's where proper planning prevents poor performance comes in. You have to do your diligence. You have to get to know your subjects. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Evon: You gotta ask them how they're doing. ⁓ So it's just making sure that that person is safe enough and comfortable and confident enough to share their stories. Everybody isn't. In the HIV community, ⁓ everybody is not comfortable in sharing their status for a large amount of reasons. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Evon: It's one of the most stigmatized therapeutic areas within healthcare. So, you know, there's reasons why someone would want to keep that to themselves and it's okay. No one has to tell their stories to anybody and everybody. But for those who are, it is responsible. You have to make sure you do it in a space where that person can do it. from a comfortable space, make sure that ⁓ there aren't any inappropriate questions, make sure that they aren't, ⁓ make sure that their statements are truthful. Right? Like all of those things are, you do in the planning phase, so when it's time to elevate their story, you absolutely can. And then they're prepped and they're ready and... Kristen Sweeney: Mmm ⁓ Evon: ⁓ and they feel proud of telling their story because storytelling should be empowering. It shouldn't be, okay, I told my story, now I feel miserable and feel like I'm, you know, ⁓ it's vulnerable, yes, in thinking about, you know, Brene Brown's work, but yes, it's a vulnerable experience, but the way you do that is to make sure that Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. Evon: this deeply transparent, vulnerable experience is powerful, if that makes sense. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, I love that because ⁓ I do a lot of work with like B2B customer stories and case studies. And we always, always position that as like our client's customer is that's the hero, right? And we're not saying that our client is the only thing responsible for their massive success. That one, that gets a lot of egos involved, but it is, it is that feeling of this should be mutually beneficial. So I love that you talk about. Evon: Thank you. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: in terms of the patient, it's that feeling of empowerment that is the benefit they're getting and it should feel like a really positive experience for them, not just a benefit to the company getting the great story to retell and share. Evon: That's nice. Right. And it's so funny how, you know, clients and whatnot, we always want to be like the headline, but isn't it more impactful being or describing ourselves from that pivotal moment perspective? Like we are the, we are part of the reason that this person went from A to B. We are, we provide, we help to get them their goals and Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, exactly. Evon: help them do X, Y, and Z. That's better than having a whole story about it. Kristen Sweeney: And I think it has to be enough because at the end of the day, the patient has to, the patient's the one who walked in the door to get the test or the patient's the one who decided to take the medication consistently or got the diagnosis and took a next step. You can't ever claim all of that nor should you. It should be enough to be part of that journey. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Evon: Mm-hmm. And I think like Harvard Business Review does that like very well. ⁓ I mean, I would say every major like media outlet that's built on storytelling does that every well. Every very well. Like they know that ⁓ it's about like the A to B journey. And there's numerous things and people and companies and products that help make that transition. And those Kristen Sweeney: Hmm. Evon: need to be equally highlighted as well, but again, we're part of someone's Germany. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, I love that. All right, I think we're gonna leave it there. Thank you for really, really thoughtful discussion in this area. ⁓ I wanna move us into our lightning round segment. This is the last word. So every guest on the show gets these same five questions. You just go with your gut, quick answer on these. Are you ready? All right, question one. What's your favorite word to say out loud? Evon: Okay. Mm-hmm. I'm ready. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: Love that! Question two, what's a word you know from reading but you're not quite sure how to pronounce it? Evon: That's a tough one. Ooh, that's a really tough one. A tough word that I may not be able to... Kristen Sweeney: Or sometimes for folks, it's like a word that you just stumble over no matter what. Evon: Specifically. ⁓ That's a key one for me. always, that or if there's like a literative ⁓ moment and so if there's like numerous words that had like the same letter, I always tongue, that's always a tongue twister for me. Yes. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: specifically. Mm-hmm. Get tongue twide? Tongue twide? Great, perfect. Question three, one phrase or saying you wish could be retired for good. Evon: I just want to help people. It's okay. So, okay, I just want to help people, but how and why? You know, it's not enough. ⁓ It's sure. And I think everybody wants to help people. That's not going to separate you from anyone else. I think we are in a space now where if you don't know how and why you're here to serve. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, so it's not enough. Yeah. Yeah. Evon: You gotta figure it out. Kristen Sweeney: It's interesting you say that, and I know these are supposed to be the lightning round questions, but that's okay. It's my show, so. I think a lot about mental load as a mother of two small children and invisible work and the ways in which language can subtly shift. Evon: Uh-huh. Uh-uh. Kristen Sweeney: the load, right? So for example, the most classic example is when someone says something and just ends an email with thoughts and it's like they've just taken that whatever and like dumped it in your lap to figure out, figure out what to do next. What are they asking? Like they didn't do the work of here's what I'd like you to think about or here's what I'm looking for feedback on. And it's like, it's just kind of like I took the mental load of it and just Evon: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: shoved it your way. So that almost reminds me of that. Like, I want to help. Okay. But now somebody else has to figure out how you can do that. Like, you know, maybe that's part of kind of what's baked in there is like, you've got to, as you're saying, take it to the next step of like, here's what I'm thinking, or here's how I can get involved. yeah. Evon: Mm-hmm. To me, it makes, it shows me that that person doesn't know what their gift is yet, and they need to like spend time trying to figure that out. I had a conversation with a mincey when I was in Dallas last week, and you know, it was clear to me that she either forgot what it was or needs to find out what it is. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, that's so interesting. All right, question four. What's a communication practice or principle that's non-negotiable for you? Love it. What's the last thing you read, heard, or watched that really stuck with you? Evon: storytelling. I am reading a book called The Nine Myths About Working. It was suggested by my boss at our team meeting a couple of months ago, and that's what I'm reading now. Kristen Sweeney: Awesome, awesome. Have to find out how it is when you're done with it. Evan, thank you so much for joining us today. If our listeners want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Evon: guys You can find me on LinkedIn, EvanBurgain, E-V-O-N, B-U-R-T-O-N. I'm always looking forward to connecting with people. Kristen Sweeney: Perfect. Thank you again. Great conversation. Really appreciate it. Evon: Thank you.