Sam Blakely

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I am currently working as a Technical Consultant at Galen Healthcare Solutions after graduating in the spring of 2015.  Galen is a consulting firm that has been in the healthcare tech industry for ten years.  At Galen, my projects have revolved around developing solutions related to ‘Electronic Medical Record’ databases.  For example, I have been contributing to a statewide project in North Carolina extracting data from private practices and hospitals, and organizing it so it could be accessed by medical providers across NC.

We face challenges such as evaluating logical arguments, anticipating special cases, graphically representing complex information, and learning new technology.  Internally, there is a strong sense of team collaboration that gives both learning opportunities and challenges in coordinating group problem solving. Beyond the technical problem solving, we often need to communicate with clients from a less technical background. This requires that we translate our solutions to include less-technical individuals in a discussion.  It is exciting to combine interpersonal and problem-solving-oriented sets of challenges.

The time I spent at Saint Mike’s played an absolutely crucial role in my ability to succeed at Galen.  Starting with the analytical skills developed in the Math and Computer Science departments, and supplemented by the rich liberal arts educational background, I feel very comfortable moving forwards applying skills I learned and gaining new ones.  Additionally, Saint Mike’s taught equally essential social and personal lessons that are just as important as the technical abilities.  If you have an interest in carrying your skills gained at Saint Mike’s over to the consulting world, or have other career interests, please feel free to reach out to me at Samuel.Blakely@galenhealthcare.com.

Contacted via e-mail as a resource for current students: Yes