Meet a Medidatian: Jen R., Innovator, World Citizen, and Compassionate Volunteer

Jen R., who goes by her birth name, Jay Jay, among her extended Filipino American family, is a traveler at heart. To date, her passport bears the stamp of nearly 70 countries, thanks to an upcoming trip to Tanzania and Zanzibar.

She credits her passion for travel to growing up in so many places—including Manila, Virginia Beach, and San Francisco—as a child of a U.S. Navy serviceman, whose career took him on deployments around the world.

“He was stationed in Asia and the Middle East, and spent a lot of time on aircraft carriers in Japan, Thailand, and Hawaii. He’d come back with all these amazing gifts and souvenirs from his travels. Plus, our family returned to visit the Philippines often. So, together, maybe that’s where my wanderlust started,” Jen said.

As director of EMEA Field Marketing Events, Jen gets to channel her love of travel and meeting new people into her work at Medidata, where she leads strategy, planning, and execution of tradeshows and other company marketing events throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

“Meeting with our amazing customers and going to their sites—and seeing the innovative work they’re doing—is so rewarding. I also love talking with new potential clients and partners from around the world,” she said. “Hearing from these groups directly gives a sense of meaning to what I do.”

Jen initially joined Medidata in 2021 as a digital marketing manager, after learning about the company’s positive corporate culture from several colleagues.

“I love that I’ve been able to grow throughout my time at Medidata, from a digital marketing role to a senior manager position and now a directorship,” she said.

While Jen has worked with or for many of the world’s most recognizable finance and tech companies, including long-term stints at Wells Fargo, Macromedia/Adobe, and IBM, she believes her work at Medidata has the potential to be the most transformative of her career. 

“This is a company where we all know we’re having a real, positive impact on people’s lives. Everyone is a [potential] patient. The treatment development work we do is critical to everyone,” Jen said, highlighting the power of Medidata’s work to inform cutting-edge, data-driven medical advances.

Medidata’s supportive company culture and its commitment to communication and collaboration are also key to making it such a wonderful place to work, according to Jen.

“I’ve worked for very few companies that invest the level of support for employee engagement and community-building that Medidata does,” she shared. 

In her role as EMEA Field Marketing Events director, Jen often heads up internal company community-building initiatives, including annual summer and winter employee parties and special events. Jen is particularly excited about organizational plans for events such as Bring Your Kids to Work Day and the annual Halloween party in the London office, since it will offer attendees an opportunity to engage in hands-on STEM activities.

Frequently lauded as an “innovator” and “game changer” in her various professional positions, Jen initially applied her gifted, curious mind toward the humanities. She earned undergraduate degrees in liberal arts—history and English—thinking she might become a teacher.

Instead, she found her first job at Wells Fargo in San Francisco, where she made her initial foray into finance. She went on to hold positions at several Bay-area software companies in the 1990s, at the height of the dot-com boom.

Since 2001, Jennifer has made her home in the South of England, where she lives with her British husband, who shares her passion for international exploration. 

“I work to live, and I focus a lot of my non-work time on travel,” she said. “Every year, we pick two or three destinations to explore that we’ve never been to before. I also try to get home to San Francisco as much as possible, to see my family and friends there.”

Outside of work and traveling, Jen is also a passionate mental health advocate. She is a certified mental health first-aider, and she has recently undergone training as a volunteer for The Samaritans, an agency dedicated to suicide prevention.

In all her endeavors—work, travel, and mental health outreach—Jen gleans energy and purpose in making personal connections. 

“My work is driven by conversations with our customers, and with my colleagues. The ability to connect is what I love so much about Medidata,” she said. “When you are lucky enough to work in a positive environment with like-minded individuals who are all committed to life sciences and patient care, it’s really a special place to be.”

Want to learn more about Jen? Watch the short video below to hear her top choice of historic dinner partners and what she loves most about her work at Medidata. 

If you’re looking for a new career challenge at Medidata, click here to check out these exciting opportunities that are currently available throughout the company globally.