Valerie Bandy had always imagined she’d be a meteorologist. A self-described science nerd, she took extra classes in high school and set her sights on studying the weather itself. Her father sold broadcasting equipment to TV and radio stations, and the home weather balloons and other novelties he’d bring home fed her fascination. She interned under the chief meteorologist at NBC’s St. Louis affiliate before a career pivot toward biology, and from there, pharmacy. “I’m not a very traditional pathway person,” she says.

Drawn to the business side of pharmacy as much as the clinical work, Bandy started at East Texas Medical Center and within a year moved into a director role at one of the system’s specialty rehab hospitals, rebuilding its clinical programs and policies from the ground up. From there, she rose from area director over five specialty hospitals in Austin to corporate director of pharmacy over nine hospitals across four states at Cornerstone Healthcare Group, standardizing operations that had been run independently for years. She went on to a national leadership role with a healthcare group purchasing organization, then to Trinity Health’s corporate office as system director of pharmacy operations, and to Deloitte, where she worked on multimillion-dollar healthcare supply chain and labor transformations. Read more >