About Catherine Kouchakji
Job title: Medical Science Liaison – Oncology
Degrees: PhD, MPH, BSOT (occupational therapy)
Career stage: Late career
State of practice: Seattle, Washington
Current practice settings: Research – Industry
Lived career experiences/transitions:
- Changing specialty
- Starting a family while maintaining a full-time practice
- Leaving a practice
- Returning to clinical practice
- Non-clinical careers
- Rural medicine
- Burnout & recovery
- Work/life balance
- Trauma in the workplace
Graduation year from the UW School of Medicine: 1986
Specialty/subspecialty: BSOT
Teaching roles: MSED human development/public health/epidemiology
Research or other professional interests: Genomics/marginalized populations
Catherine’s Bio:
Catherine Kouchakji (Coo – Sheg – Gee) lives just outside of Seattle Washington. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, she enjoyed all types of outdoor activities and learned to make friends with the rain.
Her path to becoming a Medical Science Liaison (MSL) is a bit non-traditional in that she received her BS in pre-med and Occupational Therapy. She went on to work with acute trauma- burn patients for 20 years. Along the way she received three master’s degrees. One in Human Development (anatomy and physiology), one in Education and one in Public Health/epidemiology. She completed her Doctorate in Epidemiology, Public Health, and Genomics. She is passionate about the role of genetics in identifying disease early and providing precision therapeutic options. She has worked with many organizations including the Gates Foundation internationally as an MSL.
She became a more traditional MSL and began working in rare diseases and early detection of many cancers with identification of biomarkers for matching precision treatments and early detection of disease. She also has worked on two pipeline product teams and enjoys interfacing with key opinion leaders and scientific investigators for exploration of clinical trials.
She volunteers at the University of Washington mentoring young women to gain confidence to reach for great goals in the School of Medicine and sits on the admission board for the medical school. She also remains an active member of many community health boards at the county and state level.
She has served many populations in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Northern California, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. She believes that the absolute best science and medicine should be available for all. If she could be a professional student, she would, and marvels at the speed at which new discoveries in science and medicine are occurring. She is a lifelong learner and seeks to understand the communities she has the honor to serve.
In her spare time, Catherine is an avid walker and hiker. She and her husband of 35 years have hiked Caminos all over the world for vacations. They spend time on their boat and with their three grown children, new daughter-in-law, and two fur babies.