Hometown
I grew up in Owensboro, Ky., but have been living in the Nashville, Tenn., area for over 25 years now.
Major at Kentucky Wesleyan
Chemistry
Family
I have a daughter, Hayley, who turns 23 this month. She will graduate in May from Charleston Southern University in Charleston, S.C. with a degree in psychology. She plans to either come to work with our company or continue on to grad school to become a social worker or psychologist.
My husband worked in angel investing in the past and now works with me at Dobbs Consulting. We have been married for nearly three years now. We have two cats and three Westies, which makes for an active household! We work from home, which is absolutely wonderful!
Why you chose Wesleyan
I wanted a small, intimate environment that would offer me challenges – not a university where I could get lost in the shuffle and have little interaction with the professors.
Faculty who influenced you at Wesleyan
Dr. Magnuson was a huge influence on me. As a chemistry major, I had many classes with him. He always drove his students to strive to be the best they could be. He was always patient and gave us as much one-on-one time as we needed.
Other special memories of the college
I was (and still am) a sister in Kappa Delta sorority and a sweetheart to the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. We had some fun parties, trips, baseball games, etc. during my four years! Wesleyan was also very good in basketball, and we played in the finals in Boston . . . that trip was short-lived but fun. The College re-started their football program for the first time in decades while I was there, as well.
Tell us about your present position.
I am the founder and CEO of Dobbs Consulting (Dobbs is my former last name), which is a contract research organization (CRO). We work with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to manage their clinical trials. The majority of our work is in oncology, which is incredibly fulfilling.
Tell us about your career path.
My first job was at the University of Kentucky in the pharmacology lab. We did narcotic abuse research on rats and mice, which I found utterly intriguing. Why would three mice all have different reactions to the same dose of a particular drug? That really got my wheels spinning, and my love of pharmacology was born. From there, I had another job at a small oncology lab for a short while; then landed my first job at a large CRO. I worked there for four years, getting to know the business extremely well and developing contacts and then started my own consulting company. I worked as an independent consultant for many years before bringing on other consultants to assist me with larger projects. Eventually, we built the company to be a full-blown CRO with nearly 150 consultants based all over the U.S. and Canada.
Advice you would give our current students
Put in the extra work . . . it hurts at the time, but it will pay off in the long run. Good study habits and a “nose to the grindstone” attitude will eventually translate to a solid work ethic which will absolutely pay off.
Your favorite spot on the Wesleyan campus
Sig Ep and Sigma Nu floors . . . lots of fun parties!
What you were involved in on campus? How these did activities/organizations help prepare you for life?
I was a sister in Kappa Delta sorority and a Sigma Phi Epsilon sweetheart. I also was in student government for the first couple of years on campus. Some of my closest friends today are ones I met in college and with whom I have formed life-long friendships. Participation in student government obviously helped me become more interested in the goings-on in our community/state/country.
Favorite vacation destination
My husband and I travel extensively. I’m not sure we have a favorite spot, as we like to try somewhere different every year. We were married in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is special to us, and our honeymoon encompassed nine countries! The only constant travel destination is our trip once or twice a year to my in-laws’ home in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. They live there for four months out of the year and live about two miles away from us the rest of the year.
A person you would like to meet (living/dead/fictional)
Marie Curie – she was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize and the first person to win the Nobel Prize for two separate categories. Her second Nobel Prize was for chemistry. It would be amazing to meet such a trail-blazing, innovative, strong, intelligent woman in my field.