Meet the Speaker – Julie Boora, Co-Founder & Superintendent Pharmacist, TribElle

Molly: Hi Julie, thank you so much for joining me today.

For anyone who doesn’t know you, Julie is Co-Founder and Superintendent Pharmacist at TribElle, and she’ll be joining us at The Pharmacy Show this October for a session in our Leadership, Workforce & Careers Theatre called ‘Changing your career midlife: diary of a peri-menopausal CEO’.

Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about Julie’s own career journey, what prompted her to make some significant changes along the way, and what she’s learnt about leadership, reinvention and building a career that works for you at different stages of your life.

So, Julie, thank you again for joining me. I thought we could start by going back to the beginning and talking a little bit about your career so far.

You’ve had a varied career across pharmacy and you’re now the Co-Founder and Superintendent Pharmacist at TribElle. Tell us a little bit about your career journey and what led you to where you are today.

Julie: My early career was in Boots, like many other pharmacists, I’m sure. It gave me a really strong foundation in community pharmacy. It taught me how to manage busy pharmacies, teams and, really more importantly, people.

Around 2000, the internet was really starting to change the way we worked, and I was fascinated by technology and how it was going to transform healthcare. I’d graduated back in the day with very little information about the internet or technology. So that led me to study a master’s in information science and technology, which ultimately took me into a career in executive recruitment within the pharmaceutical sector. So, I completely moved out of community.

But after a while, I was drawn back to pharmacy, but this time larger teams, bigger stores and with greater responsibility. I worked at John Bell & Croyden, which was really interesting and gave me exposure to more of the commercial and business side of pharmacy.

Then, like so many parents, my career choices were shaped by my family. I had twins, so I needed to work a little bit closer to home. I worked with my local Rowlands Pharmacy for about 10 years.

Shortly after COVID, I made another big move into health tech. I joined HeliosX, which is the parent company for MedExpress and Dermatica, where I became Head of Pharmacy. I was involved in setting up the weight management service and part of that development and wider introduction of GLP-1 weight loss treatments to the UK public.

My children then graduated from high school and went on to university, and I took some time out to travel and, probably for the first time, really thought about what I wanted the next chapter of my career to look like.

I was starting to ask myself, what do I want to look back in 20 or 30 years and feel that I’ve achieved? That reflection led to creating TribElle. I wanted to build a pharmacy that specialised in women’s health, where women could access trustworthy information, expert clinical care and appropriate medication without feeling that they had to jump through unnecessary hoops.

I found it difficult to accept that men could access medication so easily and yet women had to go through so many obstacles, so many challenges, to try and get medication like HRT or treatment for hormonal migraines.

That’s why I wanted TribElle to be in that gap where women were still struggling to find the information that they needed and to be able to access medication that they needed. And so TribElle was born with my co-founder Sahithi. It’s a GPhC-registered pharmacy now and we specialise in all women’s health conditions, from menstruation right through to menopause. We talk about things like sexual health, intimate care, migraine and weight management.

Molly: Your session at The Pharmacy Show focuses on changing career in midlife. Was there a particular point when you realised that you wanted to take your career in a different direction and try something new?

Julie: I don’t think there was one single point. There are a few turning points, as I’ve mentioned in my career already. Community pharmacy had given me so much, but I knew that as my children became more independent, I would want to use my experience to maybe have a wider impact.

COVID then accelerated all of that and made me realise that healthcare was changing and that technology will completely change the way patients access care.

After four years at HeliosX, I reached a point where I thought, I want to create something of my own and I want to be the person in the room making those decisions, shaping the culture and deciding what the business stood for.

I think there does come a point in midlife when you become clearer about what matters to you and also much less willing to spend time doing things that don’t matter to you.

So it would have been those few turning points: COVID, children becoming a little bit more independent and then midlife. So, it’s probably three points.

Molly: Making a significant career change can feel quite daunting, particularly once you’re already established professionally. What gave you the confidence to make that change?

Julie: I think confidence comes from a few different places. Firstly, I’m fortunate to be able to surround myself with positive people, and I genuinely think that matters the most. People who can see your strengths and believe in you.

The people around you can make an enormous impact on how you’re willing to take risks. If you feel you have a bit of a support structure, you’re probably a little bit more of a risk taker.

Secondly, you have to develop the self-belief. You don’t know everything, but you’ve got to believe that you will be able to work it out and find the answer or find the solution.

Thirdly, I think it’s about simplifying things that you find daunting. At the beginning, it is scary and it is frightening and there are lots of things that you don’t know. So it’s a case of just simplifying that obstacle or challenge and working through what you don’t know and figuring it out.

We’re in a world where information is at our hands all the time. So it really is just trying to hold your nerve and then go, okay, if I don’t know that, how am I going to find the answer to that?

Molly: One of the messages that is hopefully a takeaway from your session is that pharmacy careers can be more transferable than people might realise. Which skills from your pharmacy background would you say have proved most valuable as your career has evolved?

Julie: So many of them. The first one I would say is leadership. That’s probably the biggest one. Pharmacy teaches you very quickly how to lead teams, make decisions and take responsibility. There will be a huge number of newly qualified pharmacists, or pharmacists who have been in community pharmacies for many years or in hospital, who have led teams and made decisions, especially in stressful environments.

Then we’ve got communication and listening. I think these two skills are hugely transferable. Whether you’re speaking to a patient, a member of your team, a business partner or an investor, people need to feel heard and be able to communicate in a way that is conducive to both.

I also think I learned quite quickly how to be a solution finder. In pharmacy, you have to think on your feet, find a safe, practical solution, sometimes with no other support and nobody else to bounce ideas off.

And then finally, working under pressure. I think pharmacy teaches you very quickly how to stay calm, prioritise and make decisions, especially when there are a lot of competing demands. When I look back, I think those skills that I acquired during community pharmacy, I use most days at TribElle.

Molly: Continuous learning has played an important part in your journey. Have there been any particular qualifications, experiences or opportunities that maybe didn’t feel as significant at the time, but became really valuable later on?

Julie: I think it was definitely my master’s. Back in 2000, with the advent of the internet and people starting to understand technology and how it can play a part in healthcare, I did a master’s in information science and technology.

At that time, it really was just to try and understand what this new thing, the internet, was, and I didn’t want to get left behind, having had no experience in this field at all.

At that time, I had no idea how relevant that knowledge would be. Years later, I’ve worked for a digital healthcare company and then eventually co-founded my own fully digital pharmacy.

It has given me a really good foundation in using technology and understanding it and not being scared of it, and that’s now 20 years later.

So I say to everybody, no learning goes wasted. If you’re doing something and you’re not really quite sure how useful it is, it won’t go wasted. You might have to wait, like me, 20 years later to get some use out of it, but all learning is good. It will come to fruition at some point.

Molly: Your session also explores authenticity as a leadership strength. Has your own approach to leadership changed as you’ve progressed through your career?

Julie: It definitely has progressed. I don’t think it would be the best development if, after 20 or 30 years, it hadn’t changed and developed and it was the same stuff. People change and working environments change.

Earlier on in my career, I was very focused on getting things done and leading from the front. As I’ve progressed and become more experienced, I think I’ve developed more of a broader strategic perspective.

My leadership style has always been leading by example, but I’ve also learned that leading doesn’t mean I have to have all the answers myself.

I like to give people challenges that stretch them. I like to develop my team, but I also like to give them the support and confidence to succeed. Once you can build your team and give them the tools, confidence and capabilities to be able to run with whatever task they’ve got, then that team is really rock solid. That’s your foundation to then be able to propel yourself into doing anything else.

I’ve always tried to be authentic because I just think it’s generally the best way. You spend so much time with your colleagues that you want to be authentic and everybody feels like they’ve got a voice and they’re being heard, and you are one team progressing towards one goal.

Molly: Menopause has formed a big part of the story of your own career change, rather than being the focus of it. How did that period of your life influence the way you thought about your career, your priorities and what you wanted to do next?

Julie: It’s a really interesting question and I think it’s easy to answer it now, reflecting back. I think if you’d asked me while I was going through the perimenopause, it would have been a very different answer.

Looking back now, the perimenopause made me stop and think and reflect. What do I want to do for the next 20 or 30 years of my life?

Perimenopause is a stage where you are forced to identify as being midlife, and it almost doesn’t really matter what age you get it. It’s that recognition of, oh, I’m at midlife stage now.

Then you start thinking about, well, what’s the next 20 or 30 years going to look like? I spent a lot of my career building businesses, developing teams, raising my children, scaling businesses. Then suddenly I thought, well, what do I actually want to do next? And also, what am I passionate about?

What is it that makes me get up in the morning and think I’m really excited about doing this? And what will I look back on and think, I’m really glad I did that? I’m really glad I didn’t let that opportunity go.

That’s really the thinking behind TribElle. It wasn’t about doing something completely different or creating something new. It was more about what have I built over the years that I then want to use in what I want to create in the future?

It was just about bringing all those experiences together and then creating TribElle, which I’m hugely, hugely passionate about.

Molly: For someone working in pharmacy who feels ready for a change, but is perhaps worried that they’ve left it too late or now isn’t the right time, what advice would you give them?

Julie: My first tip is: it’s not too late. It’s never too late. There’s a really interesting saying that says that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.

Don’t worry about what you should have done, could have done. It’s not too late. Start again, start now.

Look at everything that you’ve accumulated and acquired so far: your experience, your knowledge, your relationships, your connections, your team. Look at all of that and then think, what is it that I’m passionate about? What is it that really gets me excited? What difference do I want to make?

Then I would just say, be brave. Don’t be reckless. It is hard. I don’t know if it’s harder for women than it is for men. I can’t speak for men, but for women, I think it is hard.

I wonder whether it’s really hard during perimenopause because you have so much probably relying on you already and you have a family and you have a career that you’ve built. But also it’s that time to be, actually, let’s be brave.

So I do think be brave, but don’t be reckless. Do your due diligence, have a business plan, look at the money that you’ve got to invest, work out how many months you’ve got.

If you can get some experience in the field that you want to move into, even better, so you really can see what it’s like. And if you can, start it as a side hustle and then move into it.

But the biggest thing is, if there’s an opportunity out there and you’re passionate about it, be brave. Be bold.

Molly: Finally, if there’s one thing that you hope people will take away from your session at The Pharmacy Show, what would you like that to be?

Julie: I think The Pharmacy Show will be interesting because it is about perimenopause, but actually it’s more about a career change during midlife.

If I’m talking to anybody out there, I’d probably say recognise that you’re not alone. Perimenopause affects women in so many different ways and we need to become more confident about talking about it with colleagues, friends, managers, anybody.

But I want this session to let people realise what transferable skills they have. What have they accumulated so far? And what is it that they want to do?

I think one of the biggest challenges is identifying what it is that you want to do and pinning that down. From the session and from listening to me and my journey of trying out lots of different things to try and figure out that it’s not too late, what is it that I would love to see myself doing in the next 20 or 30 years?

What we hear from people is generally that there’s always a regret of not doing more than regretting something that you’ve done.

So it’s trying to put yourself in the position of yourself 20 years down the line. If I look back, what will I regret that I didn’t do? And it’s using that energy to go, right, okay, I’m going to do that. I’m going to tackle that.

Because if I can do it, anyone can do it.

Molly: Julie, thank you so much for joining me and for sharing such open and honest experiences with us.

You can hear more from Julie at The Pharmacy Show on 11–12 October at the NEC Birmingham, where she’ll be speaking in the Leadership, Workforce & Careers Theatre.

Thank you again, Julie, and we look forward to seeing you at the show.