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Careers
Career Ladder
Career Ladder: James Schiller
A life-changing event plus encouragement led to a career in the pharma industry
by Taylor C. Hood
January 31, 2017
| A version of this story appeared in
Volume 95, Issue 6
1988
Unfortunate accident
During his first semester at the University of Delaware, James Schiller was in an electrical accident that caused him to lose his left arm and right leg. His rehabilitation counselor at the time told him, “You’re a smart guy. You are going to need to provide for yourself and your future family” with the disability. So when Schiller returned to school in the fall of 1989, he chose to major in chemistry. “As much as chemistry was quite daunting,” he says, “I took a challenge and I went for it.”
1993
Given an opportunity
In his senior year, Schiller signed up for interviews through the university’s career center. He landed an interview for a forensic analysis position with the Philadelphia Police Department. “Because I could pass the classes and do all the things I could in the laboratory, I didn’t think there were too many things I wouldn’t be able to do” in that job, he says. He was hired as a staff chemist to identify narcotics through qualitative bench techniques.
1996
Expanding his reach
After three years in Philadelphia, Schiller and his wife decided to move back to New Jersey, where he took a position at LabCorp doing liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis. “It was really interesting to me because LC/MS was a new field in terms of being the standard by which new medicines were quantified in biological matrices,” he says. He soon moved on to Taylor Technology, which performed LC/MS for multiple drug development companies, and later the pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough.
2006
Diversifying the workplace
Schering-Plough began to expand its diversity efforts by starting employee network groups and asked Schiller how he managed his career around his disability. When Schering-Plough merged with Merck in 2009, Schiller was asked to lead a resource group for people with disabilities in addition to his principal analytical investigator duties. “That was a pretty big challenge,” he says, “but it was really exciting to broaden my skill set and learn more about the organization.”
Today
Creating diversity in chemistry
Schiller has continued to move up in the field. He is now director of the regulated bioanalytical preclinical group at Merck. He is also a member of the ACS Chemists with Disabilities Committee, which works to ensure equal opportunity for people with disabilities in the chemistry field. “I welcome the opportunity to share my perspectives to further advance the awareness and employment of chemists with disabilities,” he says.
Know a chemist with an interesting career path? Tell C&EN about it at cenm.ag/careerladder
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ISSN 0009-2347
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