Clio Health Innovators: Donna Furu, Associate Director, Agency Operations, Boehringer Ingelheim

Donna Furu brings 34 years of industry experience to her role, including 13 years at Boehringer Ingelheim, where she works across all pharmaceutical products. Donna is a champion of efficiencies and a true partner to all agency stakeholders, ensuring operational process runs smoothly for all parties involved. 

How you bring creativity and innovation to your work

I stay on top of current trends, attend congresses, learn best practices and educate myself so that I can take my learnings back to Boehringer. I am constantly looking for opportunities for system integration across the organization to improve efficiencies. I try to look at things from a high level and consider the full cross-functional team when making decisions. 

About a recent project you’re proud of

We saw that there was an opportunity to evolve our Boehringer systems to make it easier for our agency partners to learn. This meant our marketing teams would spend less time troubleshooting technical issues and place more focus on elevating brand strategy. So, our team developed the “Agency Resource Portal,” a comprehensive, central location where internal stakeholders and external agency partners can find what they need. This portal includes onboarding, training, systems, evaluations and an extensive FAQ. 

What you’re most excited about right now in the health space

I’m very interested in AI and its potential to help us do our jobs better. Healthcare is such a highly regulated industry, and I’m excited to see how we can leverage this technology in the pharmaceutical space to move our business forward.

What it means to you to be selected as a Clio Health Innovator

I’m honored to be recognized—I truly love the work I do, especially when it results in success for our agency partners. We are all working as one team to accomplish our goals, and partnership is the key to success.

“Too often when agencies onboard to a new client, you know what information you need but have no insight into how to access it. With Donna, our team had a mentor, champion, and teacher. Donna Furu is a true disrupter, making all the difference in the value DDB Health was able to quickly bring to the JARDIANCE brand, and in turn raising our own expectations for what the onboarding process can look like.—”Emily DeClue Nadler, SVP, client service director, DDB Health

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Click here to see all of this year’s Clio Health Innovators