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Hope Lafferty
AM, ELS


Hope comes to medical writing from the writing side, not the medical side—although she did begin her career in the clinical space as a psychotherapist. Her work has always centered around helping people communicate better.  Beginning in the mid-1990s, she worked as an authors’ editor in the Department of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She honed her skills as a grant writer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She also pursued certifications in medical and life science writing and editing from the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS), the University of Chicago Medical Writing/Editing Certificate, and the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA).

Since going out on her own in 2009, she has applied her skills across the pharmaceutical industry, working on everything from research grants to scientific publications, from clinical protocols to continuing medical education. She has developed curricula and has taught writing to postdocs, junior faculty, physicians, and scientists across the country (UNC-Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and now UCSD).
Lafferty, Hope