In 2025, Shelley Brathwaite, Director of Patient Marketing at Sumitomo Pharma America, Inc. was honored at PM360’s Trailblazer Awards as a Brand Champion in the Men’s Health category for her leadership, strategic vision, relentless commitment to patients, and fearless drive to transform her industry. As the patient lead for ORGOVYX, the first and only oral androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for advanced prostate cancer, Shelley had elevated the brand and redefined what patient-centric marketing can achieve in an often under-served space. 

Shelley brought a fresh, humancentered perspective to reaching patients. She recognized that men with advanced prostate cancer are often overwhelmed by clinical messaging and led efforts to simplify communication. By grounding the campaign in authentic patient stories, she helped the brand connect through empathy, honesty, and vulnerability. Her approach created a sense of belonging, helping men feel seen, supported, and understood during an isolating time. Shelley rebuilt ORGOVYX’s directto-consumer approach from the ground up, leading media planning, creative development, messaging refinement, and alignment with HCP strategies. By synchronizing patient and physician communications, she strengthened conversations that drive informed treatment choices.

In PM360’s The Winner’s Circle, she discusses how patient engagement has evolved from one-way communication to true collaboration, and why listening directly to patients remains the foundation of meaningful marketing. She also shares her perspective on leading with curiosity, embracing innovation that addresses real patient needs, and using data and AI to strengthen—not replace—the human connection throughout the care journey.

 

PM360:What’s been the biggest change in patient engagement throughout your career?
The shift from talking to patients to building with them. When I started on the agency side, patient engagement meant a brochure and a branded website. Today, patients are active participants in their care who research, compare, and advocate for themselves. They expect us to meet them where they already are, whether that’s connected TV, social platforms, or a conversation with a care partner at the kitchen table. That has challenged us to think beyond awareness and create experiences that help patients feel informed, empowered, and confident discussing treatment options with their healthcare teams.

What patient-focused initiative has taught you the most?
Working closely with our patient ambassadors. Sitting with men living with advanced prostate cancer and hearing them describe, in their own words, what treatment choice meant to them fundamentally changed how I approach the work. No insight deck can replicate a real patient telling you why having options mattered to his sense of control. Those conversations reminded me that every metric represents a real person, and they taught me that authenticity isn’t a creative style. It’s a listening discipline. Start with the patient’s actual words, and the work gets better everywhere downstream.

How do you balance innovation with meeting patients’ real needs?
Innovation should solve a problem—not create one. Before piloting a new channel or format, I ask one question: where in the journey do patients experience confusion, barriers, or unmet needs, and does this make that moment easier? That lens has led to some genuinely new places, from emerging social platforms to plain-language cost and coverage education, but always because the patient needs to be pointed there first. Technology only matters if it makes healthcare easier to understand, easier to navigate, or helps patients have better conversations with their care team.

What’s one leadership lesson that has shaped your career?
Lead with curiosity, and let the results speak. Some of the best ideas come from asking questions rather than assuming you already know the answer, whether I’m working with cross-functional partners, agencies, or patients themselves. And when you pair that curiosity with rigorous measurement and honest readouts, being equally candid about what’s working and what isn’t, you build the credibility to take bigger swings.

How has your definition of success changed over time?
Early in my career, success was the campaign: the launch, the award, the metric. Today, it’s the outcome behind the metric. A patient starting therapy who might have delayed, a care partner who finally understood the coverage process. The business results still matter, but they’re strongest and most durable when they’re built on genuine patient value.

What’s one habit that has made you a more effective leader?
Making time to listen to the actual inputs: patient verbatims, HCP feedback, search queries, comment threads. It’s easy at this level to live in summary slides, so I intentionally seek out raw perspectives before making decisions. Staying close to the real voice of the patient keeps my instincts sharp, keeps the strategy honest about whether it reflects real people, and has consistently led to better choices.

If you could improve one part of the patient journey, what would it be?
The moment between diagnosis and treatment decision. It’s where fear, information overload, and access confusion collide. Many patients leave that appointment overwhelmed and unsure of what comes next, and too often default to the path of least resistance rather than the option that fits their life. Clearer education, practical resources, and support at that exact moment would change outcomes more than almost anything else we do.

What excites you most about the future of patient engagement?
Precision with humanity. Advances in data, measurement, and AI mean we can deliver genuinely relevant information to the right patient at the right moment, and prove it. But the real opportunity is using those tools to strengthen, not replace, the human connection between patients and their healthcare teams. The future isn’t more messages, it’s more meaningful ones.

What impact do you hope to leave on patients, your team, and the industry?
For patients: that they felt seen and informed at the hardest moment of their lives, and knew they had a choice. For the people I work with: that our partnership encouraged curiosity, creative bravery, and analytical rigor in equal measure, and made the work better for it. For the industry: proof that consumer marketing in oncology, done with respect and precision, isn’t just commercially powerful. It’s a patient service. When we put patient needs at the center of every decision, better outcomes follow for everyone.

“Staying close to the real voice of the patient keeps my instincts sharp, keeps the strategy honest about whether it reflects real people, and has consistently led to better choices.”