Candice Hinds, Sloan Fellow '23, Reflects on Her Time at Sloan

Candice Hinds, Sloan Fellow ’23, was one of the students receiving The Healthcare Certificate this year. We caught up with her after the ceremony to talk about her Sloan School experience. Candice’s original training was as a lawyer. She took on operations as well as general counsel positions in roles with increasing responsibility prior to Sloan. After nine years at the same company, she decided to pursue al graduate business degree to fuel the next stage of her career.

She chose the Sloan Fellows program since it had all the attributes to help her decide on her career pivot, and could be completed in one year. Not only did she earn her MBA, she completed all the courses for the Healthcare Certificate. Candice remarked, “I wanted to formalize my education around healthcare, specifically the financial side, and I wanted the opportunity to explore things like biotech and digital medicine in a hands-on way.”

Healthcare Lab was one of the most interesting classes since she got a crash course in biotech during her team project at Abionic where she worked on a project for a rapid sepsis detection test. This experience also taught her a lot about fundraising and regulatory approval. H-Lab gave her the opportunity to explore a new space to see if it would be of interest post-Sloan.

Candice also called out Healthcare Economics as extremely valuable. She appreciated the well-presented economic overview of the complex US health system. Asked about her most enjoyable course, Candice brought up Andrew Lo’s Healthcare Finance class. The class forces students to think about how to finance very expensive drug development in innovative ways. “His speakers were amazing,” Candice remarked and those guests complemented Lo’s “Incredible” teaching.

When asked about the most surprising aspect of her Sloan program, Candice pointed to “how often and how much opportunity MIT created for us to interact with incredible people in the industry.” Healthcare Lab in particular brough in guest speakers for most lectures. After classes, students could go to lunch with and talk in a small group with the speakers. “That’s incredible for any student, and it was so commonplace. Just any given Tuesday you could be having lunch with the CMO of CVS’s Minute Clinic or the CEO of Amwell. It’s somewhat surreal, actually.”

Candice had several employment offers as she finished Sloan. Her experience and hard work made her attractive to several healthcare operations and digital health employers. In the end she chose to go back to an operations role, but this time as Vice President of Operations of a much larger company than she worked at prior to Sloan. There was no doubt that the year at Sloan was a pivotal one for Candice, and the long hours of hard work were well rewarded.