“Connect your passion with a purpose.”
This piece of advice is what Dawn Sites, BSN'84, MS, remembers most about a meeting she attended at the IU School of Nursing as a prospective student more than 40 years ago. The advice helped her decide to change her major from biology to nursing. Over the years, it inspired a fulfilling career that took her from patient care in the intensive care unit to Eli Lilly and Company, where she worked in various roles for nearly 30 years.
“I loved the curiosity of biology and science but also really enjoyed people, which for me was the purpose,” said Sites, a Muncie, Indiana, native and 1984 graduate of the IU School of Nursing. “Going to nursing school was really the beginning of uniting my passion for science with the purpose of serving people.”
Sites worked in the surgical ICU at University Hospital during nursing school and continued there as a full-time nurse for four years after she graduated. Still interested in the field of biology, she transitioned to part-time in the ICU, while pursuing a master’s degree in biology with a minor in chemistry at Ball State University. Sites was a member of the BSU chemistry club when human resources representatives from Eli Lilly and Company came to interview students.
“I remember that interview well because they asked me a lot of questions about my nursing degree,” Sites recalls. “I was completing this degree in biology, and they found it to be a unique combination to have a nursing degree, too.”
Subsequent interviews resulted in a job offer, and Sites accepted her first position with Eli Lilly and Company in 1989 as a scientist supervisor in the toxicology laboratory. On the front end of the drug development process, she contributed to teams that worked to ensure compounds were safe for Phase I clinical trials in humans. She spent five years in the position before transitioning to work on clinical trial research teams where her roles included contributing to protocol development and training clinical site personnel.
“All of the medical and clinical aspects of my time in the nursing profession transferred beautifully because I understood the medical language and was immediately able to speak that language very clearly,” Sites explained.
During her time at Eli Lilly and Company, Sites was a member of the leadership team of the nurses’ forum—a group of nurses working at Lilly who were dedicated to using their talents and training to focus on patients. In addition, the nurses’ forum engaged schools of nursing to give faculty and students a vision for alternative roles for nurses. The group also developed a pathway to mentor nursing students.
“There are so many transferable skills that you learn as a nurse, such as critical thinking and decision-making where you have to apply scientific evidence to a goal or outcome,” said Sites, who retired from Eli Lilly and Company in 2017. “There are nurses in most areas of the company using their skills and knowledge to make a difference.”
