Five Questions with Katie Mazuk, Novartis US Chief Patient Experience Officer

1. You were once on track for medical school before making a last-minute pivot. What sparked that decision, and how has it shaped your approach to your career?

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a doctor. Medical school felt like the natural next step for a “type A” who loved science and wanted to make a difference. But while interning at a post-hospitalization care facility, I started questioning if this was the right path for me. 

I believed I could make a bigger impact by helping people stay well, not just get well—and that’s what led me to this industry.

I saw how difficult it was to help patients one at a time, often after a serious health issue had already occurred. Many were dealing with chronic conditions, and our interventions came too late to prevent suffering. That experience made me realize I wanted to shift from reactive care to proactive, preventive care at scale. I believed I could make a bigger impact by helping people stay well, not just get well—and that’s what led me to this industry.

At 21 years old, I left the med school track to follow what truly gives me life and energy: searching for scalable solutions that improve patients’ quality of life. That led to a start in a contract manufacturing organization and ultimately a career in pharma. Since then, my commitment to moving healthcare forward and helping patients get the care they need has only grown stronger.

2. As Chief Patient Experience Officer, what role do you play in evolving how Novartis shows up for patients?

As Chief Patient Experience Officer, I have the privilege of leading Novartis Patient Support (NPS), which has a beautifully simple mission: help patients start and stay on Novartis medicines. That means using our deep understanding of market dynamics, the product portfolio and the end-to-end patient experience to show up with expertise and compassion, whether someone has a question about coverage, needs help filling a prescription or is figuring out how treatment fits into everyday life. Through our support programs, call centers, field teams and technology platforms, we help patients navigate affordability, fill prescriptions, manage their symptoms and even help fit treatment into their lifestyles. And we do it across one of the most advanced product portfolios of high-value medicines in the industry.

In the past, our services were spread across different partners, and it could take as long as 18 months and significant investment to implement new programs. Today, NPS can launch new support programs in about three months, at half the cost, with higher impact for patients.

At Novartis, we often talk about “making each other extraordinary." I see that every day in my teams who are committed to understanding patient challenges and building scaled personalized support services to address those needs.

3. How are you and your teams pushing beyond traditional boundaries to maximize healthcare access and adherence for patients?

I have always been passionate about access to care, but my family’s experiences made it personal. My grandparents grew up in mining towns, where environmental exposure left them with lasting health issues, specifically cancers.

Later, my grandmother’s battle with ovarian cancer led the women in my family to be screened for the BRCA gene. These moments showed me how illness can affect whole families across generations and how critical it is to have access to screening and prevention to safeguard generations.

That perspective drives the work I lead today at Novartis. Even the most innovative treatment can only help patients if they can start on it and stay on it. That's why transforming patient support isn't just about improving services, it's about fundamentally changing how patients access and experience healthcare.

For example, by integrating real-world evidence and patient feedback into our work, we're enhancing how healthcare providers access and utilize their medical knowledge. We make available tools and resources they can use to deliver more personalized care, which can lead to improved patient outcomes. Our NPS teams also use data-driven insights in new ways to better understand and anticipate patient needs, which allows us to develop more tailored support solutions.

The impact is already clear at Novartis. Patient satisfaction is rising, and patients are able to get their first prescription at higher and higher rates. But the real measure of success is knowing that when we remove barriers, we're not just helping individual patients, we're helping close critical healthcare gaps and advance patient care at a much larger scale. 

That’s the work I’m most proud of, and it’s how we create lasting change in healthcare—by ensuring that scientific breakthroughs consistently translate into improved patient outcomes.

4. What moments have inspired how you show up as a leader?

Working at a startup gave me a strong sense of ownership. In my first job, I dug into every part of the business and asked myself: “How can we close gaps? How can we speed things up? What are smart risks we can take?” Even when the work wasn’t very sexy, at a startup, you do it all, and I did everything from the pitch decks to cleaning the toilets! 

That experience fueled entrepreneurial thinking and gave me a deep sense of responsibility for myself and others.

My time in R&D was a lesson in perseverance and agility in the pursuit of long-term goals. COVID-19 put that lesson to an extreme test. At my previous company, my team was supporting more than 400 clinical trials globally and needed to stand up COVID-19 prevention and treatment programs while the world was shutting down. My colleagues and I rallied to meet the moment. We stayed in constant communication, treated the situation with urgency, and stayed agile until we could bring back some predictability.

In healthcare, there are so many people who are counting on us, and I take that seriously. I push my teams to be clear about our commitments, deliver on our promises, and know when it’s time to pivot, regroup and, most importantly, communicate.

Find the work that really lights you up—the work that you're interested in and passionate about.

Find the work that really lights you up—the work that you're interested in and passionate about. Then, find the people that you want to do that work with. When passion aligns with the right team, that’s where true transformation begins.

5. Looking ahead, what is your vision for the future of healthcare?

I imagine a future where accessing life-changing medicines is as natural and straightforward as any part of daily life. We're at a fascinating inflection point where technology and human reasoning are coming together in powerful ways, and that gives us a chance to rethink what’s possible. 

I see us creating something truly groundbreaking: a patient support model that's not just efficient, but empathetic; not just accessible, but anticipatory. A world where every patient who needs a Novartis medicine can get it and the support they need every step of the way. That's the future we're building, and there's no more exciting time to be leading this transformation.