WOW! What a conference! The PMSA Annual Conference is always a fabulous conference for connecting with pharmaceutical commercial analytics professionals, learning about the latest techniques and finding out what to expect in the future. Smith Hanley Associates’ Executive Recruiter, Eda Zullo, has been attending this conference for the past eleven years and, “Every year there are new leaders in this progressive industry as well as experienced professionals to learn from.” Here is her recap of PMSA 2025 Annual Conference.
This year there was record attendance with 450 people at the four-day event in sunny, hot Florida. For many of the attendees this was their first time attending PMSA and the consensus was that they will be back next year.
The recap of PMSA 2025 Annual Conference is all about Elevating Analytics Through Human (HI) & Artificial Intelligence (AI). There were three conference headliners from Novartis, Escalent and Eli Lilly. There were 34 general sessions and breakout sessions including a Sunday Night Welcome Reception, Vendor Fair, Networking Happy Hour, Poster Judging and a Monday Night Social.
The conference focused on the future of commercial pharma though informative sessions focused on AI/ML. Gen AI was always part of the discussion. However, advanced analytics is still and will always be the bread and butter for this group of analytical professionals. Eda’s main take away was that data analytics, data science, commercial analytics, artificial Intelligence and machine learning are constantly changing and improving in their use, and to be part of the cutting edge you need to be in tune with science daily. This conference offers you an opportunity to do that, and make contacts to continue to do that throughout the work year.
The 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Yasser Ali, Head, Global Operations and Business Analytics at BeOne. Yasser is so well deserving of this special award as his entire career has been in commercial analytics. After he graduated from the University of Delaware he spent the next 25 years in both the pharmaceutical consulting and manufacturer side. Yasser has brought his energy and expertise to commercial analytics through innovation, influencing and vision for the pharmaceutical industry. Congrats to Yasser!
As a recruiting professional that supports this niche area of the commercial pharmaceutical industry, Eda is looking forward to next year’s event in New Orleans, LA May 3-6, 2026.
Interested in discussing your hiring needs or your own career? Contact Eda Zullo at ezullo@smithhanley.com.
