Tia Bush has been with the same company, Amgen, since graduating from college 17 years ago. Her devotion to the company’s mission has led her through the ranks and across the country.
Growing up in a military family, Bush moved around a lot, but spent most of her life on the West Coast. She spent her high school years in Hawaii and California, and then attended the University of Southern California, where she earned her bachelor’s in biological sciences with a minor in chemistry.
When Bush graduated college, she was living in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and planned to take a year off to study for the MCAS exam to attend medical school. During that time, she applied for a job at the biotech firm Amgen Inc., also in Thousand Oaks, and in 1992, was hired as a validation associate.
“When I started out there, my job involved climbing into [manufacturing] equipment and swabbing them to test for cleanliness. … To this day, I think the whole reason they hired me was because I was small enough to fit into the equipment,” she joked.
Though swabbing equipment doesn’t sound like the type of job that would trump medical school plans, it was. “After a couple months I realized I never wanted to work anywhere else,” she said. “I really just loved working there, especially the aspect of working with incredibly intelligent, positive and motivated people.”
Since then, Bush moved through the ranks to validation manager in 1997, when she developed validation strategies for large-scale manufacturing and managed an $8 million project. Three years later, Bush transferred to an Amgen facility in Longmont, Colo., to work as quality assurance senior manager.
In 2002, when Amgen acquired West Greenwich-based Immunex Corp., Bush and her husband, who also works for Amgen, made the move cross-country to help with the transition and oversee Amgen’s new Rhode Island facility. They now live in Warwick.
Her responsibilities at the new facility were to make sure Immunex’s rheumatoid arthritis medication, Enbrel, was being delivered to patients during the transition period, and to mentor employees through the acquisition period, she said.
“When [Amgen] acquired Immunex, we had 40,000 patients on a waiting list to get Enbrel, and we wanted to make sure we were successful in getting that out to patients,” Bush said. “And acquisitions are always tough, so I wanted to serve as a role model for Amgen, to build the relationships with those new employees.”
Today, part of Bush’s responsibilities as the executive director of quality oversight at Amgen includes ensuring the quality of Enbrel for worldwide use. She also serves as Amgen RI’s primary liaison to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Community Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, among other things.
To continue growing and adding value to the company, Bush approaches each day with the intention of learning something new and finding some way to improve processes for quality and safety, she said. “In my role I carry a large amount of responsibility with regards to patient safety, and I don’t take that lightly. [So] every day I spend time learning and understanding our operations and working with the staff to improve operations,” she said.
While the West Coast transplant had a tough time getting used to Rhode Island’s winters when she moved here seven years ago, Bush considers herself a true Rhode Islander now; she has integrated into her community by networking through organizations like Leading Women and the Executive Women’s Golf Association, as well as mentorship programs like Big Sisters.
“Mentoring is critical to helping people realize their full potential,” she said. “I had strong mentors as I was growing up, so my work with Big Sisters is very important to me. … These girls are at risk, so it’s important that we help give them the chances that they deserve.”
Bush also serves as a mentor within Amgen, where she serves as executive sponsor of Amgen’s Women Interactive Network to help develop leadership skills for women.
As for her own future leadership goals, Bush said, “When I look forward, I don’t focus on a particular position but the experiences I want to have in my career,” she said. “Every day I am learning to lead a large organization and delivering on its aspiration, and I don’t think I could ever get bored with that.”
At Amgen, she also leads an effort to encourage candor, open dialogue and conflict management among Amgen employees, called the Trust and Candor Team, and she’s a site committee member of the Amgen Foundation’s Rhode Island chapter.
For all of these things and more, Bush has been recognized both outside of and within Amgen. She was honored with the 2006 Amgen Excellence in Quality award for curriculum programs she designed around quality assurance, and was honored as one of Providence Business News’ “40 under Forty” business leaders in 2007. •
