On May 30th 2017, acumen public affairs welcomed Felicia Vaz as its newest Account Manager to help support the team’s growing healthcare practice.

When asked about her recently arrival, Felicia said: “I’m thrilled to be joining the Acumen team. The agency has a dynamic range of healthcare clients from all sectors of the industry. The agency’s heavy hitting reputation, client base that calls for both EU and international health expertise, coupled with the Partners’ expertise and experience, made the opportunity too good to pass up.”

Felicia has over 10 years’ experience in health policy and stakeholder engagement. She provides strategic advice to clients by realising synergies that can be executed in innovative ways. She has a specific experience in strategy development and implementation, patient engagement and the digitalisation of healthcare. Felicia's work has focused on coalition building and leadership for change initiatives through education, high touch engagement and process improvement. During her career, she managed a number of partnerships on key policy issues (primary and ambulatory care, cancer, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, immigrant and women’s health, e-health and wait-times) with other non-profit stakeholders, medical associations, pharmaceutical companies and academia.

Before joining acumen public affairs, Felicia held roles in:  hospitals, community care, accreditation, regional IM/IT delivery, eHealth strategy and business planning, mHealth development and disease specific branches of government. She has worked with health industry professionals from front line staff and clinicians to senior executives, in sectors ranging from: start-ups to global multinationals.

Felicia joins the team from Burson-Marsteller Brussels, where she provided strategic advice on global policy issues, public awareness campaigns through media and communications and the organisation’s interactions with the EU institutions.

Felicia is a Canadian national and graduate from University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine’s executive management program, within the Institute for Health Policy Evaluation and Management. Felicia is a native English speaker and an intermediate level French speaker.

Acumen founding partner Elaine Cruikshanks said: “We are delighted to welcome Felicia to the team. She brings a wealth of healthcare and digital experience from both the public sector as well as public affairs agencies, which will help us serve our expanding client portfolio to the very highest standards.”

About Acumen

Acumen public affairs was launched in September 2010 and its growing client portfolio has included Cargill Europe, DuPont, European  Broadcasting Union (EBU), Eli Lilly, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA), LEO Pharma, MasterCard, Merial/Boehringer Ingelheim, Mitsubishi, Merck Sharpe & Dohme (MSD), Novartis, Public Libraries 2020, Syngenta, TIE and Uber.